The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
In 2013, the remote Tubbataha Reef UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the western Philippines, experienced two ship groundings within four months: the USS Guardian (USSG), a US military vessel, and the Min Ping Yu (MPY), an illegal Chinese fishing vessel. Here, we present the results of coral disease assessments completed …
The Regional Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Asia and the Pacific produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) provides a critical analysis of the state of knowledge regarding the importance, status, and trends of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. The assessment …
Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of conservation efforts and now cover nearly 13% of the world’s land surface, with the world’s governments committed to expand this to 17%. However, as biodiversity continues to decline, the effectiveness of PAs in reducing the extinction risk of species remains largely untested. We …
The best way to save forests and curb biodiversity loss is to recognize the claims of indigenous peoples to their territories, a new report urges. Published by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an international NGO , and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the UN special rapporteur on indigenous rights, the 28-nation study …
Climate change will affect not only natural and cultural resources within protected areas but also tourism and visitation patterns. The U.S. National Park Service systematically collects data regarding its 270+ million annual recreation visits, and therefore provides an opportunity to examine how human visitation may respond to climate change from …
We present a range-wide assessment of sympatric western lowland gorillas Gorilla gorilla gorilla and central chimpanzees Pan troglodytes troglodytes using the largest survey data set ever assembled for these taxa: 59 sites in five countries surveyed between 2003 and 2013, totaling 61,000 person-days of fieldwork. We used spatial modeling to …
The Asia-Pacific regional assessment focuses on the critical importance of nature’s contribution to people and people’s well-being. The assessment aims to assist in the development and implementation of cross-scale and cross-sector policies, as well as institutional and governance-related interventions. It also identifies and proposes practical management options, methodologies, tools and …
A roadmap for businesses operating in some of the most biologically significant places on the planet has been issued today by the Key Biodiversity Area Partnership involving 12 of the world’s leading conservation organisations – including IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature. The report, Guidelines on Business and KBAs: …
A roadmap for businesses operating in some of the most biologically significant places on the planet has been issued today by the Key Biodiversity Area Partnership involving 12 of the world’s leading conservation organisations – including IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature. The report, Guidelines on Business and KBAs: …
India unveiled the third National Wildlife Action Plan for 2017-2031 spelling out the future road map for wildlife conservation. The third action plan comes after the first plan in 1983 and second from 2002 till 2016. The third National Wildlife Action Plan is unique as this is the first time …
Expansion and consolidation of Gir Protected Area, Gujarat, India – habitat of the Asiatic lion, and response of prey and predator to the management and dispersion trend of lions outside the Gir forests are interesting and noteworthy. During the last five decades (1965–2015), an approach for the Asiatic lion conservation …
Tourism is an engine for jobs, exports, and investments. The tourism sector is also the largest, global, market-based contributor to financing protected area systems. Nature-based tourism (NBT) is a sub-component of the tourism sector that includes wildlife-based tourism. NBT is a powerful tool countries can leverage to grow and diversify …
Equity is gaining increasing attention in international conservation policy. Specifically, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Aichi Target 11 calls for “effectively and equitably managed … protected areas”. Yet unlike effective protected area (PA) management, equitable PA management has not been defined, and there are few examples of a comprehensive …
Protected areas (PAs) represent a cornerstone of efforts to safeguard biodiversity, and if effective should reduce threats to biodiversity. We present the most comprehensive assessment of threats to terrestrial PAs, based on in situ data from 1,961 PAs across 149 countries, assessed by PA managers and local stakeholders. Unsustainable hunting …
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) is the largest network of marine reserves in the world, yet little is known of the efficacy of no-fishing zones in the relatively lightly-exploited remote parts of the system (i.e., northern regions). Here, we find that the detection of reserve effects is challenging …
Question raised in Lok Sabha on Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats,05/01/2018. Year-wise details of funds released to State/UT Governments since the inception of IDWH is given on the Annexure.
Question raised in Lok Sabha on Compensation to Displaced Families, 22/12/2017. Funding assistance for voluntary village relocation from notified core/critical tiger habitat of a tiger reserve and other Protected Areas on receipt of requests from the state Governments is provided under Centrally Sponsored Scheme of ‘Project Tiger’ and ‘Integrated Development …
Question raised in Relocation of People from Protected Areas, 15/12/2017. The scheme for rehabilitation of people from Protected Ares is going on successfully in the country. Details of villages relocated outside the Wildlife Sanctuaries/Tiger Reserves so far are given in the Annexure.
Antibiotics that has spilled from farms into the natural environment may be a bigger factor in spreading resistance to life-saving drugs than previously thought, report says. The overuse of antibiotics in farming has been highlighted as one of the biggest emerging threats to human health, spreading resistance to vital drugs …
This paper details a methodology for calculating the extent of terrestrial and marine protected areas recorded in the World Database on Protected Areas by country, type and IUCN management categories. The method allows the data on protected areas to be summarised in a harmonised and more detailed way than is …
