International wildlife law can be used as a tool to enhance conservation if a selective, informed approach is chosen to enhance cooperation among international wildlife lawyers and conservation professionals. Nereus Program Fellow Richard Caddell explores the limitations and opportunities of international wildlife law in a new paper published in BioScience.
The mesopelagic zone of the ocean, which includes the 200 to 1000 m below the ocean surface, is poorly understood. Our limited scope of understanding for these areas may become increasingly problematic, as they may be vulnerable to global issues such as climate warming, deoxygenation, acidification, commercial fishing, and seabed mining.
The high seas — also called international waters — comprise 64% of the world’s oceans and 45% of the earth’s surface. They are shared by the world but governed by no one country. That means that the incredible biodiversity of the high seas, from seaweeds to fish to sharks, is not currently protected.
The world is intuitively divided by the existence of recognizable, bounded units of landscape with characteristic climatic regimes and land cover that drives the distribution of existing life on earth. On a global scale, terrestrial ecosystems are grouped into major biomes such as boreal forest, savannah, desert, tundra and grasslands, each with distinct climates, landscapes, species, and vegetation.
The Nereus Program hosted a side event at the 3rd Preparatory Committee Meeting on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), March 27 to April 7 at the UN Headquarters, in New York. The side event entitled “Adjacency: How legal precedent, ecological connectivity, and traditional knowledge inform our understanding of proximity” was held on April 4.
A meadow under the sea? Not to be confused with seaweeds, seagrasses are land plants that have adapted to living their entire lives submerged in saltwater. They are close relatives of terrestrial grasses, seagrasses are thought to have colonized marine environments several millions of years ago. Different species of seagrass are found in tropic and temperate regions around the world from Southeast Asia to Scandinavia and all around North America. They are known as a “foundation species” because they create important habitat for a wide array of other organisms.
On March 3, Nereus fellow Gabriel Reygondeau (UBC) will be delivering a talk at the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) meeting in Honolulu, HI. Gabriel’s session…
Nereus Senior Research Fellow Daniel Dunn (Duke) hosted a workshop on global migratory connectivity with the Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative (GOBI) and the International Climate Initiative (IKI) February 15 to 17 at Duke University, North Carolina.
This year’s conference focused on mainstreaming biodiversity across relevant sectors, especially agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and tourism, to contribute to the sustainable development goals, climate action, food security and other human development goals. Nereus Program researchers participated in expert workshops and drafting groups, and presented at several side events.
Nereus Fellow Daniel Dunn will be attending the meeting, held biannually. The Conference of the Parties is the governing body of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and meets to advance implementation of the Convention through its meetings.
