Environmental evidence in action: on the science and practice of evidence synthesis and evidence-based decision-making

In civil society we expect that policy and management decisions will be made using the best available evidence. Yet, it is widely known that there are many barriers that limit the extent to which that occurs. One way to overcome these barriers is via robust, comprehensive, transparent and repeatable evidence syntheses (such as systematic reviews) that attempt to minimize various forms of bias to present a summary of existing knowledge for decision-making purposes. Relative to other disciplines (e.g., health care, education), such evidence-based decision-making remains relatively nascent for environment management despite major threats to humanity, such as the climate, pollution and biodiversity crises demonstrating that human well-being is inextricably linked to the biophysical environment. Fortunately, there are a growing number of environmental evidence syntheses being produced that can be used by decision makers. It is therefore an opportune time to reflect on the science and practice of evidence-based decision-making in environment management to understand the extent to which evidence syntheses are embraced and applied in practice. Here we outline a number of key questions related to the use of environmental evidence that need to be explored in an effort to enhance evidence-based decision-making. There is an urgent need for research involving methods from social science, behavioural sciences, and public policy to understand the basis for patterns and trends in environmental evidence use (or misuse or ignorance). There is also a need for those who commission and produce evidence syntheses, as well as the end users of these syntheses to reflect on their experiences and share them with the broader evidence-based practice community to identify needs and opportunities for advancing the entire process of evidence-based practice. It is our hope that the ideas shared here will serve as a roadmap for additional scholarship that will collectively enhance evidence-based decision-making and ultimately benefit the environment and humanity.

A horizon scan of global conservation issues for 2014

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This is the fifth in our annual series of horizon scans published in TREE.

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We identify 15 issues that we considered insufficiently known by the conservation community.

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These cover a wide range of issues. Four relate to climate change, two to invasives and two to disease spread.

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This exercise has been influential in the past.

This paper presents the output of our fifth annual horizon-scanning exercise, which aims to identify topics that increasingly may affect conservation of biological diversity, but have yet to be widely considered. A team of professional horizon scanners, researchers, practitioners, and a journalist identified 15 topics which were identified via an iterative, Delphi-like process. The 15 topics include a carbon market induced financial crash, rapid geographic expansion of macroalgal cultivation, genetic control of invasive species, probiotic therapy for amphibians, and an emerging snake fungal disease.

Dramatic decline in orang-utan numbers in the Leuser Ecosystem, Northern Sumatra

The Leuser Ecosystem, northern Sumatra, Indonesia, contains the world's largest orang-utan Pongo pygmaeus population. We examine the consequences of the recent wave of forest conversion, and legal and illegal logging, on orang-utan numbers in the Leuser Ecosystem. We review density variation inside the Leuser Ecosystem and its causes, and the consequences of selective logging, exhaustive logging and clear-felling for habitat conversion on orang-utan densities. The analysis of the orang-utan's decline is based on information on forest loss, logging intensity, and the delineation of logging concessions and legal changes in land use status. The results indicate a very rapid decline, by c. 45 per cent, from c.. 12,000 in early 1993, over a 6- to 7-year period. During 1998 and 1999, losses occurred at a rate of about 1000 orang-utans per year. At this rate, further losses in the near future are expected to put the survival of Leuser's orang-utans in serious doubt.

Effects of diet composition on intake by adult wild European rabbits

The voluntary dry matter intake (DMI) of several grass and legume diets, and the amount of dry matter (DM), nitrogen, fibre, and energy assimilated from each diet (i.e. the digestibility coefficients) are presented for the wild European rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus. The DMI may be predicted from DM% and percentage of total nitrogen (on a DM basis) for a high DM diet (90-95%) but the general relationship may stand for fresh forage also. The metabolizable energy of a diet is correlated with DMI through the DM% and the percentage of nitrogen and fibre in the diet on a DM basis. The DM digestibility coefficient is correlated with fibre content. The wild rabbit's high efficiency of protein digestibility and low fibre digestibility compared with ruminants is also a characteristic of the domestic rabbit. It is suggested that the proportions of different nutrients required by wild rabbits are similar to those required by domestic animals.