In 2010, the international community, under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed on 20 biodiversity-related "Aichi Targets" to be achieved within a decade. We provide a comprehensive mid-term assessment of progress toward these global targets using 55 indicator data sets. We projected indicator trends to 2020 using an adaptive statistical framework that incorporated the specific properties of individual time series. On current trajectories, results suggest that despite accelerating policy and management responses to the biodiversity crisis, the impacts of these efforts are unlikely to be reflected in improved trends in the state of biodiversity by 2020. We highlight areas of societal endeavor requiring additional efforts to achieve the Aichi Targets, and provide a baseline against which to assess future progress.

A key challenge in aquatic restoration efforts is documenting locations where ecological connectivity is disrupted in water bodies that are dammed or crossed by roads (road crossings). To prioritize actions aimed at restoring connectivity, we argue that there is a need for systematic inventories of these potential barriers at regional and national scales. Here, we address this limitation for the North American Great Lakes basin by compiling the best available spatial data on the locations of dams and road crossings. Our spatial database documents 38 times as many road crossings as dams in the Great Lakes basin, and case studies indicate that, on average, only 36% of road crossings in the area are fully passable to fish. It is therefore essential that decision makers account for both road crossings and dams when attempting to restore aquatic ecosystem connectivity. Given that road crossing structures are commonly upgraded as part of road maintenance, many opportunities exist to restore connections within aquatic ecosystems at minimal added cost by ensuring upgrade designs permit water flow and the passage of fish and other organisms. Our findings highlight the necessity for improved dam and road crossing inventories that traverse political boundaries to facilitate the restoration of aquatic ecosystem connectivity from local to global scales.

ABSTRACT. A rise in qualitative social science manuscripts published in ecology and conservation journals speaks to the growing awareness of the importance of the human dimension in maintaining and improving Earth's ecosystems. Given the rise in the quantity of qualitative social science research published in ecology and conservation journals, it is worthwhile quantifying the extent to which this research is meeting established criteria for research design, conduct, and interpretation. Through a comprehensive review of this literature, we aimed to gather and assess data on the nature and extent of information presented on research design published qualitative research articles, which could be used to judge research quality. Our review was based on 146 studies from across nine ecology and conservation journals. We reviewed and summarized elements of quality that could be used by reviewers and readers to evaluate qualitative research (dependability, credibility, confirmability, and transferability); assessed the prevalence of these elements in research published in ecology and conservation journals; and explored the implications of sound qualitative research reporting for applying research findings. We found that dependability and credibility were reasonably well reported, albeit poorly evolved in relation to critical aspects of qualitative social science such as methodology and triangulation, including reflexivity. Confirmability was, on average, inadequately accounted for, particularly with respect to researchers' ontology, epistemology, or philosophical perspective and their choice of methodology. Transferability was often poorly developed in terms of triangulation methods and the suitability of the sample for answering the research question/s. Based on these findings, we provide a guideline that may be used to evaluate qualitative research presented in ecology and conservation journals to help secure the role of qualitative research and its application to decision making.

We present demographic, social, historical and ecological data to challenge the generalization that traditional tenure and fishing taboos constitute cultural adaptations that evolved to prevent over‐harvesting of subsistence fisheries in the Pacific. In particular, we re‐examine the seminal and widely cited arguments of Johannes (Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 1978; 9, 349–364), which constructed tenure and taboos primarily as traditional fishery management tools for the entire Pacific region. While it is difficult to disprove Johannes’ logic for some sites, particularly in formerly densely populated parts of Polynesia and Micronesia, our review of data and literature for Melanesia indicate very different origins and functions for these institutions. Our study shows that human population densities in most of the Western Pacific prior to European colonial intrusions were too low to have generated sufficient fishing pressure to drive the evolution of a conservation ethic. Our review for Melanesia shows that customary marine tenure and fishing taboos are primarily designed to manage relationships between social groups, rather than to sustain food security from fisheries. We argue that proper recognition of the cultural role of tenure and taboos is critical to progressing marine resource management in Melanesia.