Comment in 2025

China has committed to restoring populations of critically endangered sea turtles but is focused on conservation methods with minimal evidence of efficacy. China’s National Wildlife Protection Law should be modified to reduce the emphasis on artificial breeding and release.

Global conservation agendas now emphasize habitat connectivity, with the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework calling for well-connected systems by 2030. These efforts focus strongly on connectivity benefits while dismissing costs, despite emerging evidence for potential negative effects. Further empirical assessment of the costs of connectivity, and the incorporation of these risks into connectivity decision-making, is urgently needed.

Model organisms are key to understanding principles of animal function and adaptation, although they are singular representatives of their lineages and biodiversity. Here, we propose considering model organisms alongside biological questions to guide effective data collection, experimentation and biomechanical analyses, and thus enhance researchers’ understanding of phenotypic evolution.

Model organisms have a role in biology, but the dominance of model-organism thinking hinders innovation amid profound biodiversity loss. Biology needs a new intellectual framework that values studying all of life’s diversity and inspires an appreciation of that diversity by students and non-experts.

Biological research focused on canonical research organisms can yield profound insights, but it can also obscure evolutionary context and hinder understanding of biodiversity itself. Biology researchers should tap the underutilized potential of Earth’s biodiversity by matching the biological question to the organism best suited to answer it.

Implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework requires robust commitments from actors across society. However, the Convention on Biological Diversity’s pledge system is still nascent and has structural deficiencies. Integrated guidance on society-wide biodiversity commitments that complement governmental efforts is urgently needed to effectively accelerate progress towards global biodiversity targets.

Following the line of the former Iron Curtain, the European Green Belt links protected areas across 24 countries, and restores key wildlife populations, wetlands and rural livelihoods. Its success proves that rewilding-grounded nature-based solutions can transform war-scarred frontiers into biodiversity-rich, climate-resilient lifelines, and challenges policymakers to replicate such mega-corridors worldwide.

Whole-genome plant sequencing is heavily biased towards species from temperate regions and species with utilitarian values. An expansion of efforts to include tropical plant species regardless of utilitarian value is essential for advancing scientific discovery, achieving global biodiversity goals and sustaining planetary health, and requires more equitable, inclusive approaches.

The expansion of renewable energy is urgently needed to reduce carbon emissions, but it can entail some trade-offs with biodiversity. Here, we argue that synergistic implementation strategies are possible and should be prioritized. Decision-makers must also consider the counterfactual — that unchecked fossil fuel use is far worse for biodiversity than the modest effects of renewable energy development.

The environmental effects of deep-seabed mining can only be managed within acceptable limits if they are effectively monitored. To achieve this for deep-seabed mining in international waters, four critical components first need to be addressed by the International Seabed Authority: baseline knowledge, indicators and thresholds, area-based management tools, and technical capabilities.

Bans on trophy hunting or the movement of trophies are increasingly proposed as ‘wins’ for conservation. However, trophy hunting is a complex and contentious topic, and proposed bans involve considerable trade-offs — including conservation and welfare risks. Here, we briefly outline some of the trade-offs that deserve deeper consideration.

Thermoelectric power plants discharge heat into water, which can harm aquatic species. Some regions regulate water discharge temperatures, but these regulations can cause outages, which makes compliance under global warming difficult to ensure. In this Comment, we argue that locally specific, optimized policies can help to balance biodiversity protection and energy demand.

The global food system accelerates biodiversity loss, which in turn undermines the resilience and sustainability of food production. Strategic, coordinated action across the food system’s diverse actors and networks is essential to drive structural change and reverse biodiversity loss.

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s new financial mechanism to fund conservation efforts involves for-profit users of biodiversity-derived genetic data contributing to the Cali Fund. This global fund promises benefits for biodiversity, Indigenous people and local communities while maintaining open data, but relies on action from countries and businesses.

Highly skilled scientists who live and work outside of their country of origin build capacity in their home countries from afar. In this Comment, we argue that these ‘scientific diasporas’ have great potential to advance progress in biodiversity conservation.

Maintaining human well-being in an era of biodiversity loss requires understanding the role of biodiversity in ecosystem function. We argue that absolute abundance can drive ecosystem function and that this measure should be considered alongside traditional measures of biodiversity.

Traditional, top-down governance approaches alone will not bend the curve of biodiversity loss, and must be combined with small-scale interventions that can spark systemic change. Mobilizing behaviour change towards biodiversity-positive practices is as a promising leverage point, but requires a nuanced understanding of how people perceive and value nature.

Spatial conservation prioritization offers a scientific framework for decision-making, yet its practical uptake remains limited. Here, I argue that incorporating social and political dimensions into conservation prioritization — rather than focusing solely on technical and economic aspects — would enhance progress towards biodiversity targets by ensuring closer alignment with real-world governance dynamics.

Many natural history collections have links to colonial pasts, and violent extraction practices are intertwined with their material value. We propose treating digitization practices for colonial natural history collections as research, and emphasize the need for analysis and discussion of the colonial past and metadata design to fully display their complexities and ambiguities.

Despite commitments to community rights and livelihoods, evidence of positive social outcomes from protected areas in developing countries remains scant. Bridging this gap demands a cultural shift that commits to community rights, robust evaluation and substantially increased financing to ensure that the 30 × 30 target is achieved through resilient and socially just conservation.