The majority of the world's forests are used for multiple purposes, which often include the potentially conflicting goals of timber production and biodiversity conservation. A scientifically validated management approach that can reduce such conflicts is retention forestry, an approach modeled on natural processes, which emerged in the last 25 years as an alternative to clearcutting. A portion of the original stand is left unlogged to maintain the continuity of structural and compositional diversity. We detail retention forestry's ecological role, review its current practices, and summarize the large research base on the subject. Retention forestry is applicable to all forest biomes, complements conservation in reserves, and represents bottom-up conservation through forest manager involvement. A research challenge is to identify thresholds for retention amounts to achieve desired outcomes. We define key issues for future development and link retention forestry with land-zoning allocation at various scales, expanding its uses to forest restoration and the management of uneven—age forests.

Nearly 40 years after passage of the US Endangered Species Act, the prospects for listed species remain dim because they are too severely imperiled by the time they receive the act's protection. Even if threats are abated, the low abundances required for recovery often preclude a high probability of persistence. The lack of sufficient data for setting recovery objectives also remains a barrier. Delisting is considered possible for only 74% of the 1173 species with recovery plans—92% of threatened and 69% of endangered species. The median number of populations required for delisting (8) was at or below the historical numbers for 64% and at or below the numbers at listing for 37% of the species. The median number of individuals required for recovery (2400) exceeded the abundances at listing for 93% of the species, but most were below the levels considered necessary for long-term persistence, especially in changing environments.

Global environmental changes threaten ecosystems and cause significant alterations to the supply of ecosystem services that are vital for human well-being. We provide an assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on the European diversity of vertebrates and their associated pest-control services. We modeled the distributions of the species that provide these services using forecasts from bioclimatic envelope models and then used the results to generate maps of potential species richness among vertebrate providers of pest-control services. We assessed how the potential richness of pest control providers would change according to different climate and greenhouse emissions scenarios. We found that the potential richness of pest-control providers was likely to face substantial reductions, especially in southern European countries whose economies were highly dependent on agricultural yields. In much of central and northern Europe, where countries' economies were less dependent on agriculture, climate change was likely to benefit pest-control providers.

Environmental-monitoring and observatory networks currently operating or under development at the national, regional, and global scales have the potential to provide an unprecedented understanding of our natural environment and the threats that endanger it. The breadth of these networks, as well as advances in technology (e.g., from mobile devices to in situ sensors and multidimensional satellite sensor data), will result in larger volumes of data and more complex data sets than ever before. All of these networks require robust cyberinfrastructure to support their varying mission, governance, operational, and scientific objectives. In this article, we use the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) Network as a fully functional environmental-monitoring network case study to highlight the key cyberinfrastructure components and services that support the network. We provide valuable lessons from our experience building the TEAM Network cyberinfrastructure and suggest future improvements that have broad applicability for other observatory and monitoring networks.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest ever accidental release of oil into marine waters, affected hundreds of miles of US northern Gulf of Mexico coastline that is important habitat for migratory shorebirds. Shorebirds are particularly susceptible to oil contamination because of their subsurface probe-foraging behavior and reliance on intertidal habitat. More than one million migratory shorebirds representing 28 species were potentially exposed to Deepwater Horizon oil during their 2010–2011 nonbreeding season. Although only 8.6% of the shorebirds trapped from fall 2010 to spring 2011 showed visible signs of oiling, nonlethal effects and degradation of habitat can affect populations in ways that carry over into subsequent seasons. Here, we discuss how the spill could affect populations of migratory shorebirds through acute mortality, as well as through long-term and indirect pathways. We also discuss the potential impacts on ecosystems far from the spill, including prairie grasslands and the Arctic, where migratory shorebirds breed.

With few exceptions, the US Endangered Species Act requires the designation of “critical habitat” for threatened and endangered species. This provides important protections, including a prohibition against adverse modification of designated habitat by federal agencies. Scientists with the US Fish and Wildlife Service develop critical habitat designations, which are then peer reviewed before being finalized by the secretary of the interior. We reviewed 169 peer reviews of 42 designations for 336 species finalized between 2002 and 2007 and determined whether there were changes in the area designated and whether those changes reflected the reviewers' advice. Thirty-four (81 %) of the 42 designations were reduced by an average of 43%. Eighty-five of the reviews recommended adding areas, and 19 recommended subtracting areas. Areas were added in response to only four reviews and subtracted in response to only nine. These results highlight the limitations of peer review of government decisions, which lack an arbiter to ensure that reviews are adequately considered.