How our researchers are supporting conservation around the world

Around 1 million species are currently threatened with extinction, more than at any other time in history.

Species are disappearing at a rate that is 1,000 times the norm according to the United Nations Foundation, which cites the way most humans consume, produce, travel and live as the culprit.

It is against this backdrop that researchers at Manchester Metropolitan are stepping up, with their work helping to protect and preserve animals and plants all over the globe.

Saving threatened species

One such project led by Stuart Marsden, Professor of Conservation Ecology, is helping to save the endangered African grey parrot whose populations have plummeted anywhere from 90% to 99% in the last 25 years – pushing the species to extinction – his research found.

The evidence uncovered by Professor Marsden secured a vital total trade ban on the bird in 183 countries, helping it to recover in some areas.

It is this work that is helping the University to support conservation around the world as part of its Conservation, Evolution and Behaviour research group.

The group’s experts work alongside communities and partners in countries where species are under threat – and here in the UK.

Threats to the Amazon

Dr Alexander Lees is a Reader in Biodiversity at Manchester Metropolitan whose work has taken him from the Peak District to South East Asia. The majority of his work focuses on the Amazon basin and how biodiversity responds to global change, with a particular interest in birds.

Dr Lees identifies three key threats to biodiversity in the Amazon: the conversion of tropical rainforest to non-forest land uses, such as agricultural fields, the degradation of those tropical forests by fire and selective logging, and the subdivision of patches of forest into smaller and smaller patches, on top of which climate change acts as a ‘force multiplier’.

“Commerce is one of the big drivers of the loss, fragmentation and degradation of forests, and agribusiness has been a big driver of forest loss, producing beef for export to external markets or other crops such as soybeans, which is principally for animal feed. There are also big challenges with logging,” says Dr Lees.

“Brazil has some of the sort of most visionary environmental legislation, but loggers can be predatory and act unsustainably, principally because of a lack of governance in the frontier regions of Amazonia – if there’s no one there to enforce that legislation, that’s a big problem.”

Protecting the forests

This is where Dr Lees’ work has had a significant impact, providing an evidence baseline for a change in the law affecting secondary forests that cover more than a million hectares in the eastern Amazon.

“Our research has been fundamental in shaping forest policy because we have been able to show what age that secondary forest should be legally protected to protect biodiversity and carbon stocks.

“In this case, secondary forests are forests that are regrown from historical clearcutting, so a forest which perhaps was once a field with cattle in it was then abandoned and has then started regrowing. Quite often these forests are cut down. Our work, especially on secondary forests, has also been fundamental in providing the targets for the state governments to meet their own climate goals, with essentially these forests stocking carbon to offset emissions elsewhere.”

Government policy has a key role to play in preserving biodiversity, according to Dr Lees. “Policy is often isolated from its impact on the environment. We need to see the intersection between conserving biodiversity, maintaining ecosystem services, and ensuring development.

So often we just we chase economic goals without thinking about the costs to the environment, and that comes back to haunt us.

 Fundamentally, we need a different kind of governance that understands the value of biodiversity and values that by protecting it.”