Suchergebnisse

It has been long recognized that political borders should not hamper wildlife, and that conservation actions involving several countries are known to bring large scale benefits to nature while helping to resolve social and political conflicts. While many neighboring countries have lived a considerable long peace time, namely the European western countries, several eastern countries were isolated from the west regions due to the so called "iron curtain". More recently, in the former Yugoslavia and currently along the border of Ukraine-Russia, devastating conflicts are also isolating regions and countries. On the other hand, human development, and particularly transportation networks, are serious threats to biodiversity. For example, roads inflict serious mortality rates due to animal-vehicle collisions, can obstruct the animal movement, or represent important pathways for the spread of invasive species. It is normal for conflict zones to have a lower density of roads and populations. We suggest that former isolation and conflict areas can be regarded as opportunities for biodiversity conservation and to strength cross country relations. In fact, as already shown with the German Green Belt project, border areas can become important areas for conservation due to higher habitat quality, namely forest cover and reduced density of infrastructures. Here we provide an assessment of the potential for political European borders to function as key conservation and connectivity areas by evaluating and comparing the number and size of roadless areas within countries and along their borders. The northern and eastern countries have the highest cover in roadless areas, together with Spain. However, Borders of eastern countries have significantly higher cover of roadless areas, namely from Belarus down to Croatia and Greece. Moreover, all European border with Russian Federation has also much higher cover of roadless areas. Interestingly, the borders of the northern countries, Norway, Sweden and Finland have also a higher cover of roadless areas. We further discuss how focusing on conservation action at borders can become a "win-win" outcome with advantages for both biodiversity and human peace. In particular, conservation of flag species, as bear and lynx, at borders of main geo-political blocks can be used to increase the cooperation between such regions and with that ensure long last peaceful coexistence. ; peerReviewed

Power-line grids are increasingly expanding worldwide, as well as their negative impacts on avifauna, namely the direct mortality through collision and electrocution, the reduction of breeding performance, and the barrier effect. On the other hand, some bird species can apparently benefit from the presence of power lines, for example perching for hunting purposes or nesting on electricity towers. In this perspective essay, we reviewed the scientific literature on both costs and benefits for avifauna coexisting with power lines. Overall, we detected a generalized lack of studies focusing on these costs or benefits at a population level. We suggest that a switch in research approach to a larger spatio-temporal scale would greatly improve our knowledge about the actual effects of power lines on bird populations. This research approach would facilitate suitable landscape planning encompassing both mitigation of costs and promotion of benefits for bird populations coexisting with power lines. For example, the strategic route planning of electricity infrastructures would limit collision risk or barrier effects for threatened bird populations. Concurrently, this strategic route planning would promote the range expansion of threatened populations of other bird species, by providing nesting structures in treeless but potentially suitable landscapes. We suggest establishing a collaborative dialogue among the scientific community, governments, and electricity companies, with the aim to produce a win–win scenario in which both biodiversity conservation and infrastructure development are integrated in a common strategy. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-018-1025-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.