The Effects of Access Restrictions and Communication Strategies for Divisive Environmental Management

In 2018, the U.S. National Park Service announced a controversial plan to translocate 20−30 gray wolves (Canis lupus) to Isle Royale National Park to increase genetic diversity and ultimately the dwindling wolf population. Media were restricted physical access during the translocations, citing safety concerns for the wolves and management team, as well as logistical challenges because of the remoteness of the park. Given these restrictions, we used interviews and quantitative analyses of news stories and press releases to examine what communication strategies the National Park Service and its partners deployed and how access restriction affected the way news outlets covered the events. By identifying source diversity groups, we found U.S. government sources were predominately featured with few other source types included, and that coverage heavily relied on press release information. We discuss the implications of this communication strategy and potential consequences for access restrictions when covering divisive events in remote locations

Global shortfalls in documented actions to conserve biodiversity

Threatened species are by definition species that are in need of assistance. In the absence of suitable conservation interventions, they are likely to disappear soon1. There is limited understanding of how and where conservation interventions are applied globally, or how well they work2, 3. Here, using information from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List and other global databases, we find that for species at risk from three of the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss—habitat loss, overexploitation for international trade and invasive species4—many appear to lack the appropriate types of conservation interventions. Indeed, although there has been substantial recent expansion of the protected area network, we still find that 91% of threatened species have insufficient representation of their habitats within protected areas. Conservation interventions are not implemented uniformly across different taxa and regions and, even when present, have infrequently led to substantial improvements in the status of species. For 58% of the world’s threatened terrestrial species, we find conservation interventions to be notably insufficient or absent. We cannot determine whether such species are truly neglected, or whether efforts to recover them are not included in major conservation databases. If they are indeed neglected, the outlook for many of the world’s threatened species is grim without more and better targeted action

Preparing the Next Generation of Sustainability Scientists

Graduate programs emerging in universities over recent decades support the advanced study of sustainability issues in complex socio-environmental systems. Constructing the problem-scope to address these issues requires graduate students to integrate across disciplines and synthesize the social and natural dimensions of sustainability. Graduate programs that are designed to foster inter- and transdisciplinary research acknowledge the importance of training students to use integrative research approaches. However, this training is not available in all graduate programs that support integrative research, often requiring students to seek external training opportunities. We present perspectives from a group of doctoral students with diverse disciplinary backgrounds conducting integrative research in universities across the United States who participated in a 10-day, National Science Foundation-funded integrative research training workshop to learn and develop socio-environmental research skills. Following the workshop, students conducted a collaborative autoethnographic study to share pre- and postworkshop research experiences and discuss ways to increase integrative research training opportunities. Results reveal that students, regardless of disciplinary background, face common barriers conducting integrative research that include: (1) lack of exposure to epistemological frameworks and team-science skills, (2) challenges to effectively include stakeholder perspectives in his/her research, and (3) variable levels of committee support to conduct integrative research. To overcome the identified barriers and advance integrative research, students recommend how training opportunities can be embedded within existing graduate programs. Students advocate that both internal and external training opportunities are necessary to support the next generation of sustainability scientists

Non-Invasive Detection of a Small Number of Bioluminescent Cancer Cells In Vivo

Early detection of tumors can significantly improve the outcome of tumor treatment. One of the most frequently asked questions in cancer imaging is how many cells can be detected non-invasively in a live animal. Although many factors limit such detection, increasing the light emission from cells is one of the most effective ways of overcoming these limitations. Here, we describe development and utilization of a lentiviral vector containing enhanced firefly luciferase (luc2) gene. The resulting single cell clones of the mouse mammary gland tumor (4T1-luc2) showed stable light emission in the range of 10,000 photons/sec/cell. In some cases individual 4T1-luc2 cells inserted under the skin of a nu/nu mouse could be detected non-invasively using a cooled CCD camera in some cases. In addition, we showed that only few cells are needed to develop tumors in these mice and tumor progression can be monitored right after the cells are implanted. Significantly higher luciferase activity in these cells allowed us to detect micrometastases in both, syngeneic Balb/c and nu/nu mice

Quantitative ecology at the graduate level

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167785/1/fee2338_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167785/2/fee2338.pd

Climate change, cattle, and the challenge of sustainability in a telecoupled system in Africa

Information, energy, and materials are flowing over greater distances than in the past, changing the structure and feedbacks within and across coupled human and natural systems worldwide. The telecoupling framework was recently developed to understand the feedbacks and multidirectional flows characterizing social and environmental interactions between distant systems. We extend the application of the telecoupling framework to illustrate how flows in beef affect and are affected by social-ecological processes occurring between distant systems in Africa, and how those dynamics will likely change over the next few decades because of climate-induced shifts in a major bovine disease, trypanosomosis. The disease is currently wide-spread in Africa, affecting millions of cattle every year and resulting in massive economic losses. Increasing temperatures are predicted to substantially reduce the geographic range of the cattle disease by 2050 in regions of Africa, thereby potentially releasing cattle from disease control in those areas. Despite the societal and economic benefits, greater cattle production can also lead to significant environmental degradation. Our investigation takes a qualitative, yet systematic, approach to explore how changes in the regional distribution of cattle production, caused by shifts in the bovine disease, will affect the social and ecological conditions of the telecoupled system in the future. Doing so lays the groundwork to quantify telecouplings and improve decision making under uncertainty in the future

Human adaptation strategies are key to cobenefits in human–wildlife systems

Sustainable development goals such as global food security and biodiversity conservation can conflict because these efforts create situations where humans and wildlife share landscapes, often leading to interactions that detrimentally affect both groups. Therefore, coexistence between humans and wildlife is more likely when adaptation strategies produce and sustain cobenefits, rather than benefitting one group only. However, we lack a good understanding of how different social and ecological factors contribute to cobenefit outcomes, which limits our opportunities to address local issues and scale up successful conservation actions. Here, we performed the first global review of the human–wildlife interaction literature to assess which human adaptation strategies generated cobenefits and how stakeholder involvement and other context‐specific conditions mediated those outcomes. We found that active guarding, fencing, repellents, and socioeconomic mechanisms consistently led to cobenefits across species and contexts. Thus, these interventions might be the best candidates for scaling up coexistence from local to regional or national scales. Surprisingly, stakeholder involvement was less consequential than other variables, yet, overall, it played an important role in sustaining cobenefits regardless of adaptation strategy or social–ecological context. We highlight future research directions to help manage tradeoffs and achieve sustainable coexistence outcomes in shared landscapes.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167539/1/conl12769.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167539/2/conl12769_am.pd