Assessment, planning and action for species conservation

Abstract

The IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) is a network of approximately , volunteer experts from almost every country, focused on providing scientific advice to conservation organizations, government agencies and other IUCN members, and supporting the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. The conceptual framework of the SSC is the Species Conservation Cycle, which has five components. The first three are consecutive—Assess, Plan and Act—and the other two, Network and Communicate, are transversal (Rodríguez et al., ). Every year, SSC groups set goals for the year to come, and report on their achievements of the previous year, all within this framework. The mission of the SSC includes the provision of knowledge on the status and trends of species, and the facilitation of conservation planning, and thus there is a natural synergy between the aims of the Commission and the remit of Oryx. In December , we established a partnership to encourage SSC members to submit their research to the journal, with SSC covering, where necessary, the open access fee of accepted articles authored by group members. In parallel, SSC members were encouraged towrite for the ConservationNews section of the journal, to share recent information of general conservation interest in their field of work. Since the partnership began,Oryx has published  articles and Conservation News items from the SSC network. Following the growing success of this partnership, we have renewed it for  and anticipate to maintain it thereafter. This issue of Oryx presents  articles published under this partnership. Of particular note is the wide breadth of research contributed by the SSC network. Filling information gaps and communicating findings to the wider world is a major role of SSC experts, and in this context Goodman () examines the changing knowledge landscape in Madagascar, one of the hottest of biodiversity hotspots. He contrasts information from two major natural history books published  years apart, finding that initial estimates of endemism have held, or in some cases increased, over this time. The participation of Malagasy authors has grown substantially, and knowledge of many poorly known taxa, such as various groups of invertebrates, has also expanded. Most recent efforts have focused on terrestrial biota, however, highlighting a major gap in the study of the marine world. Meijaard et al. () present an analysis of future scenarios for conservation of the Bornean orangutan Pongo pygmaeus in so-called Whole-Earth or Half-Earth contexts (Büscher et al., ). They find that although intuition might suggest a higher likelihood of survival in the Whole-Earth scenario, this could entail relaxing levels of protection throughout the species’ range, even in well-protected areas, whereas the Half-Earth scenario would in contrast imply setting aside areas exclusively for conservation. Their analysis suggests that, in the medium term, transition to a holistic, mixed strategy is probably the best way forward. Although ensuring awareness of research outcomes is important, achieving seemingly wide readership of a publication is not always the product of genuine interest in the research or species in question. In an examination of the uncommonly high readership of an article on a species that otherwise attracts little attention, Meijaard & Moqanaki () warn us that social media platforms may in some cases lead to spurious popularity, most likely related to automatic data gathering processes characteristic of the internet. Eight of the contributions to this special theme on assessment, planning and action focus on particular species. Collecting field information on the photogenic Helan Shan pika Ochotona argentata in China is the objective of Lambert et al. (). With an extent of occurrence of only c.  km,  years of camera trapping produced only two images of the species. Combined with five other new records, this nevertheless substantially increases our knowledge of the species and confirms its Endangered status. In contrast, decades of data exist for the hangul Cervus hanglu hanglu in Kashmir (Ahmad et al. ), which primarily inhabits the  km DachigamNational Park. Population viability analysis indicates a stagnant population, unable to increase, and suggests that high calf mortality and a sex ratio bias against males require attention. Two articles present contrasting perspectives on areabased conservation. Tesfai et al. () combine field data with species distribution modelling to inform the establishment of a protected area for the Critically Endangered African wild ass Equus africanus on the Messir Plateau in Eritrea. They find that  km of the Plateau is optimal habitat during the dry season, and  km is optimal during the wet season. This knowledge will support the government in securing habitat for this species and protecting it from threats such as mining, development and livestock grazing. JON PAUL RODRIGUEZ (Corresponding author, orcid.org/0000-0001-5019-2870, jonpaul.rodriguez@iucn.org) IUCN Species Survival Commission, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas and Provita, Caracas, Venezuela