Biodiversity and Conservation
The major objective of Biodiversity and Conservation is to serve as a vehicle for communicating the best ideas and research across the whole spectrum of biodiversity and conservation to our peers and those who make policy and decisions which affect what happens to the Earth and its people. The launch of Biodiversity and Conservation fills us with a sense of excitement and optimism. Excitement because of the emphatic support from people worldwide; optimism stimulated by the increased mindfulness of scientists, sociologists, economists, politicians, planners and a host of others, to environmental degradation and global changes that menance the Earth's biological diversity. The responsibility of turning concern into effective conservation actions enabling sustainable development will be the role of all our readers; Biodiversity and Conservation will endeavour to provide the information and the catalyst. The knowledge necessary for action, plans and priorities to be defined for effective conservation is generally absent. The complexity of ecological systems and our ignorance continues to thwart attempts to predict, prevent, moderate, or restore destruction of the global environment. The journal's scope is wide and multidisciplinary covering all organisms, and all facets of environmental dynamics and practice. In the former context knowledge is uneven; information on insect, invertebrate, microbial and viral diversity is vastly exceeded by that on vertebrates and plants, and as a consequence their contribution to ecosystem function is largely unheeded. Likewise, in the latter context, socio-political, cultural and economic concerns such as the role of local peoples and their enconomics, or the stability of political structures and gross national product, all come within our ambit. In setting priorities and agendas for conservation, governments, national government organizations, interest groups and individuals must augment research criteria with the values and concerns of society. Since different groups value different aspects of biodiversity differently, and the resources to counteract relentless destruction are limited, we need to set priorities as we strive towards the notion of sustainability. Biodiversity and Conservation will provide a forum for examining these complex issues. Biodiversity and Conservation welcomes contributions from practitioners of conservation as well as those who depend on the managed exploitation of biodiversity, and is keen to foster communication between them and all constituencies of people whether working on, or in, the environment. The international breadth of Biodiversity and Conservation means that we are particularly concerned to encourage contributions from developing countries where much of the biodiversity debate is centred. As Jeff McNeely concludes in the opening paper, "It is time for us to go on the offensive, to stop fighting the biodiversity crisis as if it were a series of discrete battles over pollution, species extinctions or poaching. We need to get in front of the problems."