2 resultados para Gleason, Kathryn

em Indian Institute of Science - Bangalore - Índia


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The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon(1-3). With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses(4-9). As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world's major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve `health': about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.

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Increasingly, scientific collaborations and contracts cross country borders. The need for assurance that the quality of animal welfare and the caliber of animal research conducted are equivalent among research partners around the globe is of concern to the scientific and laboratory animal medicine communities, the general public, and other key stakeholders. Therefore, global harmonization of animal care and use standards and practices, with the welfare of the animals as a cornerstone, is essential. In the evolving global landscape of enhanced attention to animal welfare, a widely accepted path to achieving this goal is the successful integration of the 3Rs in animal care and use programs. Currently, awareness of the 3Rs, their implementation, and the resulting animal care and use standards and practices vary across countries. This variability has direct effects on the animals used in research and potentially the data generated and may also have secondary effects on the country's ability to be viewed as a global research partner. Here we review the status of implementation of the 3Rs worldwide and focus on 3 countries-Brazil, China and India-with increasing economic influence and an increasing footprint in the biomedical research enterprise.