Conservation across Borders: Biodiversity in an Interdependent World
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Review: Conservation Across Borders: Biodiversity in an Interdependent World By Charles C. Chester Reviewed by A.M. Mannion University of Reading, UK Charles C. Chester. Conservation Across Borders: Biodiversity in an Interdependent World. Washington D.C.: Island Press, 2006. 262pp. ISBN: 1-55963-611-4, US pbk Alkaline paper. $US 29.95. Biodiversity loss is one of the major environmental issues of the 21st century. The conservation of species and ecosystems is difficult under the best of circumstances but where regional or national borders are involved the task requires even more effort. In North America, the mainly straightline boundaries separating the USA from Mexico in the south and Canada in the North were drawn with political and not ecological motives. Conservation problems associated with these boundaries are the substance of this book and are illustrated by reference to two initiatives: the International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA) and the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y). Following an introduction to the general problem and the specific programmes, Chester's book moves into an analysis of the many interpretations of the term 'transborder', and a brief review of historical efforts at transborder conservation such as the proposed Peace Parks of the of the early 1900s in Europe and North America. The many international initiatives have various names, the most widely accepted being Transboundary Protected Areas (TBPAs). Their advantages and disadvantages, successes and failures, best and worst practices are examined. A major example discussed is the Man and Biosphere Programme (MAB), established in the late 1960s, which recognized conservation needs and the need to reconcile them with society's needs, and instigated the development of an international network of Biosphere Reserves to preserve representative areas of the world's biodiversity. The goals, ethics and practices of MAB influenced ISDA and Y2Y, both ambitious projects embracing substantial areas, land managers with varying economic and ecological goals as well as different national governments. Details of the ISDA occupy the next 80 pages. Its official designation occurred in 1993 but it emerged from earlier MAB efforts in Mexico and the USA, which emerged from even earlier protected areas. Biology and geography are just two facets of a complex land area that experiences rapid urban growth, cultural variation, different legal systems, migration problems and drug smuggling. ISDA itself has experienced rifts within its ruling body and shifts in policy from an emphasis on land management to environmental education and community outreach programmes. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.004 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".