Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

Tag: conservation (Page 1 of 2)

New paper: Cultural integration of invasive species

June 26, 2025 /
Process diagram showing replacement, coexistence and addition modes of native species relative to invasive.

Modes of cultural integration of invasive species (IS), relative to native species

Really pleased to be part of a new (open access) conceptual paper in npj Biodiversity, Cultural integration of native species. Led by Ivan Jaric and Jonathan Jeschke with a fascinating international team, this paper describes and problematizes the implications of cultures accepting invasive species into their landscapes and livelihoods. The range of disciplines in the writing team prompted rich debates about the issues, which are only more relevant with species ‘on the move’ due to climate change. A few case studies flesh out the paper, showing for instance the impact of the cultural integration of Black locust trees in Hungary, and of prickly pear cactus in a range of different settings. Such cultural integration can limit conservation management options, especially for species not only widely recognized and accepted but that become essential to livelihoods or lifestyles (e.g., food or sport fishing) or culturally iconic (e.g. the Sable Island Horse). We hope that this review helps provide some structure for those dealing with similar issues. Thanks to all the co-authors.

New review paper: social license to operate and coastal management

December 8, 2023 /

Table 1 in Margeson et al. 2023 showing factors that influenced coastal
SLO with associated themes that
emerged from the literature

Congratulations to Keahna and her PhD committee for the publication of her first comprehensive exam as a review in Environmental Management yesterday, The Role of Social License in Non-Industrial Marine and Coastal Planning: a Scoping Review. The idea of social license to operate is often used in industrial contexts, but in Nova Scotia we know that public acceptance can also be an issue with coastal activities such as conservation or restoration and related  nature-based coastal adaptation techniques. Using an SES lens Keahna reviewed 85 relevant papers–most from Europe and North America–and found key drivers to be sense of place, costs and benefits, perceived risk, trust and knowledge.

New paper on flagship individuals in conservation

October 12, 2023 /
Defining characteristics of flagship individuals, presented through the example of an African elephant (Loxodonta africana). A flagship individual (the central composite image with four shades of green) is distinguished by species characteristics, individual traits (here, larger body size and prominent tusks), its level of exposure to humans (tourism), and its individual fate (a victim of poaching).

Figure 1 in the paper, showing defining characteristics of flagship individuals, presented through the example of an African elephant (Loxodonta africana). A flagship individual (the central composite image with four shades of green) is distinguished by species characteristics, individual traits (here, larger body size and prominent tusks), its level of exposure to humans (tourism), and its individual fate (a victim of poaching).

Another new paper is out today in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment thanks to the leadership of Ivan Jarić at Université Paris-Saclay, systematizing the use of individual animals and plants as so-called ‘flagships’ of conservation campaigning. Titled Flagship individuals in biodiversity conservation (and happily open access), the paper describes the characteristics of a typical flagship individual, drawing on examples from around the world, and their potential utility for drawing attention to conservation needs. As with fundraising for humans, it is the individual story that will often move people to act. The paper also considers some of the challenges or drawbacks of such personalization, both for the individual in question and for the cause.

 

New paper on attention transience in conservation

June 19, 2023 /

Figure 4 in Jaric et al. (2023) shows ways of adapting to attention transience in conservation messaging, or mitigating it to reduce the transience.

A quick note to acknowledge the long-awaited open-access publication of Transience of public attention in conservation science, a commentary in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment lead-authored by Ivan Jaric. This is third of a series of papers I’ve joined with this interdisciplinary team of conservation scholars. As a social scientist on this team, I advocated for recognition of human cognitive limitations and the psychological burden that would be associated with attention persistence at scale. In this context, attention transience is really a way of coping with modern life without undue emotional toll. But it is shown that attention is a key input to conservation impact, so papers like this help conservation practitioners consider the causes of transience and choose humane and humanist ways to navigate it. Thanks to Ivan and the team for another fun collaborative experience.

New paper: non-material costs of conservation for humans

May 5, 2020 /
Figure 2 on categories of non-material costs, from the new Thondhlana-led paper in Biological Conservation

Figure 2 on categories of non-material costs, from the new Thondhlana-led paper in Biological Conservation

Thanks to Gladman Thondhlana for leadership on a new perspective paper in Biological Conservation, Non-material costs of wildlife conservation to local people and their implications for conservation interventions. My placement on this author list emerged from a chat I had with Gladman while walking between hotel and venue during ISSRM in Oshkosh, WI, last year. Americans always rent cars and drive around at conferences but the rest of us have a great time strolling and talking shop. This paper synthesizes literature from a number of countries and contexts to show that more attention is needed to measuring the non-material costs of conservation and designing socially just conservation interventions.

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