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Poverty and biodiversity loss are two of the world's dire challenges. Claims of conservation's contribution to poverty alleviation, however, remain controversial. Here, we assess the flows of ecosystem services provided to people by priority habitats for terrestrial conservation, considering the global distributions of biodiversity, physical factors, and socioeconomic context. We estimate the value of these habitats to the poor, both through direct benefits and through payments for ecosystem services to those stewarding natural habitats. The global potential for biodiversity conservation to support poor communities is high: The top 25% of conservation priority areas could provide 56%–57% of benefits. The aggregate benefits are valued at three times the estimated opportunity costs and exceed $1 per person per day for 331 million of the world's poorest people. Although trade-offs remain, these results show win—win synergies between conservation and poverty alleviation, indicate that effective financial mechanisms can enhance these synergies, and suggest biodiversity conservation as a fundamental component of sustainable economic development.

We synthesized key findings from the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, the world's largest and longest-running experimental study of habitat fragmentation. Although initially designed to assess the influence of fragment area on Amazonian biotas, the project has yielded insights that go far beyond the original scope of the study. Results suggest that edge effects play a key role in fragment dynamics, that the matrix has a major influence on fragment connectivity and functioning, and that many Amazonian species avoid even small (<100-m-wide) clearings. The effects of fragmentation are highly eclectic, altering species richness and abundances, species invasions, forest dynamics, the trophic structure of communities, and a variety of ecological and ecosystem processes. Moreover, forest fragmentation appears to interact synergistically with ecological changes such as hunting, fires, and logging, collectively posing an even greater threat to the rainforest biota.

One Health is a cross‐sectoral and transdisciplinary approach that emphasizes the fundamental ways in which the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, fungi, plants, microbes, and natural and built ecosystems are interdependent. One Health approaches recognize the links between human health and a range of environmental concerns including biodiversity, climate, freshwater, food, harmful chemicals, and healthy oceans. Yet the conservation community and its broad interest in biodiversity and the natural world has been notably lacking in discussions about One Health. Partly as a result, both policy and practice have been narrowly focused on one or a few links between human and other healths, such as the human and wildlife health nexus. We provide a set of principles and components that will balance existing discussions by including the natural world and biodiversity and provide a framework for more active involvement by the conservation community. Incorporating these principles and components will enable One Health practice to guide inclusive, multidisciplinary, and cross‐sectoral efforts that consider the shared costs and benefits of human, animal, plant, and ecosystem health and help readjust humanity's pursuit of a green, just, and equitable sustainability pathway.

Rivers have been suggested to have played an important role in shaping present-day patterns of ecological and genetic variation among Amazonian species and communities. Recent molecular studies have provided mixed support for the hypothesis that large lowland Amazonian rivers have functioned as significant impediments to gene flow among populations of neotropical species. To date, no study has systematically evaluated the impact that riverine barriers might have on structuring whole Amazonian communities. Our analyses of the phylogeography of frogs and small mammals indicate that a putative riverine barrier (the Jurua River) does not relate to present-day patterns of community similarity and species richness. Rather, our results imply a significant impact of the Andean orogenic axis and associated thrust-and-fold low-land dynamics in shaping patterns of biotic diversity along the Jurua. Combined results of this and other studies significantly weaken the postulated role of rivers as major drivers of Amazonian diversification.

Rain forest fragments in central Amazonia were found to experience a dramatic loss of above-ground tree biomass that is not offset by recruitment of new trees. These losses were largest within 100 meters of fragment edges, where tree mortality is sharply increased by microclimatic changes and elevated wind turbulence. Permanent study plots within 100 meters of edges lost up to 36 percent of their biomass in the first 10 to 17 years after fragmentation. Lianas (climbing woody vines) increased near edges but usually compensated for only a small fraction of the biomass lost as a result of increased tree mortality.

In 1997, the Amazon Basin experienced an exceptionally severe El Niño drought. We assessed effects of this rare event on mortality rates of trees in intact rain forest based on data from permanent plots. Long-term (5- to 13-year) mortality rates averaged only 1.12% per year prior to the drought. During the drought year, annual mortality jumped to 1.91% but abruptly fell back to 1.23% in the year following El Niño. Trees dying during the drought did not differ significantly in size or species composition from those that died previously, and there was no detectable effect of soil texture on mortality rates. These results suggest that intact Amazonian rainforests are relatively resistant to severe El Niño events.

Ideally, science should inform policy development in all areas of human endeavor. Nowhere is this truer than in the case of human land use and our impact on the natural environment. Unfortunately, little recent science has percolated into policy guidelines for tropical forest management in areas facing serious threats. To help science inform policy we present six guidelines, which have been empirically proven important, for the management of fragmented landscapes: (1) incorporate protection measures as part of development projects; (2) protect large areas and prevent the fragmentation of currently contiguous large patches of forest; (3) manage forest edges when creating forest patches; (4) protect gallery forests along waterways to connect isolated forest patches; (5) control the use of fire and the introduction of exotic plant species and limit the use of toxic chemicals in areas near forest patches; and (6) promote reforestation and forest cover in critical areas of landscapes. Straightforward linkages between science and policy formulation can result in simple, yet powerful, changes in land-use patterns and have a concurrent positive effect on biodiversity and natural resources.

It is well documented that the negative effects of habitat fragmentation are strong enough to promote local as well as regional extinction of canopy and emergent trees in neotropical forests. However, forest fragmentation does not occur alone, but is always associated with other human-induced threats to trees, such as logging, forest burning and hunting of key vertebrate seed dispersers within forest remnants. This association occurs because forest resources are, at least during a certain period, the main income source for local human populations. It is now possible to establish how these threats act in concert causing tree species impoverishment. Based on a predictive model, it is predicted that the most fragmented forest regions have lost or will lose an important part of their tree diversity. New integrated research must urgently test this prediction and investigate how human activities might be regulated in both old and new tropical forest frontiers to avoid species loss. If we fail to do this we will miss the opportunity of proposing sound and efficient guidelines to rescue neotropical forests from species impoverishment.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Logging and road building carve up otherwise intact expanses of forest into small and isolated islands (forest fragmentation), creating a perimeter of abrupt forest edge where ecological changes take place.