The expansion of agriculture and exploitation of natural forest resources across the tropics presents one of the greatest environmental challenges of the 21st Century. I present the conceptual framework and initial results of the Sustainable Amazon Network (RAS); a multi-disciplinary research initiative involving more than 30 partners assessing both social and ecological dimensions of land-use sustainability in eastern Brazilian Amazonia

Industry and scientists worked together during a 1.5 day integrated workshop to identify barriers and opportunities to an issue where little progress has been made.  Participants identified novel solutions that might not have been possible without industry involvement. We outline key lessons applicable to conservation issues concerning industry and private enterprise.

Adaptive management is proposed as a tool to develop strategies for the conservation of endemic floras. The adaptive approach was applied to the endemic plants from Sicily, Malta and their satellite islands whose biodiversity, IUCN status, and distribution patterns, were analyzed as a preliminary step to set clear goals and conservation priorities.

Following bird surveys and assessments of agricultural yield we found that more bird species overall, and more with smaller range sizes, would benefit from high-yield farming in Uganda, if used as part of a strategy to reduce forest loss, than from low-yield farming and land sharing. This compares favourably with similar surveys in Ghana and India.

Concerns about the impacts of climate change loom large among biodiversity scientists. In this study we use two techniques in conservation science, first, to estimate the likely impacts on the distributions of mammals and butterflies in Egypt (MaxEnt), and second, to measure the effectiveness of Egypt’s Protected Area network (Zonation).

The New Forest has the largest remaining area of lowland heath in Europe and is important for the diversity of its habitats and associated species.   We compared the effects of two management techniques (burning and cutting) on the vegetation and invertebrate communities and discuss the implications for biodiversity conservation and management in the New Forest National Park.

Research on the implementation of Natura 2000 in Scotland found no relationship between stakeholder involvement and expected biodiversity outcomes. Social outcomes of increased stakeholder involvement, such as increased trust, did however increase the likelihood of positive future biodiversity outcomes. The findings indicate key aspects to consider in future efforts aimed at increasing stakeholder involvement in the management of protected areas.

Fisheries have wide-ranging impacts on marine biodiversity. Thus the ways that fisheries are conducted and managed will influence progress towards meeting targets for biodiversity conservation and management measures taken to meet biodiversity targets will affect fisheries. We comment on progress and propose some options for providing a reliable, internally consistent and trusted scientific evidence base to inform management decision making.

There is still a gulf between those involved in research and those involved in practice. Bridging that gap is important for making our research relevant; futhermore there are increasing pressures and incentives to do so, such as the REF. I will describe a range of ways in which this can be achieved by changing both research and practice.

LEFT is a tool which maps ecological value across landscapes.  The website automatically processes high-quality global data to produce 300m resolution maps of land cover,  numbers of globally threatened terrestrial vertebrate species, beta-diversity of terrestrial vertebrates and flowering plants, habitat fragmentation, habitat connectivity, numbers of migratory species and vegetation resilience.

Long-term ecosystem behaviour includes continual change at both large and small temporal and spatial scales. In order for habitat management to capture these ecosystem attributes it may be better to adopt an ‘open-ended ‘ approach rather than target-driven approaches. This paper will discuss when open-ended management is appropriate and its adoption at the Wicken Fen Vision project inEast Anglia.

Climate change is forcing species to shift their range and those not capable of dispersing naturally could be translocated. Selecting suitable sites is paramount for success and habitat suitability modelling can be used to this effect. However, we show that model assumptions and validation should be based on a priori understanding of the impact of climate on species’ population dynamics.

Several authors have questioned the utility of Protected Areas (PAs) under climatic change, as species may change their distributions away from such locations. We consider northerly- and southerly distributed species within Great Britain, and quantify the effectiveness of PAs across a range of taxa during a period of recent climatic change.