Biological Conservation

BackgroundThe conservation status of the common European adder (Vipera berus) in Sweden is ambiguous. While the species is officially classified as "Least Concern" (LC) on the national Red List, localised reports and long-term studies suggest significant population declines, creating a need for a consolidated evidence summary. ObjectiveTo systematically review and synthesise available scientific and official evidence to determine the overall population trend for the adder in Sweden and to identify the principal drivers behind this trend, with a specific focus on habitat, urbanisation, and procreation. MethodA rapid review of the literature was conducted using a defined Boolean search strategy across academic databases (Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed), preprint servers (bioRxiv), government archives, and citizen science portals. The research question was structured using the PECO framework. The search yielded 255 initial hits, which, after screening, resulted in 12 core sources for inclusion. Evidence was weighted using a four-level hierarchy to assess its robustness. The rapid nature of this review carries an inherent risk of time bias, as studies published after the search date are not included. ResultThe analysis reveals a significant discrepancy between the species official national status and the findings from high-quality longitudinal studies. While the national Red List assesses the species as "Least Concern," the most robust evidence indicates severe and rapid local population declines. The primary identified threats are habitat fragmentation from infrastructure and urban development, and acute effects of climate change, particularly extreme drought. A critical gap in national environmental monitoring was also identified, with no dedicated, systematic programme for reptiles. ConclusionThe probable national trend for the adder in Sweden is a slow, cryptic decline driven by local extirpations. The official "Least Concern" status risks being a lagging indicator that masks underlying threats. DiscussionThe findings highlight a paradox where the most reliable, high-resolution scientific data conflicts with broad-scale national assessments. This suggests that the current conservation status may engender a false sense of security, potentially delaying necessary conservation interventions. The lack of a national monitoring programme is a major limitation to evidence-based management. Recommendations include establishing such a programme and integrating habitat connectivity into landscape planning to mitigate the impacts of fragmentation.

MotivationPopulation trend information is an Essential Biodiversity Variable for monitoring change in biodiversity over time. Here, we present a global dataset of 1122 population trends describing changes in abundance over time in large mammals from the Order Carnivora - some of the worlds most charismatic and functionally important fauna. Main types of variables includedKey data fields for each record: species, coordinates, trend timeframe, methods of data collection and analysis, and population timeseries or summarised trend value. Population trend values are reported using quantitative metrics in 75% of records that collectively represent more than 6500 population estimates. The remaining records qualitatively describe population change (e.g. increase). Spatial location and grainRecords represent locations across the globe (latitude: -51.0 to 80.0; longitude: -166.0 to 166.0) with more trends found within the northern temperate zone. Time period and grainRecords span from 1726 to 2017, with 92% of trends starting after 1950. Major taxa and level of measurementWe conducted a semi-systematic search for population trend data in 87 species from four families in the order Carnivora: Canidae, Felidae, Hyaenidae and Ursidae. We compiled data for 50 of the 87 species. Software format.csv

Brazil is a continental-sized megadiverse country with high rates of habitat loss and degradation. Part of the Brazilian biodiversity - including endemic species - is recognized as threatened. By following the IUCN standards, we review the classification of all the 1172 endangered species in Brazil, analyzing differences among categories and groups. Based on a subsample of all 464 terrestrial vertebrates we identified 1036 records of threats affecting them. Criterion B was the most used (56% overall; 70% for CR species; 75% for EN), mainly related to reductions in their habitat area, extent and/or quality due to deforestation. Data on population declines (criterion A), number of reproductive individuals (criterion C), and population sizes (criterion D) are available for only a small fraction of the Brazilian fauna. Criterion E (probability of extinction in the wild) was used for only one species. Birds and mammals had the highest diversity of used criteria, while marine fish the lowest (90% related to declining populations). Two out of three of the 464 vertebrate species analyzed were negatively impacted by agribusiness. Other major threats are hunting, urban sprawl, rural settlements, and the construction of hydroelectric dams. Birds and mammals experience more co-occurrence of threats. Some threats are clearly underestimated in Brazil: climate change was indicated for only 2% species analyzed, but included no birds or amphibians. The main threats identified are linked to the patterns of economic development in Brazil and the current political and economic context points to a worrisome conservation scenario in the near future.

The sustainable use of wildlife is a core aspiration of biodiversity conservation but is the subject of intense debate in the scientific literature as to how, and whether, species are best used and managed. While both positive and negative outcomes of sustainable use are known for specific taxa or local case studies, a global and regional picture of trends in wildlife populations in use is lacking. We use a global data set of over 11,000 time-series to derive indices of utilised and not utilised wildlife populations and assess global and regional changes, principally for mammals, birds and fishes. We also assess whether management makes a measurable difference to wildlife population trends, especially for the utilised species populations. Our results show that wildlife population trends globally are negative, but with utilised populations tending to decline more rapidly, especially in Africa and the Americas. Crucially, where utilised populations are managed, using a variety of mechanisms, there is a positive impact on the trend. It is therefore true that use of species can both be a driver of negative population trends, or a driver of species recovery, with numerous species and population specific case examples making up these broader trends. This work is relevant to the evidence base for the IPBES Sustainable Use Assessment, and to the development of indicators of sustainable use of species under the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework being developed under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Protected areas are widely used management tools designed to support the long-term conservation of biodiversity. The effectiveness of protected areas is being challenged by human-induced climate change, however, which is causing three broad shifts away from the current distribution of climate trends: a change in mean conditions, a change in the variance around the mean, and/or a change in symmetry. Though changes in average conditions are certainly important, the second behaviour, a change in variance, brings a unique set of challenges that species must respond to. As conditions become more variable, phenological events become less predictable, extreme weather events become more frequent, food security and ecosystem stability are compromised, and extinction risk increases. It therefore stands to reason that changes in the variance of local conditions should be a core consideration when designing protected areas. Here, we reviewed the literature to determine the extent to which changes in variance are being incorporated into protected area planning. Worryingly, we found that fewer than a quarter of the 100 studies we surveyed formally considered how climate change might change mean conditions, and only four considered climate change-induced changes in the variance around the mean. Our evaluation reveals an alarming gap in protected area research. The majority of researchers continue to make recommendations for protected areas without acknowledging that the area(s) they are recommending for protection may have markedly different conditions in the future. Whether variability is considered or not, stochastic events represent a serious threat to the persistence of species and complex ecosystems. Effective conservation requires actively considering how the stability of conditions within protected areas will be impacted by future climate change. As global climate patterns tend towards increasing unpredictability, protecting less variable habitat should be a priority to ensure local populations are not exposed to elevated extinction risk.

Legal hunting practiced under regulatory frameworks is not always assessed for its sustainability. The lack of harvest data is of particular concern in the case of birds occurring on islands. Resident species on islands often exhibit limited geographic ranges and inherently small population sizes, rendering them particularly susceptible to environmental and anthropogenic threats. Islands also support seasonally fluctuating populations of migratory species, providing essential habitats for stopovers and non-breeding periods. Within this context, the sustainability of gamebird harvest practiced on islands within a regulatory framework needs to be evaluated to inform management and prevent negative impacts on populations. Here, we present a case study of an island-wide assessment of bird hunting estimates, based on data available from a legal hunting program, in Martinique, a tropical oceanic island part of the Caribbean biodiversity hotspot. Our objectives were to determine the magnitude of gamebird harvest, track changes in harvest levels over time, and assess harvest sustainability. Our assessment, which is based on hunting logbooks and hunter surveys between the 2012-2013 and 2021-2022 hunting seasons, provides harvest estimates for two groups of migratory species, shorebirds (Charadriidae, Scolopacidae) and teals (Anatidae), and two groups of resident species (Columbidae and Mimidae). In Martinique, harvest management measures, combined with increased hunters engagement and enforcement of regulations, has led more stringent harvest regulations, improved compliance from hunters, and a reduction of Martiniques national shorebird harvest. However, considering continued and rapid shorebirds population declines across the Western Atlantic flyway, shorebird harvest assessment at the flyway level remains a priority.

Anthropogenic land use and climate change are facilitating intracontinental species range expansions, leading to novel ecological communities and interactions. Although invasive range-expanders threaten native species, lethal management can be challenged based on the notion that range-expanders are native and therefore less likely to precipitate ecological damage. The anthropogenically-mediated range expansion of barred owls (Strix varia) from eastern to western North America exemplifies this controversy: a recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to cull barred owls for the benefit of spotted owls (Strix occidentalis) ignited public outcry and resistance. Here, we assessed barred owls potential invasiveness and broader effects on biodiversity by using molecular methods to characterize the diet of 788 individuals in California, Oregon, and Washington. Barred owls consumed 162 vertebrate and invertebrate prey species, including 29 species with federal- or state-level conservation status. Our findings suggest that barred owls may (1) threaten smaller native predators via intraguild predation and competition for shared prey; and (2) further imperil amphibian communities already threatened by a suite of environmental stressors. We thus contend that barred owls function as an invasive species in their expanded range. The Precautionary Principle suggests that large-scale lethal management is warranted to curb barred owls impacts on not just spotted owls but broader ecological communities in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. More broadly, our study highlights the significant biodiversity loss that could result from range expansions of a generalist predator and provides a roadmap for quantifying putative impacts.

In recent years, vertebrate population abundance has declined at unprecedented rates (WWF 2020). In response, targeted conservation measures - such as breeding programs or species-specific habitat management - have been applied to halt population declines, aid population recovery, and reduce and reverse the loss of biodiversity (Salafsky et al. 2008; Bolam et al. 2020). Until now, assessments of conservation actions have focused on the extent to which they reduce extinction risk, impact populations within protected areas, or increase the global area of land under protection (Hoffmann et al. 2010, 2015; Barnes et al. 2016; Maxwell et al. 2020; Bolam et al. 2020; Grace et al. 2021a). Here, we record and analyze conservation actions for 26,904 vertebrate populations from 4,629 species, to measure the impact of targeted conservation on vertebrate abundance. Using a counterfactual approach to represent population trends in the absence of conservation, we demonstrate that targeted actions have delivered substantial positive effects on the abundance of recipient vertebrate populations worldwide. We show that, in the absence of conservation, a global indicator of vertebrate abundance would have declined even more. Positive population trends were associated with vertebrate populations subject to species or habitat management. We demonstrate that targeted conservation actions can help to reverse global biodiversity loss and show the value of counterfactual analysis for impact evaluation - an important step towards reversing biodiversity declines.

The rising demand for outdoor recreation worldwide may be undermining the conservation objectives of protected areas (PAs). We leveraged a natural experiment, in which two adjacent PAs were closed to the public for different durations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using detections from 39 camera traps in Joffre Lakes and Garibaldi Parks, Canada, from 2020-2022, we examined how recreation influenced mammal habitat use and diversity. Bayesian regression showed weak evidence that, when recreation was higher, detections declined for black bear, mule deer, and marten, while detections of bobcat and hoary marmot shifted closer to trails. Accumulation curves revealed that species richness and diversity were higher in the closed vs. open PA in 2020 (mean differences of -5.04 for richness and -0.33 for Shannon diversity). However, diversity did not decline consistently despite increases in recreation in 2021 and 2022. Notably, several rare species were only detected in the lower-recreation PA, suggesting they may be filtered out of the higher-recreation PA. This emphasizes the need for long-term monitoring to detect delayed and cumulative effects of recreation on mammal communities. Given growing global pressures on biodiversity, we urge PA managers to prioritize adaptive management to assess and balance outdoor recreation with conservation goals.

Area-based conservation remains a pivotal component of global wildlife protection efforts. Mexico hosts a diverse array of area-based approaches, encompassing protected areas (PAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) such as voluntary conservation areas (VCAs) and wildlife management units (UMAs). Indigenous Territories (ITs) also provide heightened conservation potential through traditional ecological knowledge systems. These conservation spaces exhibit significant variations in community involvement, national coverage, and governance. Here, we evaluate the conservation potential of these land management types for 29 terrestrial carnivores, focusing on spatial co-occurrence. We determine areas in Mexico lacking area-based protection and calculate carnivore richness per land management type. Analyzing overlap between land management types and carnivore ranges, we employ heat maps to visualize overlap occurrence and key unprotected areas. We found that across all carnivore ranges, 87% of the area remains unprotected under designated protection areas (PAs & VCAs), decreasing to 65.2% after including non-designated types (ITs and UMAs). We identified several key gaps in the protection estate for Mexican carnivores, most notably on the eastern Mexican coast in the state of Veracruz. Our findings corroborate the importance of including Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in conservation efforts, emphasizing their contributions to the stewardship of Mexican ecosystems. As the global protected area estate continues to expand under the post-2020 global biodiversity targets, and the importance of a well-designed and diverse portfolio of practices for conservation is recognized, the need for collective action, increased collaboration and inclusivity, and effective communication amongst stakeholders becomes necessary for carnivore conservation.

O_LIA literature review was conducted to identify human-wildlife conflicts associated with British terrestrial mammal species. Conflicts were classified as economic, health, environmental or social, divided into 32 subcategories, and ranked using a Generic Impact Scoring System (GISS). C_LIO_LIWe identified 48 species associated with 200 conflicts. Sika deer were involved in the most conflicts. The highest ranked conflicts were measurable on an economic scale (involving rabbits, badgers, brown rats, grey squirrels), with the total estimated cost of all economic conflicts exceeding {pound}0.5 billion. C_LIO_LIThe most common conflicts were reservoirs of disease and zoonotic disease, with non-native species scoring statistically higher than native species for the latter. Generally, we scored these conflicts low, deemed localised and mild, but highlighted the importance of surveillance to monitor and control disease spread. C_LIO_LIMost species caused minimal conflict, likely due to their limited distribution. We identified potential impact increased as a function of biomass and population size, therefore a GISS may help identify species capable of expanding beyond their current range, such as recently reintroduced beavers. C_LIO_LIA GISS is useful for identifying conflict species but there is also the need to understand the value of British wildlife. We identified costs-to-benefits trade-offs for several high impact species, including rabbits, deer, badgers and foxes, which underlie human-conflict and/or coexistence and are critical for informed decision-making. As one in four British mammal species face local extinction, the emphasis should encourage focus away from conflict resolution to acceptance and/or tolerance where wildlife and people coexist. C_LI

Aggregate biodiversity data from museum specimens and community observations have promise for macroscale ecological analyses. Despite this, many groups are under-sampled, and sampling is not homogeneous across space. Here we used butterflies, the best documented group of insects, to examine inventory completeness across North America. We separated digitally accessible butterfly records into those from natural history collections and burgeoning community science observations to determine if these data sources have differential spatio-taxonomic biases. When we combined all data, we found startling under-sampling in regions with the most dramatic trajectories of climate change and across biomes. We also found support for the hypothesis that community science observations are filling more gaps in sampling but are more biased towards areas with the highest human footprint. Finally, we found that both types of occurrences have familial-level taxonomic completeness biases, in contrast to the hypothesis of less taxonomic bias in natural history collections data. These results suggest that higher inventory completeness, driven by rapid growth of community science observations, is partially offset by higher spatio-taxonomic biases. We use the findings here to provide recommendations on how to alleviate some of these gaps in the context of prioritizing global change research.

Where and how species are sampled can shape biodiversity knowledge, spatial patterns, and data-driven conservation. In many Global South biodiversity hotspots, sampling remains uneven, and available data often lack the synthesis needed to assess region-wide gaps for effective conservation planning and priority-setting. This shortfall is common within conserved areas and key biodiversity areas (hereafter priority conservation areas or PCAs). We demonstrate this case in the Philippines, one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, where longstanding biodiversity research and growing policy momentum support efforts to expand coverage of conserved areas. Drawing on over a century of species occurrence records made digitally accessible, we compiled and manually curated these data to assemble and analyze information on Philippine amphibians and squamate reptiles from multiple sources, assessing the spatial distribution of observed diversity in relation to PCAs. Results reveal strong spatial biases, with preserved specimens comprising the majority of records and largely shaping observed diversity patterns. Citizen-science data complement already well-sampled regions, while records from peer-reviewed literature contribute valuable documentation in poorly sampled areas. PCAs are proportionally well-sampled, although gaps and biases remain. Sampling effort and observed diversity were higher in larger PCAs, but this positive area effect diminishes with increasing topographic relief, highlighting large mountain ranges as persistent blind spots in biodiversity documentation. Notably, some areas of higher diversity occur outside established PCAs. We discuss implications of these biases and propose enabling mechanisms to improve primary biodiversity data collection. This study affirms the importance of integrating digitally accessible biodiversity data from multiple sources in revealing sampling gaps and biases, guiding future studies towards poorly sampled areas and informing conservation priorities.

The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) is widely considered the strongest biodiversity conservation law in the world. Part of its strength comes from the mandate to use the best available science to make decisions under the law, including whether to list a species, setting the criteria for when a species can be considered recovered, and determining when those criteria have been met and a species can be delisted. Both biological status and threat factors are considered at each stage of the listing and delisting process. In most cases, conservation science would suggest that species at risk enough to be listed under the Act should be more abundant and secure at delisting than they were at listing. Surprisingly, we identified 130 ESA-listed species that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could consider recovered with fewer populations or individuals than existed at the time of listing. We ask whether their ESA recovery plans present scientific data, rationale, or evidence to support a decline in abundance as part of recovery. We find that almost no plan clearly explains why a decline is allowed. Fewer than half of the plans provide scientific support for a decline in the form of literature references or modeling results. We recommend that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service create a decision support system to inform when species can decline in abundance and still recover, including guidance on (a) the need to explicitly address the declines and (b) the science used to support the decisions.

Persistence of large mammals in the Anthropocene depends on human willingness to coexist with them, but this is rarely incorporated into habitat suitability or conservation priority assessments. We propose a framework that integrates human willingness-to-coexist with habitat suitability assessments to identify areas of high potential for sustainable coexistence. We demonstrate its applicability for elephants and rhinos in the socio-ecological system of Maasai Mara, Kenya, by integrating spatial distributions of peoples willingness-to-coexist based on Bayesian hierarchical models using 556 household interviews, with socio-ecological habitat suitability mapping validated with long-term elephant observations from aerial surveys. Willingness-to-coexist was higher if people had little personal experience with a species, and strongly reduced by experiencing a species as a threat to humans. The sustainable coexistence potential framework highlights areas of low socio-ecological suitability, and areas that require more effort to increase positive stakeholder engagement to achieve long-term persistence of large herbivores in human-dominated landscapes.

Understanding the relationship between a species feeding strategy and its environment (trophic ecology) is critical to assess environmental requirements and improve management policies. However, measuring trophic interactions remains challenging. Among the available methods, quantifying the plant composition of a species diet indicates how species use their environment and their associated niche overlap. Nevertheless, most studies focusing on herbivore trophic ecology ignore the influence that landscape variability may have. Here, we explored how landscape variability influences diet composition through niche overlap. We used eDNA metabarcoding to quantify the diet composition of two large herbivores of the Bialowieza Forest, Red deer (Cervus elaphus) and European bison (Bison bonasus) to investigate how increasing habitat quality (i.e. higher abundance of deciduous forage species) and predation risk (i.e. density of wolf in the area) influence their diet composition and niche partitioning. Our findings indicate diet composition is non-homogeneous across the landscape, both within and between species. Red deer showed greater diet variability and lower niche overlap within species compared to bison. We detected a reduction of niche overlap for red deer with increasing predation risk, leading to more dissimilar diets, suggesting their feeding behaviour is affected by wolf presence. This correlation was not found for bison, which are rarely predated by wolf. Higher habitat quality was associated with higher niche overlap only within bison, probably due to their suboptimal feeding strategy as browsers. These results show the importance of integrating environment-induced diet variation in studies aimed at determining the landscape usage or niche overlap of a species. Niche overlap can therefore be a powerful tool for inferring predation risk for red deer, and estimating predator abundance or its perception. This approach has enormous potential for wildlife management in areas where predator estimates are unknown or difficult to quantify.

The recovery of large carnivores in Europes human dominated landscapes is an unexpected conservation success. In France, where the wolf disappeared in 1937, the species population is now approaching one thousand individuals after the species naturally returned in the country in 1992 from Italy. Large carnivores in Europe are protected by several legal instruments, ranging from international law, to European, national or regional laws (in federal countries). There has been a limited attention allocated to how this legal protection is in practice activated in Member States of the European Union. In particular, there is little research on the role of public interest environmental litigation for large carnivore conservation. We take the example of the wolf (Canis lupus) in France and describe wolf-related litigation in the country during two decades. We compiled a database of case law decisions (i.e. court rulings) relating to administrative litigation about the protection of the wolf and collected a total of 275 court rulings. We found that wolf litigation occurred unsurprisingly more often in administrative courts located in regions where wolves first returned (i.e. South-East of France). Animal welfare or protection associations were the most active and successful plaintiffs. The State administration represented by its Prefets was also a plaintiff in lawsuits against illegal culling decisions made by mayors. The Prefet des Alpes Maritimes and the Minister of the Environment were regular defendants for decisions to cull wolves that were litigated by nature protection associations. Nature protection associations overall had a case winning rate higher than 50%. There were no immediately obvious inter-annual trends in wolf litigation. Our database did not allow us to quantify the total number of wolves that were effectively protected from culling decisions because court rulings made after the execution of administrative decisions did not specify whether the animals were killed or not. Bet it as it may, nature protection associations appear to conduct legally relevant litigation in view of the high success rate they achieve and conservation lawsuits belong to the portfolio of available conservation instruments.

During the El Nino phase of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), much of Southeast Asia experiences intense droughts and surging temperatures, exacerbating wildfires and creating a blanket of hazardous haze across much of the region. These patterns are predicted to worsen with climate change, further exacerbating the vulnerability of the regions primate species, 94% of which are threatened with extinction. Here, we report findings from a systematic search of the literature and synthesise the current state of knowledge regarding the impacts of El Nino-driven heat, drought, fire, and smoke on non-human primates in Southeast Asia. Our review shows that habitat loss and degradation driven by El Nino-induced drought and fire causes changes to diet, activity patterns, social interactions, and physical condition, and leads to population crowding, reduced group sizes, increased infant mortality, displacement of individuals, and local extirpation. Further, prolonged exposure to smoke alters behaviour and worsens the health of primates. Notably, two studies presented evidence for the recovery of primate populations in habitats damaged by fire if forest is allowed to regenerate. We highlight significant gaps in our understanding of the impacts of El Nino on non-human primates, particularly the need for research that encompasses the interconnected factors of rainfall, temperature, fire, and smoke, as well as long-term effects on reproduction and mortality. Due to the unpredictable nature of El Nino, we acknowledge the difficulties of planning research in this area and emphasise the potential of long-term research sites to add to our understanding of this key conservation issue.

Recovering species is one of the main goals of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In the face of limited budgets, diverse tools are needed to find efficient solutions. Recovery units may be one such tool - designated portions of a species range that must be recovered individually before an entire species can be considered recovered. Recovery units allow for spatial flexibility in recovery goals and may be used in regulatory decisions such as section 7 consultation. Despite their availability, there is very little information on how recovery units have been developed and used. We mined available public data to determine the number and types of species for which recovery units have been designated; evaluated species and geographic characteristics associated with recovery unit designation; and examined how recovery units have been used in the implementation of the ESA, such as during consultation. We found 49 listed species have designated recovery units through 2017, and that these species had similar characteristics. Namely, they had relatively large ranges and were well-studied. We found taxonomic biases in recovery unit designation as well, with fish species being disproportionately likely to have recovery units and plants disproportionately less. Improvements in recovery priority numbers among species with recovery units indicate that the theoretical benefits of this tool may have translated to improved status. These data indicate that recovery units could be applied to more wide-ranging species to improve recovery under the ESA.

The central northern coast of South America has extensive wetlands critical for waterbird conservation. While waterbird harvest occurs in the region, the impact on species population dynamics remains unclear. This study assesses waterbird hunting in the coastal wetlands of Suriname, addressing: (i) the extent of waterbird harvest, (ii) changes in harvest magnitude over time, and (iii) the motivations and methods used by hunters. We collected data via a national survey of licensed hunters in 2006 and 2016 using structured interviews. A Bayesian hierarchical model was used to analyze the data. We estimated harvest levels for 11 species and three groups (small herons, small shorebirds, large shorebirds). For most species, mean harvest per hunter significantly decreased from 2006 to 2016, except for blue-winged teal and migratory shorebirds. Most hunting was for non-commercial purposes (personal consumption and recreational). This is the first national assessment of waterbird hunting in Suriname. Harvest levels vary by species, and the sustainability of these levels remains uncertain. Managing hunting in Suriname requires addressing both legal and illegal hunting. Given Surinames importance for waterbirds, particularly species like the scarlet ibis and migratory shorebirds, it should be a priority for conservation efforts.