News

It is often assumed that protected areas such as natural parks preserve wildlife, but perhaps surprisingly, the evidence has been limited.

Local communities are not incentivised to protect tropical forests that are hugely valuable for global climate regulation, a new study has found. “International gains from the conservation of this biodiversity hotspot far outweigh the gains to local communities directly involved in their conservation,” said Andrew Balmford...

Tropical butterflies with bigger, longer and narrower wings are better able to stay cool when temperatures get too hot. In fact, tropical species’ ability to keep cool at higher air temperatures mean they are more able to “thermoregulate” and keep a balanced body temperature compared to their evolutionary cousins in milder...

A new study by James Ball and colleagues in the Cambridge Conservation Research Institute has developed a computer vision method for delineating tree crowns in tropical forests from aerial RGB imagery, with the new approach available as an open-source Python package for broader uptake and further development. Monitoring...