We argue the need to improve climate change forecasting for ecology, and importantly, how to relate long-term projections to conservation. As an example, we discuss the need for effective management of one species, the emperor penguin, Aptenodyptes forsteri. This species is unique amongst birds in that its breeding habit is critically dependent upon seasonal fast ice. Here, we review its vulnerability to ongoing and projected climate change, given that sea ice is susceptible to changes in winds and temperature.

Biodiversity of insects is threatened worldwide.

Determining whether species have gone extinct requires considering the timing and reliability of records, the timing and adequacy of surveys, and the timing, extent and intensity of threats. However, previous assessments have either applied qualitative approaches or considered only the first of these factors. We applied quantitative methods encompassing all three factors to a suite of 61 potentially or confirmed extinct species of birds.

Effective habitat restoration requires an understanding of species habitat preferences and the associated mechanisms driving those preferences. We examined the patterns and causes of oviposition preference in the monarch butterfly, a rapidly declining species, in southwestern Ontario at both landscape and milkweed patch spatial scales. Additionally, we measured the abundance of invertebrate predators, parasitoids and parasites across these same spatial scales.

Non-native plants invade some tropical forests but there are few long-term studies of these invasions, and the consequences for plant richness and diversity are unclear. Repeated measurements of permanent plots in tropical montane rain forests in the Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park in Jamaica over 24 to 40 years coincided with invasion by a non-native tree, Pittosporum undulatum.

Trade in large cats (Panthera and Neofelis species), and indeed other wild cats, is a clear impediment to their conservation. Myanmar is an important country for cat conservation, both because of the presence of significant populations of threatened species but equally as it is positioned strategically between China, Thailand and India. Here we analyse data from large cat skins and other cat parts observed openly for sale at two border towns in Myanmar.

Effective and targeted conservation action requires detailed information about species, their distribution, systematics and ecology as well as the distribution of threat processes which affect them. Knowledge of reptilian diversity remains surprisingly disparate, and innovative means of gaining rapid insight into the status of reptiles are needed in order to highlight urgent conservation cases and inform environmental policy with appropriate biodiversity information in a timely manner.

The relocation and resettlement of people from nature reserves is a controversial issue in the conservation community. The perceived poor success rate of resettlement efforts, combined with availability of few well-documented studies, warrants a detailed examination of this issue. The authors has analyzed a relocation and resettlement project in India

Rajaji