Conservation Biology
Global targets, glossy reports, and dramatic indices dominate the conversation. But how much of it translates into verifiable ecological outcomes?
Happy World Wildlife Day!
Here’s what’s inside today’s issue of Biodiversity Affairs:
Stuart Pimm’s “Triptych” on aligning NGO reporting with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework — and why activity reports are not impact.
Why replacing fisheries with cattle could worsen biodiversity outcomes.
The case for documenting neglected taxa like those in EuroWorm.
Mosquito evolution, climate adaptability, and disease risk.
New environmental governance in Wales.
Korea’s national biodiversity data infrastructure
Pimm's Triptych.
My former advisor at Duke, conservation biologist Stuart Pimm, has published three papers with colleagues on aligning conservation actions with the Global Biodiversity Framework. In his characteristic grand style, he calls them a "Triptych."
Triptych - typically a three-paneled artwork. A well-known example is The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.
Here are the three papers:
They are crisply written and unapologetically direct. Several key insights, but most importantly, for NGOs.
Stop reporting only on activities. Start reporting more on outcomes.
Across five large conservation NGOs, Pimm and colleagues show that most reporting falls under the “Programs” category: new initiatives, partnerships, and future plans.
Research findings, ecological surveys, documented impact, and transparent financial allocation occupy a much smaller share of reporting. Yet those are precisely the categories that demonstrate whether conservation is working.
There are three main recommendations I gathered from the triptych:
Use the Kunming–Montreal Targets as the evaluation framework.
Assess successes and failures against those targets.
Communicate those results transparently.
In the second paper, Pimm et al. review the success of conservation actions, showing substantial evidence in three areas:
(i) slowed the extinction rate of many species groups and the transition of species to more threatened categories
(ii) slowed or reversed population declines.
(iii) expansion of protected areas.
And in the third paper, he then offers a blunt critique of the Living Planet Index and Planetary Boundaries. In the paper, he says that these tools "may be effective fund-raising tools for their authors, but they confound efforts to solve difficult, practical efforts in conservation.”
In his LinkedIn he wrote:
Not to put a fine point in it, we find the Living Planet Index, promoted by WWF to be complete rubbish and Rockstrom's ideas of a global biodiversity tipping point to be devoid of scientific content. If you can't measure it, it has no meaning.
Also, be aware that Stuart has previously criticised Planetary Boundaries before, in another excellent read: Planetary Boundaries for Biodiversity: Implausible Science, Pernicious Policies
Conservation Inertia
I also share the concern that the “planetary boundaries” framework, beyond being an effective communication device, adds little operational clarity for conservation practice. But the Living Planet Index is worse.
The Living Planet Index is fatally flawed, and it has been called "a case study in statistical pitfalls."
Yet once an indicator becomes institutionalized, cited in global reports, embedded in advocacy campaigns, and repeated in the media, it develops inertia.
That inertia is precisely the problem.
Conservation cannot afford to anchor strategy and public understanding to metrics that obscure more than they illuminate. If an indicator is misleading, longevity is not a defense. It is an additional reason to scrutinize it carefully.
This is not an abstract concern. I recently raised related questions in a reply to the global biodiversity hotspots literature:
The Biodiversity Brief
Save the Worms
There is a recent initiative called EuroWorm to build an inventory of marine annelids for research, conservation, and species discovery.
These are foundational organisms in marine environments, poorly documented and rarely prioritized.
For charismatic vertebrates, we often have enough data and insufficient action.For neglected invertebrates, we often lack even baseline inventories and basic science.
I'm fond of these initiatives for groups that aren't as charismatic or that just never get thought about.
Mosquito Mayhem
Mosquitoes are having a moment — and not in a good way.
First, a new study on Scientific Reports found suggests they started feeding on human blood about 1.8 million years ago, starting with our ancestor Homo erectus in Asia.
Now, in the Atlantic forest researchers have found that they are increasing their appetite for human blood potentially driven by habitat change and declining wildlife abundance, which can lead to the spread of diseases.
Worse, climate change won't stop them. They have within them the ability to adapt to hotter temperature, a new study in PNAS found, while at the same time, they are expanding into colder areas.
Hotter regions? They persist. Colder regions? They expand. Overall, it looks like a mosquito-mayhem is unfolding.
Korea’s Biodiversity Portal
The Republic of Korea has built one of the most accessible national biodiversity platforms I’ve seen. Take a look for instance at the The National Species List of Korea.
As of December 31, 2025, it lists 62,604 species in a centralized, searchable database.
Many countries still struggle to maintain updated species inventories. Korea’s portal demonstrates that comprehensive national biodiversity accounting is administratively feasible.
Global frameworks are important. But national data infrastructure is where accountability begins.
A new bill for the Welsh Environment
The 2025 State of Natural Resources Report (SoNaRR 2025) has warned of the precarious state of the Welsh Environment:
"The evidence is no longer abstract, technical or distant. It is visible on our doorsteps:flooded homes, polluted rivers, failing soils, collapsing wildlife, unaffordable energy bills, rising food costs, and communities living with growing risk and uncertainty."
In response, the Welsh Government has introduced the Environment (Principles, Governance and Biodiversity Targets), establishing the Office of Environmental Governance Wales (OEGW).
The OEGW will have investigatory powers and the ability to escalate environmental non-compliance to the courts.
Eat fish, save the rainforest
Eating fish for land sparing?
A recent paper Biodiversity Consequences of Replacing Animal Protein From Capture Fisheries With Animal Protein From Agriculture tackles a politically uncomfortable question:
If we stopped fishing, where would the protein come from?
Max Mossler at the Global Seafood Alliance commented on the study. It speaks cleary about incentives and unintended consequences. Simply put, the paper shows that replacing it with terrestrial sources, such as cattle, would be worse for biodiversity.
This does not mean high meat consumption is defensible. A transition toward more plant-based diets remains environmentally preferable. But in a world that continues to consume animal protein, well-managed fisheries may outperform many terrestrial alternatives.
"It’s a great paradox that the sector that relies the most on biodiversity, agriculture, is also the greatest threat to the world’s most fragile ecosystems" This is one of the messages from the December 2025 report from the World Bank states Agriculture Rooted in Biodiversity:
And we’re seeing the problem with badly managed agriculture in real time. A recent paper in Science found that North American bird declines are accelerating, with the strongest associations in areas of intensive agriculture.
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