Creating Markets for Biodiversity: A Case Study of Earth Sanctuaries Ltd

This papers examines the activities and operations of the first publicly listed company in Australia with wildlife conservation as its primary goal. Earth Sanctuaries Ltd (ESL) is the first publicly listed company in Australia with wildlife conservation as its primary goal. Its focus to date is on conservation of small native mammals that are threatened by exotic predators and loss of habitat. Its strategy has been to acquire land, erect electrified vermin-proof fencing, remove feral animals, regenerate native vegetation and reintroduce selected native species. The paper finds that there does not appear to be a consistent and coordinated approach across jurisdictions for private conservation providers to access, keep, relocate and trade native wildlife, amplifying uncertainty for organisations which operate in several jurisdictions.biodiversity - environment - conservation - wildlife - Earth Sanctuaries - regulation - property rights - competitive neutrality - contestability - ecological outcomes - private sector conservation

Cost Sharing for Biodiversity Conservation: A Conceptual Framework

„h Many resource users undertake actions that conserve biodiversity. If, however, there were public demand for more conservation than would be provided voluntarily by the private sector alone, there are two broad principles for determining who should bear the costs ¡X ¡¥impacter pays¡¦ or ¡¥beneficiary pays¡¦. The two principles have different efficiency and distributional effects. „h A fundamental step in determining which cost sharing principle to apply is the clarification of the rights and responsibilities implied by existing property rights. This is an important issue that requires further work. „h If property rights effectively require resource users to meet an environmental standard, resource users who fail to achieve this may be considered to generate external costs. In these circumstances, on efficiency grounds, the impacter pays principle should generally be adopted to internalise external costs. This effectively amounts to enforcement of an individual¡¦s existing legal responsibilities. However, if the costs of implementing the impacter pays principle were to outweigh its efficiency advantages, the beneficiary pays principle may be considered.environment, conservation, biodiversity

Transfer of Training Emotionally Biased Interpretations

Non-anxious college students first performed a semantic-judgement task that was designed to train either threat-related or threat-unrelated interpretations of threat-ambiguous homographs (e.g. mug). Next they performed an ostensibly separate transfer task of constructing personal mental images for single words, in a series that included new, threat-ambiguous homographs. In two experiments, the number of threat-related interpretations in the transfer task significantly increased following threat-related experience during the training phase, compared to other training conditions. We conclude that interpretive biases typically shown by anxious people can be established in non-anxious students in ways that generalize to novel tasks and materials

Measuring Population Transmission Potential for HIV: An Alternative Metric of Transmission Risk in Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) in the US

Background Various metrics for HIV burden and treatment success [e.g. HIV prevalence, community viral load (CVL), population viral load (PVL), percent of HIV-positive persons with undetectable viral load] have important public health limitations for understanding disparities. Methods and Findings Using data from an ongoing HIV incidence cohort of black and white men who have sex with men (MSM), we propose a new metric to measure the prevalence of those at risk of transmitting HIV and illustrate its value. …See full text for complete abstract

The Comparability of Men Who Have Sex With Men Recruited From Venue-Time-Space Sampling and Facebook: A Cohort Study

Background: Recruiting valid samples of men who have sex with men (MSM) is a key component of the US human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) surveillance and of research studies seeking to improve HIV prevention for MSM. Social media, such as Facebook, may present an opportunity to reach broad samples of MSM, but the extent to which those samples are comparable with men recruited from venue-based, time-space sampling (VBTS) is unknown. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the comparability of MSM recruited via VBTS and Facebook. Methods: HIV-negative and HIV-positive black and white MSM were recruited from June 2010 to December 2012 using VBTS and Facebook in Atlanta, GA. We compared the self-reported venue attendance, demographic characteristics, sexual and risk behaviors, history of HIV-testing, and HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevalence between Facebook- and VTBS-recruited MSM overall and by race. Multivariate logistic and negative binomial models estimated age/race adjusted ratios. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to assess 24-month retention. Results: We recruited 803 MSM, of whom 110 (34/110, 30.9% black MSM, 76/110, 69.1% white MSM) were recruited via Facebook and 693 (420/693, 60.6% black MSM, 273/693, 39.4% white MSM) were recruited through VTBS. Facebook recruits had high rates of venue attendance in the previous month (26/34, 77% among black and 71/76, 93% among white MSM; between-race P=.01). MSM recruited on Facebook were generally older, with significant age differences among black MSM (P=.02), but not white MSM (P=.14). … See full text for complete abstract