Forthcoming Special Issues

17 August 2022

The threat of wire snaring to wildlife conservation globally

Snaring is the most common tool used globally to hunt animals. Though illegal across most of the world, snares are widely used because the materials necessary to participate, including rope, sisal, and wire, are often locally sourced and freely available. While snaring is often motivated by human subsistence, the technology is indiscriminate, and snares can capture both target and non-target animals. Despite its global prevalence, the impacts of snaring on animal populations have yet to be comprehensively described. This special issue seeks to fill that knowledge gap. In doing so, it will explore the ways in which snaring has lethal, ethical, energetic, nonconsumptive, and demographic consequences on animal populations. The conservation implications for animal populations will be described and discussed across numerous Taxonomic Orders including Carnivora, Ungulata, Primate, Rodentia, Lagomorpha, among others. This special issue will not only identify information on snaring that has not yet been well-described, but will also reveal techniques to uplift local communities in conservation so as to decrease snaring pressure. This special issue would provide critical guidance about one of the most important, and as yet under-appreciated, threats to the conservation of animal populations globally.

Guest editors:

Dr. Varun Goswami
Conservation [email protected]

Dr. Robert Montgomery
University of Oxford, Department of [email protected]

Dr. Tutilo Mudumba
Makerere University, Department of Zoology, Entomology, Fisheries Sciences
[email protected]

Manuscript submission information:

Submission deadline: Mar 31, 2023

You are invited to submit your manuscript at any time before the submission deadline. For any inquiries about the appropriateness of contribution topics, please contact Managing Guest Editor: Dr. Varun Goswami.

The journal’s submission platform (Editorial Manager®) is now available for receiving submissions to this Special Issue. Please refer to the Guide for Authors to prepare your manuscript and select the article type of “VSI:Snare conservation threat” when submitting your manuscript online.

Keywords:

(snare) OR (snaring) AND (wildlife) OR (animals) OR (conservation) OR (population persistence)

Learn more about the benefits of publishing in a special issue: https://www.elsevier.com/authors/submit-your-paper/special-issues

Interested in becoming a guest editor? Discover the benefits of guest editing a special issue and the valuable contribution that you can make to your field: https://www.elsevier.com/editors/role-of-an-editor/guest-editors

15 August 2022

Conservation science has often been described as a mission-driven discipline. While the mission orientation is aligned to protect biodiversity, the manner in which conservation work has been implemented has come at a cost to the human rights of people living in local communities. Though germane around the world, these dynamics are particularly evident in the Global South. It is in the Global South where much of the world’s biodiversity occurs and where people tend to be faced with comparatively greater socio-economic needs. Importantly, biodiversity conservation and human rights are not incompatible spheres. This Special Issue highlights the impressive work being performed around the world to embed principles of social justice within the fabric of progressive conservation practice. The Issue explores case studies of emergent techniques and methods to conserve biodiversity and support the professional development of local human communities. In this process, the Special Issue demonstrates that the integrity of coupled human and natural systems requires conservation practice that facilitates the protection of biodiversity via the preservation of human social justice.

Guest editors:

Dr. Robert Montgomery
University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Department of Biology
[email protected]

Dr. Asmita Kabra
Ambedkar University Delhi, India
School of Human Ecology
[email protected]

Dr. Thembela Kepe
University of Toronto, Canada
Department of Human Geography
[email protected]

Dr. Stephen Garnett
Charles Darwin University, Australia
College of Engineering, Information and the Environment
[email protected]

Dr. Roger Merino
Universidad del Pacífico Research Center, Peru
Department of Management
[email protected]

Manuscript submission information:

Submission deadline: Feb 28, 2023

The journal’s submission platform (Editorial Manager®) is now available for receiving submissions to this Special Issue. Please refer to the Guide for Authors to prepare your manuscript and select the article type of “VSI:social justice” when submitting your manuscript online.

Keywords:

(social justice) AND (conservation) OR (vaccine) OR (vaccine hesitancy) OR (critical public health)

Learn more about the benefits of publishing in a special issue: https://www.elsevier.com/authors/submit-your-paper/special-issues

8 May 2022

Knowledge shortfalls in conservation sciences

Editor information:

	Dr. Javier Nori - Handling editorial board member CONICET – UNC, [email protected]
	Dr. Bea Maas - BIOC editor University of Vienna, [email protected]
	Dr. Fabricio Villalobos - Guest Editor Instituto de Ecología, A.C. (INECOL), [email protected]
	Dr. Fernanda Brum - Guest Editor Universidade Federal do Paraná, [email protected]

Knowledge shortfalls can preclude and bias our understanding of biodiversity, thus hindering its effective conservation. However, the impact of knowledge shortfalls on conservation actions and decision-making is still poorly explored. In this special issue, we will focus on how and to what extent previously described knowledge shortfalls preclude our chances to elaborate and conduct robust conservation actions. We also encourage authors to describe and discuss new relevant shortfalls that are biasing conservation findings and/or hindering efforts but that have not been formally described. Shortfalls can be related to different causes including, but not exclusive to, methodological issues, data biases, social, and academic inequity, among others.

Manuscript submission information:

Submission portal open: Oct 01, 2022

Submission deadline: Nov 16, 2022

The journal’s submission platform (Editorial Manager®) is now available for receiving submissions to this Special Issue. Please refer to the Guide for Authors to prepare your manuscript and select the article type of “VSI:Conservation shortfalls” when submitting your manuscript online.

Detailed Information:

In a previous Biological Conservation Special Issue, we addressed an important issue in Conservation sciences related to the challenge of overcoming the research-implementation gaps. That is, gaps between the generation of useful conservation knowledge and its impact in the implementation of conservation actions. However, there are many other knowledge gaps that directly preclude (or strongly bias) the generation of robust findings about biodiversity patterns and causes, thus hindering the provision of accurate conservation recommendations. These gaps have been described as "Knowledge shortfalls", and while different aspects of them have been explored in recent years (especially in the field of biogeography and macroecology), we still don’t know why and how such knowledge shortfalls can directly affect the generation of accurate conservation recommendations as well as their implementation.

In this special issue, we will focus on how and to what extent previously described and well-known knowledge shortfalls preclude our chances to elaborate and conduct robust conservation actions. While this particular effect of knowledge shortfalls on conservation actions is still poorly explored, it has become evident that their impact on conservation research, and consequently decision-making, is large. For example, it is expected that the discrepancy between formally described species and the number of species that actually exist (Linnean shortfall) as well as the gaps in our understanding of species distributions (Wallacean), phylogenetic relationships (Darwinian), and environmental tolerances (Hutchinsonian), will certainly bias conservation research such as assessments on species potential responses to climate/land use changes and thus conservation planning. The knowledge shortfall on population data in space and time (Prestonian) might complicate the assessments of population decline and extinction risk, whereas those shortfalls about species’ traits (Raunkerian) and their interactions (Eltonian) might hinder our ability to understand the effect of major threats on ecosystem functioning, compromising our ability to conserve and restore ecosystem services and nature contributions to people.

The above-mentioned examples describe potential effects of previously defined knowledge shortfalls on conservation related research and actions. Beyond such potential effects, our idea for this Special Issue is also to encourage authors to describe and discuss new relevant shortfalls that are biasing conservation findings and/or hindering efforts but that have not been formally described. In this context, it is important to highlight that the existence of knowledge shortfalls can be related to different causes including, but not exclusive to, methodological issues, data biases, social and academic inequity, among others. In addition, from a practical perspective, it is important to consider that there is no single or simple way to overcome knowledge shortfalls. As such, this Special Issues also aims to provide a forum for discussing robust and convenient ways to do so depending on the context: from theory to the practice (doing by knowing) and vice versa (knowing by doing).

For this Special Issue, we welcome articles aimed at describing and discussing the effects of knowledge shortfalls on biological conservation as a way to provide a general overview on the challenge and need to overcome such shortfalls for robust conservation actions. Therefore, we want to include articles that have a global relevance for conservation in terms of the topics or issues addressed, and which demonstrate applications of conservation science and management beyond the specific system or species studied. As such, this special issue will target a broad audience of scientists, conservationists, practitioners and decision-makers. Through a comprehensive introduction and synthesis paper led by the handling editors, the key output of this special issue will be summarized for the reader.

Keywords:

Bias; conservation planning; decision making; inaccurate policies; inequity; knowledge shortfall

Learn more about the benefits of publishing in a special issue: https://www.elsevier.com/authors/submit-your-paper/special-issues