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Protected areas are increasingly recognized as an essential way to safeguard biodiversity. Although the percentage of land included in the global protected area network has increased from 9 to 15%, Jones et al. found that a third of this area is influenced by intensive human activity. Thus, even landscapes that are protected are experiencing some human pressure, with only the most remote northern regions remaining almost untouched. Science , this issue p. 788 Human pressure is present in a third of the land designated as protected, globally. In an era of massive biodiversity loss, the greatest conservation success story has been the growth of protected land globally. Protected areas are the primary defense against biodiversity loss, but extensive human activity within their boundaries can undermine this. Using the most comprehensive global map of human pressure, we show that 6 million square kilometers (32.8%) of protected land is under intense human pressure. For protected areas designated before the Convention on Biological Diversity was ratified in 1992, 55% have since experienced human pressure increases. These increases were lowest in large, strict protected areas, showing that they are potentially effective, at least in some nations. Transparent reporting on human pressure within protected areas is now critical, as are global targets aimed at efforts required to halt biodiversity loss.

Regional economic integration efforts in Africa have, over the years, yielded varied results. For the most part, they have not been as successful as hoped, often encountering crippling challenges. These challenges have been as varied as the blocs that have existed on the continent since the early colonial years. The main hindrance has been the considerably different abilities, intentions and political will with which regional economic integration has been approached. This, however, appears to have changed with the signing of the Treaty for the Establishment of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The AfCFTA is Africa's most ambitious effort geared at establishing the Africa Common Market (ACM) - an aspiration pursued incrementally since 1980. In this thesis, I examine the relationship between flexible regional economic integration in the East African Community (EAC), through its application of variable geometry, and the establishment of AfCFTA as a continent-wide form of integration. I argue that the use of flexible integration in the EAC is at the same time affected by, and has an effect on, the pace of regional economic integration in Africa. I use a historical, political, legal and economic analysis of the processes that led to the adoption of flexible regional integration in Africa, with particular regard to the EAC. This is done in the inescapable context of pan-Africanism, showing how regional integration efforts in Africa have been based on pan-Africanist ideals, and how an evolution of these ideals has led to an evolution in the goals of integration. I argue that indeed, flexible economic integration is inherently pan-African, and I make the case for its regulated application.

The European wildcat (Felis silvestris Schreber, 1777) is an endangered and elusive carnivore that is slowly recovering in Central Europe after persecution and a decline in its distribution over the past two centuries, and specific conservation plans are needed in most of its range. Knowledge of the continent-wide distribution and status of this species is still poor. Using an online questionnaire, we evaluated the nationwide distribution of wildcats across three time periods (2004, 2014, and 2022) in Hungary. The species’ reported occurrence was analyzed according to binominal logistic regression using the percent cover of land cover categories as explanatory variables. We found that the spatial cover of broad-leaved forest was positively associated with the occurrence of wildcats, and the analysis revealed a positive trend in the larger 2004–2022 time frame. We also recorded that although wildcats have disappeared from areas of the central, southern, and western parts of Hungary, regions in the eastern, northern, and south-western areas appear to retain stable populations.

Protected areas (PAs) play an important role in conserving biodiversity and providing ecosystem services, yet their effectiveness is undermined by funding shortfalls. Using lions (Panthera leo) as a proxy for PA health, we assessed available funding relative to budget requirements for PAs in Africa’s savannahs. We compiled a dataset of 2015 funding for 282 state-owned PAs with lions. We applied three methods to estimate the minimum funding required for effective conservation of lions, and calculated deficits. We estimated minimum required funding as $978/km2 per year based on the cost of effectively managing lions in nine reserves by the African Parks Network; $1,271/km2 based on modeled costs of managing lions at ≥50% carrying capacity across diverse conditions in 115 PAs; and $2,030/km2 based on Packer et al.’s [Packer et al. (2013) Ecol Lett 16:635–641] cost of managing lions in 22 unfenced PAs. PAs with lions require a total of $1.2 to $2.4 billion annually, or ∼$1,000 to 2,000/km2, yet received only $381 million annually, or a median of $200/km2. Ninety-six percent of range countries had funding deficits in at least one PA, with 88 to 94% of PAs with lions funded insufficiently. In funding-deficit PAs, available funding satisfied just 10 to 20% of PA requirements on average, and deficits total $0.9 to $2.1 billion. African governments and the international community need to increase the funding available for management by three to six times if PAs are to effectively conserve lions and other species and provide vital ecological and economic benefits to neighboring communities.

Pumas (Puma concolor) live in diverse, often rugged, complex habitats. The energy they expend for hunting must account for this complexity but is difficult to measure for this and other large, cryptic carnivores. We developed and deployed a physiological SMART (species movement, acceleration, and radio tracking) collar that used accelerometry to continuously monitor energetics, movements, and behavior of free-ranging pumas. This felid species displayed marked individuality in predatory activities, ranging from low-cost sit-and-wait behaviors to constant movements with energetic costs averaging 2.3 times those predicted for running mammals. Pumas reduce these costs by remaining cryptic and precisely matching maximum pouncing force (overall dynamic body acceleration = 5.3 to 16.1g) to prey size. Such instantaneous energetics help to explain why most felids stalk and pounce, and their analysis represents a powerful approach for accurately forecasting resource demands required for survival by large, mobile predators.

The degree of introgressive hybridization between the Scottish wildcat and domestic cat has long been suspected to be advanced. Here, we use a 35‐SNP‐marker test, designed to assess hybridization between wildcat and domestic cat populations in Scotland, to assess a database of 295 wild‐living and captive cat samples, and test the assumptions of the test using 3,097 SNP markers generated independently in a subset of the data using ddRAD. We discovered that despite increased genetic resolution provided by these methods, wild‐living cats in Scotland show a complete genetic continuum or hybrid swarm structure when judged against reference data. The historical population of wildcats, although hybridized, clearly groups at one end of this continuum, as does the captive population of wildcats. The interpretation of pelage scores against nuclear genetic data continues to be problematic. This is probably because of a breakdown in linkage equilibrium between wildcat pelage genes as the two populations have become increasingly mixed, meaning that pelage score or SNP score alone is poor diagnostic predictors of hybrid status. Until better tools become available, both should be used jointly, where possible, when making management decisions about individual cats. We recommend that the conservation community in Scotland must now define clearly what measures are to be used to diagnose a wildcat in the wild in Scotland, if future conservation action is to be effective.