Although marine reserves represent one of the most effective management responses to human impacts, their capacity to sustain the same diversity of species, functional roles and biomass of reef fishes as wilderness areas remains questionable, in particular in regions with deep and long-lasting human footprints. Here we show that fish functional diversity and biomass of top predators are signifi...

a SILVIS Lab, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1630 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA b U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NWRS, Region 3, 2630 Fanta Reed Road, La Crosse, WI 54603, USA c U.S. Geological Survey, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, 2630 Fanta Reed Road, La Crosse, WI 54603, USA d Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research, U...

Farmers who participate in the Conservation Reserve Program (a voluntary program that removes highly erodible cropland from proauction) may be able to supplement their annual government payment by renting out their land to hunters, fishers, birdwatchers, or wildlife photographers. Those recreational activities may boost income and employment in the larger region by raising retail spending in ne...

The Wilderness Debate Rages On: Continuing the Great New Wilderness Debate (Georgia University Press, 2008) is a 2 -pound, 723-page anthology of views, opinions, polemics, and exhortations with some philosophical arguments to round out the collection. The title is, perhaps, more hopeful than descriptive. While it is clear that various authors are talking about wilderness, it’s less evident that...

Forest biodiversity policies in multi-ownership landscapes are typically developed in an uncoordinated fashion with little consideration of their interactions or possible unintended cumulative effects. We conducted an assessment of some of the ecological and socioeconomic effects of recently enacted forest management policies in the 2.3-million-ha Coast Range Physiographic Province of Oregon. T...

Protected areas are extremely important for the long term viability of biodiversity in a densely populated country like India where land is a scarce resource. However, protected areas cover only 5% of the land area in India and in the case of large carnivores that range widely, human use landscapes will function as important habitats required for gene flow to occur between protected areas. In t...

Roads are the ultimate manifestation of urbanization, providing essential connectivity within and between rural and heavily populated areas. Roads permeate national forests and other established wilderness areas; consequently, no areas in the U.S. are protected from this expanding infrastructure. The ecological impacts roads have on herpetofauna across temporal and spatial scales are profound, ...

Sean Penn's Into the Wild is a magnificent, epic film that tells an intriguing story of the wilderness. The film, based on Jon Krakauer's book of the same title, is about a young man who leaves what he perceives to be false and materialistic life behind to enter the wild in search of the pure and authentic. In an interview about the film, Sean Penn said that, while human inauthenticity and corr...

American pikas (Ochotona princeps) have been heralded as indicators of montane-mammal response to contemporary climate change. Pikas no longer occupy the driest and lowest-elevation sites in numerous parts of their geographic range. Conversely, pikas have exhibited higher rates of occupancy and persistence in Rocky Mountain and Sierra Nevada montane 'mainlands'. Research and monitoring efforts ...

A case is made for greater emphasis to be placed on value chain management as an alternative to geographically based disease risk mitigation for trade in commodities and products derived from animals. The geographic approach is dependent upon achievement of freedom in countries or zones from infectious agents that cause so-called transboundary animal diseases, while value chain-based risk manag...