Biodiversity and conservation: real-world examples
Named cases you can use in an answer, each under the syllabus point it illustrates and linked to the lesson it comes from.
3 Biodiversity and conservation
3.1 Biodiversity and evolution
3.1.1Biodiversity is the total diversity of living systems and it exists at several levels.
The Swiss National Park in the Engadin (170 km², founded 1914) spans 1,400 m to 3,174 m, creating distinct habitats (coniferous forest 28%, alpine grassland 21% and high alpine rock/scree 51%) that support 36 mammal species, ~100 bird species and over 650 vascular plant species.
Demonstrates how a steep altitudinal gradient generates high habitat diversity, one of the three levels of biodiversity.
Swiss National Park, Engadin, Switzerland Biodiversity and ResilienceThe Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) has extremely low genetic diversity from historical population bottlenecks, leaving it vulnerable to devil facial tumour disease (DFTD); with immune systems unable to recognise the transmissible cancer as foreign due to similar MHC genes, the population has declined over 85% since 1996.
Shows genetic diversity as a distinct level of biodiversity and the consequences of its loss within a population.
Tasmania, Australia Biodiversity and Resilience
3.1.2The components of diversity contribute to the resilience of ecological systems.
In Lake Geneva each quagga mussel filters up to 2 litres of water per day, feeding on phytoplankton at the base of the food chain; the resulting phytoplankton decline cuts food for zooplankton and fish, threatening the livelihoods of roughly 120 professional fishers on the lake.
Shows how loss/replacement of species propagates up the food chain, affecting ecosystem functioning and human livelihoods.
Lake Geneva, Switzerland Human Impact on Biodiversity and Invasive Alien SpeciesQuagga mussels (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis), native to the Ponto-Caspian Black Sea region, were found in Lake Geneva by 2016 and by 2024 made up 100% of mussel samples at densities over 35,000 per m², driving native snails, shrimps and mussels to local extinction through competitive exclusion for space and food on the lake bed.
Demonstrates competitive exclusion, one of the three biodiversity-reduction mechanisms, with quantified colonisation of a named local ecosystem.
Lake Geneva, Switzerland Human Impact on Biodiversity and Invasive Alien SpeciesThe reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone in the 1990s triggered a trophic cascade that restored ecosystem function, whereas the historical loss of wolves from European forests let deer populations explode, reducing tree regeneration and simplifying the ecosystem.
Shows how species diversity and a keystone predator maintain complex food webs and ecosystem resilience.
Yellowstone National Park, USA Biodiversity and ResilienceWild banana populations with high genetic diversity resist Panama disease TR4, which devastates genetically uniform commercial Cavendish plantations where every plant shares the same disease susceptibility.
Demonstrates how genetic diversity confers resilience while genetic uniformity leads to collapse under a single pathogen.
3.1.3Biodiversity arises from evolutionary processes.
Italian wall lizards (Podarcis sicula) introduced to Pod Mrčaru, Croatia in 1971 evolved over ~36 years (~30 generations) a plant-based diet (up to 60% plant matter), larger heads with stronger bite force, and novel cecal valves in the gut compared to the source population on Pod Kopište.
Demonstrates evolution as cumulative, heritable change in a population's characteristics observable over a short timescale.
Pod Mrčaru, Croatia Biodiversity and Resilience
3.1.4Natural selection is the mechanism driving evolutionary change.
The European robin (Erithacus rubecula), a year-round woodland resident, faces harsh winters with reduced invertebrate food; individuals with higher metabolic efficiency and greater fat-storage capacity survive to breed in spring and pass these heritable traits on, increasing their frequency over generations.
Illustrates natural selection as a continuous mechanism acting on heritable variation through seasonal selection pressures.
3.1.5Evolution by natural selection involves variation, overproduction, competition for limited resources, and differences in adaptation that affect rates of survival and reproduction.
A single pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) can produce over 70,000 acorns in a mast year, yet an ancient woodland may hold only a few hundred mature oaks: most seeds are lost to herbivory, competition and shading, while seedlings germinating in canopy gaps receive more light and are more likely to survive.
Quantifies overproduction and demonstrates competition for limited resources and differential survival driving natural selection.
European great tits (Parus major) that time their egg-laying to coincide with the ~2–3 week spring peak in canopy caterpillar abundance raise more surviving chicks, and populations have shifted laying dates earlier within a few decades in response to warming springs.
Shows heritable variation, competition and differential reproductive success producing measurable evolutionary change over just decades.
3.1.6Speciation is the generation of new species through evolution.
Four similar leaf warblers, the chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita), willow warbler (P. trochilus), wood warbler (P. sibilatrix) and garden warbler (Sylvia borin), coexist in a single European woodland by partitioning niches through feeding height, food source and nest location, having diverged from common ancestors after Pleistocene isolation.
Shows how repeated speciation and adaptation from ancestral populations generates biodiversity and niche partitioning within one habitat.
The Eurasian treecreeper (Certhia familiaris) and short-toed treecreeper (Certhia brachydactyla) diverged when Pleistocene ice sheets (2.6 million–11,700 years ago) fragmented European woodland into isolated refugia in Iberia, Italy and the Balkans; adapting separately, the populations could no longer interbreed when woodlands reconnected.
Demonstrates allopatric speciation via geographic isolation, divergent selection and resulting reproductive isolation.
Iberian Peninsula Natural Selection
3.1.8Simpson's reciprocal index is used to provide a quantitative measure of species diversity, allowing different ecosystems to be compared and for change in a specific ecosystem over time to be monitored.
On a rewilded estate in the Scottish Highlands, ground beetle (Carabidae) communities were compared using pitfall traps: after 15 years of rewilding (sheep removed, birch and Scots pine regenerating) Site 1 gave a Simpson's reciprocal index of D = 5.28, while the still-grazed Site 2, dominated by 45 Nebria brevicollis out of 60 individuals, gave only D = 1.74, despite both sites having identical richness (5 species) and total individuals (60).
Demonstrates how Simpson's reciprocal index quantifies diversity and detects change from a management intervention when richness alone stays constant, using a valid same-organism, same-ecosystem, same-method comparison.
Scottish Highlands, Scotland Species diversity
3.1.9Knowledge of global and regional biodiversity is needed for the development of effective management strategies to conserve biodiversity.
Dr Erpur Snær Hansen of the South Iceland Nature Research Centre conducts a twice-yearly 'puffin rally', travelling over 3,100 miles to about 700 marked burrows across 12 colonies with plumbing cameras; this government-linked systematic monitoring revealed Iceland's puffin decline since the early 2000s, linked to falling sand eel numbers and rising sea surface temperatures.
Demonstrates why systematic professional monitoring, alongside citizen science, provides the long-term trend data needed for effective conservation strategies.
Iceland Species diversityIceland's Puffling Patrol on Heimaey in the Westman Islands is a citizen-science programme where local children and families collect, weigh, log and release disoriented Atlantic puffin chicks each August–September, feeding standardised data into GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) for use by researchers.
Shows how citizen science following a standardised protocol gathers regional biodiversity knowledge that aggregates into global databases underpinning conservation management.
Heimaey, Westman Islands, Iceland Species diversity
3.1.10Mutation and sexual reproduction increase genetic diversity.HL
Eastern tree frogs (Hyla orientalis) in Ukraine's Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are, per 2022 research, significantly darker than frogs in uncontaminated areas nearby; pre-existing melanin-producing alleles gave protection against elevated radiation after the 1986 disaster, so darker frogs were selected over ~14 generations.
Demonstrates how mutation first generates genetic variation (dark-pigment alleles) which natural selection then amplifies once the environment changes.
Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Ukraine Reproductive Isolation and Biodiversity Hotspots
3.1.11Reproductive isolation can be achieved by geographical separation or, for populations living in the same area, by ecological or behavioural differences.HL
Bonobos (Pan paniscus) and common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) diverged from one ancestral population ~1.5–2 million years ago when the Congo River became too deep and wide to cross; chimps north of the river evolved male-dominant, aggressive, tool-using societies while bonobos south of it (lacking gorilla competitors) became female-dominant and less aggressive.
Shows speciation by geographical separation, with a physical barrier splitting a gene pool and different selective pressures driving divergence.
Congo River Reproductive Isolation and Biodiversity HotspotsThe apple maggot fly (Rhagoletis pomonella) began, from the mid-1800s in North America, laying eggs on introduced apples rather than native hawthorn; because flies mate on their host fruit and apples and hawthorn ripen at different times, the two 'host races' rarely interbreed and now differ in emergence timing and genetic markers.
Demonstrates behavioural (sympatric) reproductive isolation without a geographical barrier: 'speciation in progress' within a few hundred generations.
North America Reproductive Isolation and Biodiversity Hotspots
3.1.12Biodiversity is spread unevenly across the planet, and certain areas contain a particularly large proportion of species, especially species that are rare and endangered.HL
Socotra, an Indian Ocean island ~380 km south of Arabia isolated from Africa ~6 million years ago, has ~37% endemic plant species, including the dragon blood tree (Dracaena cinnabari) and the cucumber tree (Dendrosicyos socotranus), the only tree-form cucumber on Earth; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008.
Shows how long island isolation concentrates rare endemic species, illustrating the uneven, vulnerable distribution of biodiversity.
Socotra, Yemen Reproductive Isolation and Biodiversity HotspotsThe Mediterranean Basin, one of 36 recognised biodiversity hotspots, holds over 25,000 plant species (~13,000 endemic) adapted to hot dry summers and mild wet winters (maquis and garrigue), yet millennia of agriculture, urbanisation, tourism and fire have destroyed most of its original habitat.
Demonstrates a non-tropical hotspot meeting both criteria (high endemism plus severe habitat loss), showing hotspots are not only tropical rainforests.
Mediterranean Basin Reproductive Isolation and Biodiversity Hotspots
3.1.13Human activities have impacted the selective forces acting on species within ecosystems, resulting in evolutionary change in these species.HL
European great tits (Parus major) have evolved earlier egg-laying dates as climate warming shifts the caterpillar peak earlier; populations that cannot keep pace suffer a phenological mismatch where chicks hatch after peak food, reducing breeding success.
Shows how climate change from burning fossil fuels alters the selective advantage of a trait (laying date), driving evolutionary change dependent on a population's genetic diversity.
Europe Humans and SelectionIn Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, ivory poaching during the civil war (1977–1992) killed ~90% of elephants (from ~2,500 to ~200); tuskless females rose from ~18.5% before the war to ~51% of survivors, and ~33% of the next generation, a genetic shift confirmed by Campbell-Staton et al. (Science, 2021).
Demonstrates how a human activity (poaching) unintentionally altered the selective force on a population, causing rapid, measurable, heritable evolutionary change: human-altered natural selection, not artificial selection.
Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique Humans and Selection
3.1.14Artificial selection reduces genetic diversity and, consequently, species resilience.HL
The Cavendish banana, which dominates global trade, is propagated vegetatively as genetic clones with essentially zero genetic diversity and no resistance to the spreading fungus Tropical Race 4 (Fusarium oxysporum); it replaced the Gros Michel variety, itself wiped out by Panama disease in the 1950s for the same reason.
Demonstrates how artificial selection for uniformity eliminates genetic variation, leaving no material for selection to act upon and creating extreme vulnerability (loss of resilience) to disease.
3.1.15Earth history extends over a period of 4.5 billion years. Processes that occur over an extended timescale have led to the evolution of life on Earth.HL
The limestone peaks of the Jura mountains near Ferney-Voltaire, such as La Dôle (1,677 m), contain marine fossils (ammonites, belemnites, corals, sea urchins) deposited on the floor of the warm shallow Tethys Sea around 150 million years ago during the Jurassic, before being uplifted 1.7 km by the collision of the African and Eurasian plates.
Shows how fossils and the geological record work together to reveal both the evolution of life and the movement of environments over deep time.
La Dôle, Jura, France Deep Time and the Anthropocene
3.1.16Earth history is divided up into geological epochs according to the fossil record.HL
The Cretaceous–Palaeogene (K–Pg) boundary at 66 million years ago is marked worldwide in rocks by the sudden disappearance of non-avian dinosaurs and ammonites together with a chemical signal from a large meteorite impact, and is formally defined by the International Commission on Stratigraphy.
Demonstrates how an epoch/period boundary is read from a globally synchronous change in the fossil record rather than assigned arbitrarily.
3.1.17Mass extinctions are followed by rapid rates of speciation due to increased niche availability.HL
Ammonites, shelled cephalopods related to modern squid, adaptively radiated into thousands of species after surviving three mass extinctions (Late Devonian, Permian–Triassic, Triassic–Jurassic) before going completely extinct at the K–Pg boundary 66 Ma, after which niches were filled by radiating bony fish.
Illustrates repeated rapid speciation into vacant niches following mass extinctions, plus eventual extinction, within a single well-documented lineage.
The Permian–Triassic 'Great Dying' at ~252 Ma, caused by super-volcanic eruption and resulting climatic change, killed ~96% of species, the largest extinction in Earth's history, after which surviving lineages radiated into vacant niches.
Quantifies the scale of a mass extinction and its abiotic cause, and shows the vacated niches that drive subsequent adaptive radiation.
3.1.18The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch characterized by rapid environmental change and species extinction due to human activity.HL
The 2024 proposal to formalise the Anthropocene used a 1950s start with the 1964 Carbon-14 peak as its golden spike, preserved in the annual varves of Crawford Lake, Ontario, but the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy voted against it in March 2024, leaving the Anthropocene a proposed epoch.
Demonstrates the golden-spike concept and the contested, unresolved status of the proposed Anthropocene epoch.
Crawford Lake, Ontario, Canada Deep Time and the Anthropocene
3.1.19Human impacts are having a planetary effect, which will be detectable in the geological record.HL
Plastiglomerate (fragments of plastic fused with natural rock, first documented on beaches in Hawaii) is a novel human-made mineral-like material with no pre-industrial precedent that will persist in the far-future rock record.
Provides a concrete example of novel minerals as a permanent planetary-scale human signal in the geological record.
Kamilo Beach, Hawaii, USA Deep Time and the Anthropocene
3.2 Human impact on biodiversity
3.2.3Invasive alien species can reduce local biodiversity by competing for limited resources, predation and introduction of diseases or parasites.
In Lake Geneva quagga mussel filtering makes water clearer and lets light penetrate deeper, while climate change has stopped seasonal lake mixing since 2012, warming deep water and raising the risk of toxic blue-green algal blooms: a combined impact far greater than either stressor acting alone.
Quantifies the amplification effect where climate change and an invasive species interact to reduce resilience beyond the sum of their parts.
Lake Geneva, Switzerland Human Impact on Biodiversity and Invasive Alien SpeciesIn Lake Geneva quagga mussels clogged the deep-water cooling pipes of the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne (EPFL), cutting heat-exchanger efficiency by a third, and prompting plans for a new closed-loop cooling system beginning in 2027 since eradication is impossible.
Shows why adaptation rather than eradication is the only management option once an invader is established, illustrating persistent multi-impact stress.
EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland Human Impact on Biodiversity and Invasive Alien Species
3.2.6Investigate three different named species: a species that has become extinct due to human activity; a species that is critically endangered; and a species whose conservation status has been improved by intervention.
Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), an 8–9 m sirenian discovered in 1741 around the Commander Islands, was hunted to extinction by Russian fur traders for meat and hide within just 27 years (by 1768), the first historical extinction of a marine mammal caused by humans. Its small remnant population (~1,500), tameness and shallow-water habitat made it defenceless.
Demonstrates a species driven extinct by human overharvesting, with cascading effects on kelp-forest food webs and no conservation attempted.
Commander Islands, Russia The IUCN Red List and the Tragedy of the CommonsThe vaquita (Phocoena sinus), the world's smallest porpoise, is Critically Endangered with fewer than 10 individuals remaining in the upper Gulf of California; its decline is driven not by hunting but by bycatch in illegal gillnets set for totoaba fish, whose swim bladders sell for thousands of dollars per kg, despite a 2005 refuge, a 2017 gillnet ban and support from WWF and Sea Shepherd.
Shows a critically endangered species whose decline continues despite well-funded intervention because economic incentives behind the threat remain unaddressed.
Upper Gulf of California, Mexico The IUCN Red List and the Tragedy of the Commons
3.2.7The tragedy of the commons describes possible outcomes of the shared unrestricted use of a resource, with implications for sustainability and the impacts on biodiversity.
The Baltic Sea, bordered by nine countries, now holds the world's largest human-caused dead zone at almost 70,000 km² (about 1.5 times the area of Denmark) after agricultural nitrogen and phosphorus runoff drove eutrophication; despite the Helsinki Convention (HELCOM) cutting nitrogen inputs ~20% and phosphorus ~40% since the 1980s peak, levels remain roughly double those of the early 1900s.
Shows the tragedy of the commons through contamination of a shared resource, where each nation gains from farming but shares the collective cost of biodiversity loss.
The Grand Banks cod fishery off Newfoundland, once among the world's most productive, collapsed after 1950s industrialised trawling by multiple nations acting in self-interest under weak international regulation; Canada imposed a moratorium in 1992, costing over 35,000 jobs, and after 30+ years cod have still not recovered because shrimp and snow crab occupied the vacant niche.
Quantifies the tragedy of the commons through overharvesting of an unowned shared fishery leading to catastrophic, possibly irreversible, ecosystem collapse.
Grand Banks, Newfoundland, Canada The IUCN Red List and the Tragedy of the Commons
3.2.8Biodiversity hotspots are under threat from habitat destruction, which could lead to a significant loss of biological diversity, especially in tropical biomes.HL
The Boma-Badingilo KBA illustrates the wealth-biodiversity mismatch: South Sudan has per-capita GDP under US$500 and, after civil war (2013–2018), depends almost entirely on a single NGO (African Parks, 10-year agreement signed 2022), and the 2024 survey found hippos, elephants and warthogs had collapsed over 40 years due to bushmeat hunting where enforcement was absent.
Demonstrates how tropical biodiversity concentrated in low-income countries lacks the governance, funding and security capacity to prevent habitat and population loss.
Boma National Park, South Sudan Hotspots, KBAs and the Conservation Conflict
3.2.9Key areas that should be prioritized for biodiversity conservation have been identified on the basis of the international importance of their species and habitats.HL
The Aeolian Archipelago off Sicily (~115 km²) holds the entire global population of the Critically Endangered Aeolian wall lizard (Podarcis raffonei), roughly 2,000 individuals in an area of occupancy under two hectares, qualifying as a KBA under criterion A (threatened biodiversity) and B (geographically restricted biodiversity).
Shows that KBA prioritisation applies at tiny scale in a temperate high-income biome, based on international importance of a microendemic species rather than megafauna spectacle.
Aeolian Islands, Italy Hotspots, KBAs and the Conservation ConflictThe Boma-Badingilo-Gambella landscape (~122,000 km² across eastern South Sudan and western Ethiopia) hosts the largest land mammal migration on Earth: a 2024 African Parks aerial survey confirmed ~6 million migrating antelope, including ~5 million white-eared kob, and it qualifies as a KBA under criterion D (biological processes), C (ecological integrity) and A (threatened species such as the endemic Nile lechwe).
Demonstrates how a specific site is prioritised as globally important on the basis of a globally significant life-cycle stage (migration) meeting formal KBA criteria.
Boma National Park, South Sudan Hotspots, KBAs and the Conservation Conflict
3.2.10In KBAs, there is conflict between exploitation, sustainable development and conservation.HL
At COP30 in Belém (November 2025), Brazil launched the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), under which consumer countries pay tropical governments to keep forests standing with at least 20% going to indigenous and local communities; over US$6.7 billion had been pledged by the summit's end.
Shows an attempted resolution to the exploitation-versus-conservation conflict by realigning who pays, addressing the justice dimension of protecting hotspots in lower-income countries.
Belém, Brazil Hotspots, KBAs and the Conservation ConflictThe Brazilian Cerrado, a biodiversity hotspot holding ~5% of global biodiversity, has lost over 55% of its native vegetation (~650,000 ha in 2024 alone) as soy occupies ~75% of cropland; Brazil's Forest Code requires retaining only 20–35% of native vegetation there (vs 80% in the Amazon), and the 2006 Soy Moratorium excluded the Cerrado, displacing ~16% of avoided Amazon deforestation into the savanna.
Quantifies the three-way conflict between profitable legal soy/cattle exploitation, water/climate-based sustainable development needs, and conservation of KBAs meeting criteria A and B.
Cerrado, Brazil Hotspots, KBAs and the Conservation Conflict
3.2.11Traditional indigenous approaches to land management can be seen as more sustainable but are facing challenges of population growth, economic development, climate change and a lack of governmental support and protection.HL
Sámi reindeer herding across Sápmi (northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia's Kola Peninsula) is an extensive, low-input system managed collectively through the siida, but faces external threats such as climate-driven 'rain-on-snow' events that ice over lichen pastures and internal threats such as motorisation (snowmobiles, GPS) and young people leaving for salaried urban work.
Demonstrates a named sustainable Indigenous practice and the syllabus distinction between threats from outside and from within.
3.2.12Environmental justice must be considered when undertaking conservation efforts to address biodiversity loss.HL
At the Fosen wind farm in central Norway, the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 2021 that the Storheia and Roan licences were invalid because the turbines violated Sámi herders' cultural rights under Article 27 of the ICCPR, yet the turbines kept operating and only 2023–24 settlements left them standing in exchange for compensation: an example of 'green colonialism'.
Demonstrates the gap between legal rights and environmental justice when 'green' projects dispossess a biodiversity-rich Indigenous community.
Fosen, Norway Indigenous Land, Justice and Biosphere IntegrityThe Swiss National Park, founded in 1914 in the Engadine valley of Graubünden and classified under the strict IUCN category Ia, banned all traditional uses (grazing, hunting, fishing, mowing, wood-cutting) on land leased from local communes, making it a textbook European case of fortress conservation.
Shows conservation overriding traditional land use, illustrating the environmental-justice tension even without forced relocation of Indigenous people.
Swiss National Park, Engadine, Graubünden, Switzerland Indigenous Land, Justice and Biosphere Integrity
3.2.13The planetary boundary \"loss of biosphere integrity\" indicates that species extinctions have already crossed a critical threshold.HL
The planetary boundaries framework developed by Johan Rockström, Will Steffen and colleagues at the Stockholm Resilience Centre identifies nine Earth-system processes; its 2023 update placed 'loss of biosphere integrity' firmly in the high-risk zone, with extinction rates (its genetic-diversity component) estimated at tens to hundreds of times the natural background rate against a proposed safe boundary of ~10 extinctions per million species per year.
Quantifies how the biosphere-integrity boundary has been crossed and shows the distinction between its genetic-diversity and functional-integrity components.
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm, Sweden Indigenous Land, Justice and Biosphere Integrity
3.3 Conservation and regeneration
3.3.1Arguments for species and habitat preservation can be based on aesthetic, ecological, economic, ethical and social justifications.
In South Sudan the elephant population has fallen to about 5% of the ~133,500 estimated in the early 1970s; in Badingilo National Park the last bull elephant, so isolated it moved with a herd of giraffes, was killed by suspected poachers at the end of 2025, and one hunter said he killed an elephant out of hunger for $50 per tusk.
Shows how ecological (keystone role), ethical and social justifications collide with extreme poverty, undermining preservation arguments in practice.
Badingilo National Park, South Sudan Why and How We ConserveIn Zimbabwe about 60,000 of the country's ~100,000 elephants pass through Hwange National Park in the dry season (roughly double the region's carrying capacity), where safari tourism is a major income source yet Fransica Sibanda's husband was trampled to death near their home: the same elephants bring economic value and a social and human cost.
Demonstrates how one species can simultaneously carry economic (ecotourism) and social (well-being, livelihoods) justifications that conflict in local context.
Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe Why and How We Conserve
3.3.2Species-based conservation tends to involve ex situ strategies, and habitat-based conservation tends to involve in situ strategies.
CITES listed African elephants under Appendix I in 1989, effectively banning international commercial ivory trade after catastrophic 1970s–80s declines; enforcement varies by country and southern African states like Zimbabwe and Botswana repeatedly push at CoP meetings to sell ivory stockpiles or downlist to Appendix II.
Illustrates ex situ, species-based conservation through international trade regulation and its dependence on national enforcement.
The Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de Genève seed bank, established 1999 in Chambésy, is Switzerland's only wild-flora seed bank, holding over 600 species (~30% of Switzerland's threatened flora, 57% of Geneva canton's) dried to ~5% moisture and stored at -20°C for reintroduction projects.
Shows ex situ, species-based conservation preserving genetic material outside natural habitat as an insurance policy against wild extinction.
Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de Genève, Chambésy, Switzerland Why and How We Conserve
3.3.3Sometimes a mixed conservation approach is adopted, where both habitat and particular species are considered.
The giant panda combines ex situ conservation at the Chengdu Research Base (founded 1987, ~240 ha, 9 million+ visitors in 2019) with the in situ Giant Panda National Park created in 2021 (27,134 km²), which reconnects habitats for ~1,900 wild pandas; as a flagship species (WWF logo since 1961) it provides an 'umbrella effect' protecting 8,000+ other species, though leopards, wolves and wild dogs in the region have declined.
Demonstrates a mixed approach using a flagship species to justify protecting intact habitat, including its trade-offs.
Giant Panda National Park, Sichuan, China Why and How We Conserve
3.3.4The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a UN treaty addressing both species-based and habitat-based conservation.
The Convention on Biological Diversity, established at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and in force from 1994, is a legally binding UN treaty requiring national biodiversity strategies covering both species and habitat; its 2010 Nagoya Protocol ensures fair and equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources with countries of origin.
Shows a UN treaty addressing both species-based and habitat-based conservation plus benefit-sharing, broader than trade-focused CITES.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Why and How We Conserve
3.3.5Habitat conservation strategies protect species by conservation of their natural environment. This may require protection of wild areas or active management.
La Grande Cariçaie, Switzerland's largest lakeside wetland (>3,000 ha along 40 km of Lake Neuchâtel's south shore, ~800 plant and 10,000 animal species), was created accidentally by the First Jura Waters Correction (1868–1889) lowering the lake by 2.7 m; the Second Correction (1962–1973) then removed the seasonal flooding that kept it open, so since 1982 it requires rotational mechanical mowing on a 3–4 year cycle and Highland cattle grazing to stop alder, willow and buckthorn succeeding it to woodland.
Demonstrates active management to hold a habitat at a seral stage, and shows how surrounding engineering, farmland runoff and invasive Louisiana crayfish create the pressures conservation must balance.
La Grande Cariçaie, Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland Habitat Conservation and Reserve DesignSanctuary Mountain Maungatautari (3,400 ha, Waikato, New Zealand) is the world's largest fenced ecosanctuary, enclosed by a 47 km Xcluder pest-proof fence (2004–2006) with a curved anti-climb hood and buried mesh skirt; after aerial brodifacoum drops eradicated 14 mammal species, natives like kiwi, takahē, tuatara and (in 2023) four kākāpō were reintroduced, though mice could not be eradicated and some kākāpō climbed out over fallen trees.
Shows pest-exclusion fencing as an active management strategy in a country whose birds evolved without mammalian predators, illustrating both its power and its 'ecological island' limitations.
Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, Waikato, New Zealand Habitat Conservation and Reserve Design
3.3.6Effective conservation of biodiversity in nature reserves and national parks depends on an understanding of the biology of target species and on the effect of the size and shape of conservation areas.
StudyA study of European protected areas by Lurgi (2025, Swansea University) found that reserves and national parks do increase species richness and support larger predators, but they do not consistently preserve ecological interactions such as food-chain length and food-web complexity, with remoteness, habitat diversity, human pressure and surrounding agricultural land all affecting how well food webs were maintained.
Provides evidence that reserve design factors (surrounding land use, edge effects, connectivity) determine effectiveness beyond mere species counts, adding critical depth to conservation-area evaluation.
The Yasuní Biosphere Reserve in the Ecuadorian Amazon uses the UNESCO three-zone model: a ~10,000 km² national park core (protected 1979, biosphere reserve 1989), a buffer including the Tagaeri-Taromenane Intangible Zone for uncontacted peoples, and a transition zone of Kichwa and Waorani communities. It protects record biodiversity (~1,300 tree, 150 amphibian, 170 mammal species) despite sitting on 1.7 billion barrels of oil (~40% of Ecuador's reserves) drilled since 2016.
Demonstrates the core/buffer/transition zonation model applied to a globally significant biodiversity site and the human-impact conflict (oil extraction, 2023 anti-drilling referendum) it must manage.
Yasuní National Park, Ecuador Habitat Conservation and Reserve Design
3.3.7Natural processes in ecosystems can be regenerated by rewilding.
At Hinewai Reserve (~1,250 ha) on Banks Peninsula, New Zealand, botanist Hugh Wilson from 1987 stopped fighting invasive gorse (Ulex europaeus) on former sheep pasture, using it as a nitrogen-rich nurse crop under which native broadleaf forest regenerated with no replanting, herbicide or intervention.
Demonstrates rewilding through minimisation of human influence and cessation of agriculture, showing natural succession can regenerate forest when active management ceases.
Hinewai Reserve, Banks Peninsula, New Zealand Rewilding, Regeneration and Conservation ChoicesOn Chris Jones's organic beef farm in Cornwall, Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber) reintroduced in 2017 expanded a pond by two-thirds and built leaky dams, and University of Cambridge scientists measured an 80% reduction in nitrates in water leaving the beaver wetland, alongside larger fish and returning otters and invertebrates.
Shows how reintroducing a keystone ecosystem engineer regenerates natural hydrological and water-quality processes even on a small farm in a populated landscape.
Cornwall, England Rewilding, Regeneration and Conservation Choices
3.3.8Conservation and regeneration measures can be used to reverse the decline in biodiversity to ensure a safe operating space for humanity within the biodiversity planetary boundary.
After being hunted to extinction in Britain ~400 years ago, the Eurasian beaver's return culminated in the UK government's 2025 decision to licence wild releases (first at Purbeck Heath, Dorset), requiring each release to have a beaver management plan with mitigations, linked to the international 30 by 30 target to protect 30% of land and water by 2030.
Illustrates how national legislation and international targets combine as regeneration measures to reverse biodiversity decline within the planetary boundary.
Purbeck Heath, Dorset, England Rewilding, Regeneration and Conservation ChoicesThe Eurasian beaver, hunted to extinction in Switzerland by ~1820, was reintroduced from 1956 by naturalist Maurice Blanchet and artist Robert Hainard using French beavers, so that several thousand now live across Switzerland including in the Rhône, Arve and Versoix rivers in canton Geneva.
Shows a successful long-term national regeneration measure re-establishing a locally extinct keystone species, with the 70-year head start over the UK highlighting the role of success factors.
Versoix, Geneva, Switzerland Rewilding, Regeneration and Conservation Choices
3.3.9Environmental perspectives and value systems can impact the choice of conservation strategies selected by a society.
In the UK beaver debate, ecocentric voices like Derek Gow argued beavers intrinsically belong in British rivers, anthropocentric water companies backed them for cheaper flood and pollution control, while some dairy farmers and landowners lobbied against releases over flooded fields and felled trees, resolved by a technocentric licensing system with chicken-wire tree guards and German-style trap-and-relocate schemes.
Demonstrates how ecocentric, anthropocentric and technocentric value systems produce conflicting conservation preferences over a single species, resolved through compromise.
United Kingdom Rewilding, Regeneration and Conservation ChoicesMaungatautari ecosanctuary in New Zealand uses high-tech pest-exclusion fencing (a technocentric strategy) to protect a wild forest that is then largely left to run itself (an ecocentric goal), showing a single project spanning the EVS spectrum.
Shows how a real conservation project blends technocentric intervention with ecocentric non-intervention, reflecting mixed underlying values.
Maungatautari, New Zealand Rewilding, Regeneration and Conservation Choices
3.3.10Success in conserving and restoring biodiversity by international, governmental and non-governmental organizations depends on their use of media, speed of response, diplomatic constraints, financial resources and political influence.HL
Swiss NGOs Pro Natura and WWF Switzerland, despite far smaller budgets than the state, used direct democracy by gathering 65,000 signatures to trigger the 2020 wolf referendum, ran media campaigns, and challenged individual culls in court to halt some shooting orders.
Illustrates how NGOs compensate for weak financial resources by leveraging political influence, media and legal challenge to shape conservation outcomes.
The 1979 Bern Convention (Council of Europe, 49 member states) listed the wolf as 'strictly protected', but only in December 2024 did its Standing Committee, acting on an EU proposal and needing a two-thirds majority, vote to downgrade the wolf to merely 'protected', effective March 2025, with the Czech Republic, Monaco and the UK opting out; Switzerland's own bid for the downgrade in 2022 had failed.
Shows how an IGO's political influence is constrained by diplomatic negotiation and slow speed of response: change took years while wolf numbers shifted rapidly on the ground.
Strasbourg, France The return of the wolf: judging conservation success
3.3.11Positive feedback loops that enhance biodiversity and promote ecosystem equilibrium can be triggered by rewilding and habitat restoration efforts.HL
Along Knepp's restored River Adur, Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) held in an enclosure dammed the flow and created wetland that supports more aquatic plants and prey, and dragonfly and damselfly abundance rose by around +871% between 2005 and 2025.
Quantifies a rewilding-triggered positive feedback loop in which beaver-created wetland reinforces the conditions supporting more wetland species.
River Adur, West Sussex, England Rewilding Knepp: tipping points, trade-offs and tourismAt Knepp Estate, West Sussex, grazing and trampling by free-roaming herbivores let thorny scrub such as blackthorn and hawthorn establish, which shelters oak seedlings from browsing ('the thorn is the mother of the oak'); more trees and scrub support more insects, birds and seed dispersal, which builds still more scrub: a self-reinforcing loop.
Demonstrates how rewilding triggers a positive feedback loop through food-web interactions that amplifies biodiversity past a threshold into a new wood-pasture stable state.
Knepp Estate, West Sussex, England Rewilding Knepp: tipping points, trade-offs and tourism
3.3.12Rewilding projects have both benefits and limitations.HL
In Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique (4,067 km²), civil war left only ~7,000 large animals by 1994, but the Gorongosa Restoration Project begun in 2008 lifted this to over 100,000 by a 2022 aerial survey, with waterbuck rising from under 500 to over 55,000 and lions from ~15 to over 100, though rising elephant numbers now damage crops on surrounding farms.
Illustrates the benefits of restocking wildlife in a rewilding project alongside the limitation of rising human-wildlife conflict as populations recover.
Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique Rewilding Knepp: tipping points, trade-offs and tourismKnepp took 1,400 hectares of loss-making arable and dairy farmland out of food production from 2001; its twenty-year review reported breeding birds up around +900% and nightingale singing males rising from 9 to 62 (1999–2025), but the estate has no apex predators (no wolves or lynx) so cattle, ponies, pigs and deer must be controlled by culling, and it depends on stewardship grants and private income.
Shows both the biodiversity/ecosystem-service benefits and the limitations (culling need, funding dependence, lost food production) at the heart of the food-versus-rewilding land-use tension.
Knepp Estate, West Sussex, England Rewilding Knepp: tipping points, trade-offs and tourism
3.3.13The success of conservation or regeneration measures needs to be assessed.HL
In Switzerland's 27 September 2020 referendum on a revised Hunting Act to make wolves easier to shoot, 51.9% voted no (keeping strict protection), but rural Alpine cantons voted heavily for easier culling (~69% in favour in Valais and Uri, 67% in Graubünden) while urban cantons opposed it (only ~37% in favour in Geneva and Basel-City), against a backdrop of ~1,480 farm animals killed by wolves in 2022.
Quantifies Level 2 (community reception): a measure popular nationally is rejected by the rural communities that bear its costs, so acceptance is uneven.
Valais, Switzerland The return of the wolf: judging conservation successThe gray wolf recolonised Switzerland naturally, with a single male (M1) crossing from the Italian Apennine population into Valais in 1995; the first pack formed at Calanda in 2012, and by the 2025/26 KORA monitoring year there were 43 confirmed packs with 148 cubs, against habitat capacity of 50–100 packs.
Demonstrates Level 1 (outcome) success, since a native apex predator absent for a century is now established and breeding, and distinguishes natural recolonisation from reintroduction.
Calanda, Graubünden, Switzerland The return of the wolf: judging conservation success
3.3.14Ecotourism can increase interdependence of local communities and increase biodiversity by generating income and providing funds for protecting areas, but there can also be negative societal and ecological impacts.HL
Gorongosa National Park's 'community-based capitalism' model uses donor funding plus profits from tourism, aviation and agriculture to pay for rangers and restocking, and in 2025 employed 1,894 people (99% Mozambican), including paying farmers to grow coffee on Mount Gorongosa to restore the rainforest feeding the park's rivers.
Shows in a named protected area how tourism income funds biodiversity protection and ties local livelihoods to conservation, while remaining vulnerable to donor withdrawal and long-haul-flight emissions.
Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique Rewilding Knepp: tipping points, trade-offs and tourismKnepp's nature-tourism business (guided wildlife safaris, camping and glamping, and pasture-fed wild-range meat) turns over roughly £800,000 a year, funding the rewilding and reducing reliance on grants while bringing trade to nearby pubs, shops and B&Bs, though it risks disturbing wildlife, causing trampling and over-dependence on visitor income.
Demonstrates how ecotourism income funds area protection and builds local interdependence while also carrying ecological and societal downsides.
Knepp Estate, West Sussex, England Rewilding Knepp: tipping points, trade-offs and tourism