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Summary1. Many interventions to stem wildlife poaching have overlooked insights into human behaviour offered by the social sciences. South-East Asia suffers the world's highest rate of wildlife declines, due mainly to poaching, yet there is little scientific attention on behaviour change, and few evaluations of the effectiveness of different approaches for stemming poaching. 2. We used social-psychology principles to design a community outreach programme aimed at reducing poaching in a reserve in Thailand, and we monitored biological and social outcomes over 4-6 years. Outreach aimed to build trust, raise awareness, motivate, offer opportunities for action, increase perceived behavioural control of villagers and generate social pressure against poaching. Behaviour change is promoted when these conditions converge. 3. We conducted 116 outreach events, focusing on adult farmers, children and local leaders. We assessed poaching trends using encounter rates with poaching signs and questionnaires. We monitored population status of six hunted mammal species (five ungulates and one rodent) using sign-based occupancy surveys and camera trapping. 4. Poaching pressure dropped by a factor of four across the park, with multiple short-term declines (usually to zero) immediately following outreach in seven of nine patrol zones. Park patrol effort was uncorrelated with poaching trends, contrary to expectations. Questionnaire responses (n = 311) corresponded to empirical observations: 88% stated that poaching declined over previous years; the top reason given for this decline was park outreach. 5. In response to safer conditions, occupancy and abundance of five of the six focal species increased significantly or was stable in all three monitoring sites. Patrol effort was statistically unrelated to wildlife trends. 6. Synthesis and applications. The weight of evidence in our study points to outreach as the main driver of a biologically significant decline in poaching that initiated the recovery of hunted species within the national park. This experiment provides one of the first demonstrations that scientifically designed and proactive park outreach activities might suppress poaching and initiate wildlife recovery in South-East Asia.

Satellite telemetry is an increasingly utilized technology in wildlife research, and current devices can track individual animal movements at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions. However, as we enter the golden age of satellite telemetry, we need an in-depth understanding of the main technological, species-specific and environmental factors that determine the success and failure of satellite tracking devices across species and habitats. Here, we assess the relative influence of such factors on the ability of satellite telemetry units to provide the expected amount and quality of data by analyzing data from over 3,000 devices deployed on 62 terrestrial species in 167 projects worldwide. We evaluate the success rate in obtaining GPS fixes as well as in transferring these fixes to the user and we evaluate failure rates. Average fix success and data transfer rates were high and were generally better predicted by species and unit characteristics, while environmental characteristics influenced the variability of performance. However, 48% of the unit deployments ended prematurely, half of them due to technical failure. Nonetheless, this study shows that the performance of satellite telemetry applications has shown improvements over time, and based on our findings, we provide further recommendations for both users and manufacturers.

SignificanceIdentifying and explaining regional differences in tropical forest dynamics, structure, diversity, and composition are critical for anticipating region-specific responses to global environmental change. Floristic classifications are of fundamental importance for these efforts. Here we provide a global tropical forest classification that is explicitly based on community evolutionary similarity, resulting in identification of five major tropical forest regions and their relationships: (i) Indo-Pacific, (ii) Subtropical, (iii) African, (iv) American, and (v) Dry forests. African and American forests are grouped, reflecting their former western Gondwanan connection, while Indo-Pacific forests range from eastern Africa and Madagascar to Australia and the Pacific. The connection between northern-hemisphere Asian and American forests is confirmed, while Dry forests are identified as a single tropical biome.

Depressed mammal densities characterize the interior of many Southeast Asian protected areas, and are the result of commercial and subsistence hunting. Local people are part of this problem but can participate in solutions through improved partnerships that incorporate local knowledge into problem diagnosis. The process of involving local people helps build a constituency that is more aware of its role (positive and negative) in a protected area and generates site-specific conservation assessments for management planning. We illustrate the practical details of initiating such a partnership through our work in a Thai wildlife sanctuary. Many protected areas in Southeast Asia present similar opportunities. In local workshops, village woodsmen were led through ranking exercises to develop a spatially explicit picture of 20-year trends in the abundance of 31 mammal species and to compare species-specific causes for declines. Within five taxonomic groups, leaf monkeys (primates), porcupines (rodents), tigers (large carnivores), civets (small carnivores), and elephants (ungulates) had declined most severely (37-74%). Commercial hunting contributed heavily to extensive population declines for most species, and subsistence hunting was locally significant for some small carnivores, leaf monkeys, and deer. Workshops thus clarified which species were at highest risk of local extinction, where the most threatened populations were, and causes for these patterns. Most important, they advanced a shared problem definition, thereby unlocking opportunities for collaboration. As a result, local people and sanctuary managers have increased communication, initiated joint monitoring and patrolling, and established wildlife recovery zones. Using local knowledge has limitations, but the process of engaging local people promotes collaborative action that large mammals in Southeast Asia need.