(from Duke Environment Digest)
Conserving biodiversity has long been recognized as a global good whose success depends on improving local livelihoods. However, little evidence shows that protected areas have had sustained positive effects on the welfare of local communities, especially in the Global South, according to Randall Kramer, Priya Shyamsundar, Ph.D.’93, and colleagues. In a commentary for Nature Reviews Biodiversity, the team argues for a cultural shift that considers the need for financial resources and depth of engagement with local communities to deliver sustained and socially just conservation.
An interdisciplinary research team recently launched an NIH-supported project aimed at investigating infectious diseases at the human-animal interface in Northeastern Madagascar. The team will model disease transmission within and across small mammals (rats, bats, and tenrecs), domesticated mammals (cats, cows, pigs, and dogs), and humans by screening humans and animals for a wide range of diseases, undertaking rigorous surveys of people and their environments, and conducting sophisticated mathematical modeling to represent connections between humans and animals in a network framework.
