Tackling invasive alien species in Europe: The top 20 issues

Globally, Invasive Alien Species (IAS) are considered to be one of the major threats to native biodiversity, with the World Conservation Union (IUCN) citing their impacts as ‘immense, insidious, and usually irreversible’. It is estimated that 11% of the c. 12,000 alien species in Europe are invasive, causing environmental, economic and social damage; and it is reasonable to expect that the rate of biological invasions into Europe will increase in the coming years. In order to assess the current position regarding IAS in Europe and to determine the issues that were deemed to be most important or critical regarding these damaging species, the international Freshwater Invasives - Networking for Strategy (FINS) conference was convened in Ireland in April 2013. Delegates from throughout Europe and invited speakers from around the world were brought together for the conference. These comprised academics, applied scientists, policy makers, politicians, practitioners and representative stakeholder groups. A horizon scanning and issue prioritization approach was used by in excess of 100 expert delegates in a workshop setting to elucidate the Top 20 IAS issues in Europe. These issues do not focus solely on freshwater habitats and taxa but relate also to marine and terrestrial situations. The Top 20 issues that resulted represent a tool for IAS management and should also be used to support policy makers as they prepare European IAS legislation. © 2014 The Author(s)

Conservation genetics of the annual hemiparasitic plant Melampyrum sylvaticum (Orobanchaceae) in the UK and Scandinavia

Melampyrum sylvaticum is an endangered annual hemiparasitic plant that is found in only 19 small and isolated populations in the United Kingdom (UK). To evaluate the genetic consequences of this patchy distribution we compared levels of diversity, inbreeding and differentiation from ten populations from the UK with eight relatively large populations from Sweden and Norway where the species is more continuously distributed. We demonstrate that in both the UK and Scandinavia, the species is highly inbreeding (global F IS = 0.899). Levels of population differentiation were high (F’ST = 0.892) and significantly higher amongst UK populations (F’ST = 0.949) than Scandinavian populations (F’ST = 0.762; P < 0.01). The isolated populations in the UK have, on average, lower genetic diversity (allelic richness, proportion of loci that are polymorphic, gene diversity) than Scandinavian populations, and this diversity difference is associated with the smaller census size and population area of UK populations. From a conservation perspective, the naturally inbreeding nature of the species may buffer the species against immediate effects of inbreeding depression, but the markedly lower levels of genetic diversity in UK populations may represent a genetic constraint to evolutionary change. In addition, the high levels of population differentiation suggest that gene flow among populations will not be effective at replenishing lost variation. We thus recommend supporting in situ conservation management with ex situ populations and human-mediated seed dispersal among selected populations in the UK

Equity-Oriented Healthcare: What It Is and Why We Need It in Oncology

Alarming differences exist in cancer outcomes for people most impacted by persistent and widening health and social inequities. People who are socially disadvantaged often have higher cancer-related mortality and are diagnosed with advanced cancers more often than other people. Such outcomes are linked to the compounding effects of stigma, discrimination, and other barriers, which create persistent inequities in access to care at all points in the cancer trajectory, preventing timely diagnosis and treatment, and further widening the health equity gap. In this commentary, we discuss how growing evidence suggests that people who are considered marginalized are not well-served by the cancer care sector and how the design and structure of services can often impose profound barriers to populations considered socially disadvantaged. We highlight equity-oriented healthcare as one strategy that can begin to address inequities in health outcomes and access to care by taking action to transform organizational cultures and approaches to the design and delivery of cancer services

Services, models of care, and interventions to improve access to cancer treatment for adults who are socially disadvantaged: A scoping review protocol.

Timely access to guideline-recommended cancer treatment is known to be an indicator of the quality and accessibility of a cancer care system. Yet people who are socially disadvantaged experience inequities in access to cancer treatment that have significant impacts on cancer outcomes and quality of life. Among people experiencing the intersecting impacts of poor access to the social determinants of health and personal identities typically marginalized from society ('social disadvantage'), there are significant barriers to accessing cancer, many of which compound one another, making cancer treatment extremely difficult to access. Although some research has focused on barriers to accessing cancer treatment among people who are socially disadvantaged, it is not entirely clear what, if anything, is being done to mitigate these barriers and improve access to care. Increasingly, there is a need to design cancer treatment services and models of care that are flexible, tailored to meet the needs of patients, and innovative in reaching out to socially disadvantaged groups. In this paper, we report the protocol for a planned scoping review which aims to answer the following question: What services, models of care, or interventions have been developed to improve access to or receipt of cancer treatment for adults who are socially disadvantaged? Based on the methodological framework of Arksey and O'Malley, this scoping review is planned in six iterative stages. A comprehensive search strategy will be developed by an academic librarian. OVID Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL (using EBSCOhost) and Scopus will be searched for peer-reviewed published literature; advanced searches in Google will be done to identify relevant online grey literature reports. Descriptive and thematic analysis methods will be used to analyze extracted data. Findings will provide a better understanding of the range and nature of strategies developed to mitigate barriers to accessing cancer treatment

Management preferences, perceived benefits and conflicts among resource users and managers in the Mafia Island Marine Park, Tanzania \ud

Conflicts between resource users and managers are common and well documented on Mafia Island (Tanzania), where there has been a history of unresolved conflict over marine conservation initiatives. The perceptions of fisheries and park restrictions among resource users and managers were evaluated to try to understand the underlying causes of these conflicts. Responses concerning management preferences of government officials employed by the Mafia Island Marine Park (MIMP), personnel of the fisheries department, and heads of households in three villages in and out of the Park were compared. The largest differences in perceptions were found between villagers and managers, but all respondents agreed that minimum fish lengths and gear restrictions were beneficial and that benefits increased along the scale of the individual – community – national government. Villagers and government officials differed most in their perceptions towards area- based management, spatial and temporal closures, and species restrictions. Perceptions of management restrictions and benefits were only weakly correlated with the socioeconomic status of the villagers, but more strongly correlated with their living in or out of the Park and their family’s economic options. The most negative perceptions towards restrictions were found in villages near fisheries closures, where there was a heavy reliance on marine resources and a higher numbers of jobs per household, but less reliance on cash crops, animal husbandry and tourism. The lack of these three options appears to have produced lower levels of support for MIMP and associated restrictions, and might be overcome by (1) using gear and minimum size restrictions more than fisheries closures and (2) increasing access to tourism, cash crops, animal husbandry and salaried employment, \ud rather than simply increasing livelihood diversity. \u