{"id":4379,"date":"2020-01-21T17:02:16","date_gmt":"2020-01-21T17:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/?p=4379"},"modified":"2020-01-21T17:02:16","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T17:02:16","slug":"dice-research-shows-potential-for-zero-deforestation-pledges-to-protect-wildlife-in-oil-palm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/2020\/01\/21\/dice-research-shows-potential-for-zero-deforestation-pledges-to-protect-wildlife-in-oil-palm\/","title":{"rendered":"DICE research shows potential for zero-deforestation pledges to protect wildlife in oil palm"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE)<\/a> has found that environmental efforts aimed at eliminating deforestation from oil palm production have the potential to benefit vulnerable tropical mammals.<\/p>\n

These findings, published by\u00a0Conservation Letters<\/em>, were drawn from an\u00a0international collaboration\u00a0led by\u00a0Dr Nicolas Deere<\/a> from DICE and\u00a0includes work from the University of Melbourne, University of York, Universiti Malaysia Sabah and South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership.<\/p>\n

In a promising development, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)<\/a> has recently\u00a0committed to zero deforestation\u00a0on plantations certified as sustainable, as a way to prohibit forest clearance during the development of new agricultural areas. This is achieved using the\u00a0High Carbon Stock (HCS) Approach, a land-use planning tool that aims to protect patches of well-connected, high quality forest.<\/p>\n

In their study of forest patches in Borneo, Dr Deere and his colleagues found that those forests greater than 100 hectares, and afforded the highest conservation priority by High Carbon Stock protocols, supported larger populations of threatened species particularly sensitive to deforestation, such as sun bears and orang-utans.<\/p>\n

Using camera-trap information, the size of the mammal population was greatest in larger and more connected forest patches. However, hunting and forest quality compromised the suitability of the patch for many species,\u00a0indicating the importance of accounting for the impacts of human activities on wildlife in agricultural areas.<\/p>\n

While the study highlights the potential for zero-deforestation approaches to contribute to wildlife conservation, the feasibility of protecting patches\u00a0large enough to sustain sufficient numbers of species\u00a0was called into question.<\/p>\n

The study found that in the 100 hectares patches (the minimum criterion for\u00a0high-priority conservation status\u00a0in HCS), only 35% of mammal species that would otherwise be present in continuous forest would be protected. In fact, patches would need to be\u00a030 times larger to support the mammal community and even larger if the effects of hunting were considered. Preserving forest patches of this size is simply unrealistic in most plantations.<\/p>\n

Dr Deere said, “The HCS protocols seem to work well in prioritising patches of wildlife-friendly forest\u00a0within oil palm plantations, but it\u2019s not enough for many of the species we studied.\u00a0A switch in emphasis towards joining up forest patches and managing them together across farmland landscapes would really help wildlife conservation in the long term.”<\/p>\n

Implications of zero-deforestation commitments: Forest quality and hunting pressure limit mammal persistence in fragmented tropical landscape<\/a> by Nicolas J Deere, Gurutzeta Guillera-Arroita, Philip J Platts, Simon L Mitchell, Esther L Baking, Henry Bernard, Jessica K Haysom<\/a>, Glen Reynolds, Dave J I Seaman<\/a>, Zoe G Davies<\/a> and Matthew J Struebig<\/a> is published in Conservation Letters<\/em> (https:\/\/doi\/full\/10.1111\/conl.12701<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New research from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) has found that environmental efforts aimed at eliminating deforestation from oil palm production have … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40284,"featured_media":3932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[159353,6599,124,70,6600],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4380,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379\/revisions\/4380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}