Integrating Proximal and Horizon Threats to Biodiversity for Conservation

• Published in: Trends in ecology & evolution (Amsterdam) Vol. 34; no. 9; pp. 781 - 788
• Main Authors: Bonebrake, Timothy C., Guo, Fengyi, Dingle, Caroline, Baker, David M., Kitching, Roger L., Ashton, Louise A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2019
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Climate Change; conservation; Conservation of Natural Resources; conservation templet; multiple threats; conservation; biodiversity; conservation templet; multiple threats
• ISSN: 0169-5347; 1872-8383
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2019.04.001

Global conservation promotes solutions to different dimensions of threat and response: land-use change, climate change, pollution, and so forth. Countering each threat has its band of proponents who advocate for their cause as paramount, increasingly, given limited resources, by downplaying the relative importance of others. Not only does this encourage a compartmentalised view of the world, which is ecologically unsound, it allows politicians and others to cherry-pick responses in light of political expediency or local demands. We should instead aim to achieve win–win conservation strategies that address multiple threats to diversity acting at different timescales, as well as ‘horizon threats’, which occur at large scales and may be the most challenging conservation issues to address in both the present and the future. Strong voices suggest that horizon threats (e.g., climate change) to biodiversity are less urgent than other, more immediate threats, implying that limited resources for both research and conservation should be redirected away from horizon-driven priorities.The high impact of contrarian messages distorts the current scientific literature and commentaries. The ‘Balkanisation’ of conservation science and its applications can only be detrimental. We assert that this compartmentalisation of conservation is both counterproductive and scientifically inappropriate.Multidimensional, long-term, collaborative research and management are essential given the current global predicament.We show how different threats to biodiversity occur across multiple time and space scales and that conservation intervention (local to international) may be most effective at different levels depending on the scale of the threat.We illustrate this point with a set of actual or potential conservation win–win examples that offer solutions to multiple threats.