Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

The Moore Center for Science at Conservation International is one of the world’s premier conservation research institutes, producing and applying groundbreaking and policy-relevant research to help decision-makers protect nature. To date, Conservation International has published more than 1,100 peer-reviewed articles, many in leading journals including Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

On average, each of our scientific papers is cited more than 45 times by other scholars — a rate exceeding that of any other U.S. conservation organization as well as leading universities.

Here is an archive of our most recent research.

Over half of threatened species require targeted recovery actions to avert human‐induced extinction

Friederike C Bolam, Jorge Ahumada, H Reşit Akçakaya, Thomas M Brooks, Wendy Elliott, Sean Hoban, Louise Mair, David Mallon, Philip JK McGowan, Domitilla Raimondo, Jon Paul Rodríguez, Dilys Roe, Mary B Seddon, Xiaoli Shen, Simon N Stuart, James EM Watson, Stuart HM Butchart

Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment

July 18, 2022

Averting human-induced extinctions will require strong policy commitments that comprehensively address threats to species. A new Global Biodiversity Framework is currently being negotiated by the world’s governments through the Convention on Biological Diversity. Here we explored how the suggested targets in this framework could contribute to reducing threats to threatened vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants, and assessed the importance of a proposed target to implement recovery actions for threatened species. Although many of the targets benefit species, we found that extinction risk for over half (57%) of threatened species would not be reduced sufficiently without a target promoting recovery actions, including ex situ conservation, reintroductions, and other species-specific interventions. A median of 54 threatened species per country require such actions, and most countries of the world hold such species. Preventing future human-induced extinctions requires policy commitments to implement targeted recovery actions for threatened species in addition to broader efforts to mitigate threats, underpinned by transformative change.

CITATION

Bolam, F. C., Ahumada, J., Akçakaya, H. R., Brooks, T. M., Elliott, W., Hoban, S., Mair, L., Mallon, D., McGowan, P. J., Raimondo, D., Rodríguez, J. P., Roe, D., Seddon, M. B., Shen, X., Stuart, S. N., Watson, J. E., & Butchart, S. H. (2022). Over half of threatened species require targeted recovery actions to avert human‐induced extinction. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Portico. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2537