Who is exploring solutions to the most urgent threats of our times?

9 July 2018

While the idea of global biodiversity boundaries is still under discussion, there is no doubt that technological advancements and computing power are driving a scientific revolution aimed at addressing as quickly as possible biodiversity conservation challenges: people around the world increasingly relies on spatial data and geo-localized information to take action on the ground.

Researchers are constantly proposing new indicators and tools to bring feasible solutions into conservation management practices, one of them being the Marxan software, currently under discussion for an integration into BIOPAMA Reference Information Systems.

In this framework, the 5th European Congress Conservation Biology (#ECCB2018), one of the world largest conferences in the field of conservation biology, took place in the beautiful city of Jyväskylä, in Finland.

The Finnish capital of biodiversity – surrounded by boreal forests, peatlands, and lakes with plenty of exotic wildlife – inspired more than 800 congress participants to discuss the identification of new solutions for biodiversity conservation at the site as well as at the global level.

Prof. Santiago Saura (Joint Research Centre, European Commission) introduced there the most recent developments and next steps for the DOPA indicators, in addition to chairing the session on ‘Connectivity conservation – safeguarding the future in a matrix of human-dominated landscapes’.

The BIOPAMA programme was acknowledged in the session on ‘Advances In Approaches For Evaluating Conservation Impacts, Their Strength and Limitations’, chaired by Jonas Geldmann (University of Cambridge).

Local park managers are not left alone, as the challenge of biodiversity conservation stands at the core of the discussion about ‘planetary well-being’, the main theme at this year’s Conference.

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