Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2020 -

This comprehensive conservation textbook is an open access title offered freely to students and researchers in Africa and in various formats for sale to others. Conservation biology is still evolving as a discipline, linking protection of biodiversity, natural habitats, and ecosystem services to socioeconomic and demographic realities. Africa's growing human population, plagued by unemployment and food insecurity, imposes competing demands on environmental resources. Governments prioritize development over biodiversity, but biodiversity and human well-being are closely linked. Former NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow Wilson and Primack (Boston Univ.) argue that the major threats to biodiversity are rooted in expanding human populations and unsustainable consumption patterns. Chapters introduce sub-Saharan Africa's environment, biodiversity, and ecosystems and present rationales for conservation. Critical factors examined include climate change, overharvesting, invasive species, land ownership, disease, and extinction. Chapter 12 examines the legal framework to support African biodiversity, including in human-dominated landscapes. The book concludes by cautioning against misusing sustainable development concepts to "greenwash" harmful industrial activities, also providing an agenda for action stressing the need to build coalitions. Inexplicably, ecotourism, an economic engine in several African countries, gets minuscule attention. Four appendixes further support concrete action. This innovative book provides essential background and valuable tools for conservation everywhere, especially in Africa.Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students through faculty and professionals. General readers.