Nature’s nations: the shared conservation history of Canada and the USA

Historians often study the history of conservation within the confines of national borders, concentrating on the bureaucratic and political manifestations of policy within individual governments. Even studies of the popular expression of conservationist ideas are generally limited to the national or sub-national (province, state, etc.) scale. This paper suggests that conservationist discourse, policy and practice in Canada and the USA were the products of a significant cross-border movement of ideas and initiatives derived from common European sources. In addition, the historical development of common approaches to conservation in North America suggests, contrary to common assumptions, that Canada did not always lag behind the USA in terms of policy innovation. The basic tenets of conservation (i.e. state control over resource, class-based disdain for subsistence hunters and utilitarian approaches to resource management) have instead developed at similar time periods and along parallel ideological paths in Canada and the USA

Large-scale discovery of novel genetic causes of developmental disorders

Despite three decades of successful, predominantly phenotype-driven discovery of the genetic causes of monogenic disorders1, up to half of children with severe developmental disorders of probable genetic origin remain without a genetic diagnosis. Particularly challenging are those disorders rare enough to have eluded recognition as a discrete clinical entity, those with highly variable clinical manifestations, and those that are difficult to distinguish from other, very similar, disorders. Here we demonstrate the power of using an unbiased genotype-driven approach2 to identify subsets of patients with similar disorders. By studying 1,133 children with severe, undiagnosed developmental disorders, and their parents, using a combination of exome sequencing3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 and array-based detection of chromosomal rearrangements, we discovered 12 novel genes associated with developmental disorders. These newly implicated genes increase by 10% (from 28% to 31%) the proportion of children that could be diagnosed. Clustering of missense mutations in six of these newly implicated genes suggests that normal development is being perturbed by an activating or dominant-negative mechanism. Our findings demonstrate the value of adopting a comprehensive strategy, both genome-wide and nationwide, to elucidate the underlying causes of rare genetic disorders

Brazil Nut Forest Concessions in the Peruvian Amazon: Success or Failure?

In Peru, concessions for harvesting Brazil nuts (fruits of the Amazon tree Bertholletia excelsa) were launched in the Madre de Dios Department in 2000. This study analyses the extent to which the Brazil nut concession system (which covers about 1 million ha of closed canopy forest) has met its objective of providing a governance model for sustainable and equitable use. Primary and secondary information sources were used to analyse governance outcomes based on 10 indicators, and the performance of Brazil nut concessions in two contrasting land-use types in Madre de Dios were compared (within and outside protected areas). It was found that corresponding institutional arrangements have led, more than a decade later, to different socioeconomic, ecological and legal outcomes. Particularly outside protected areas, where the vast majority of the concessions are located, a paradoxical situation was found of ineffective over-regulation on paper but minimal intervention from state agencies; ineffective state monitoring and sanctions; poor law enforcement with excessive punitive measures; power imbalances in the value chain and illegal timber harvesting; the lack of a multiple forest-use framework; and overlapping, conflictual customary and regulatory governance. This paper argues that at present, the long-term sustainability of the Brazil nut concession system seems compromised. If the Brazil nut concession system is to enter into a new decade, this may only be possible by formally recognizing the multiplicity of land uses, implementing and validating sound silvicultural approaches, minimizing land use and management trade-offs in alignment with local aspirations, and establishing effective negotiation platforms with different productive sectors and government agencies.</p