The rapid expansion of global urban development is increasing opportunities for wildlife to forage and become dependent on anthropogenic resources. Wildlife using urban areas are often perceived dichotomously as urban or not, with some individuals removed in the belief that dependency on anthropogenic resources is irreversible and can lead to increased human-wildlife conflict. For American black bears (Ursus americanus), little is known about the degree of bear urbanization and its ecological mechanisms to guide the management of human-bear conflicts. Using 6 years of GPS location and activity data from bears in Aspen, Colorado, USA, we evaluated the degree of bear urbanization and the factors that best explained its variations. We estimated space use, activity patterns, survival, and reproduction and modeled their relationship with ecological covariates related to bear characteristics and natural food availability. Space use and activity patterns were dependent on natural food availability (good or poor food years), where bears used higher human density areas and became more nocturnal in poor food years. Patterns were reversible, i.e., individuals using urban areas in poor food years used wildland areas in subsequent good food years. While reproductive output was similar across years, survival was lower in poor food years when bears used urban areas to a greater extent. Our findings suggest that bear use of urban areas is reversible and fluctuates with the availability of natural food resources, and that removal of urban individuals in times of food failures has the potential to negatively affect bear populations. Given that under current predictions urbanization is expected to increase by 11% across American black bear range, and that natural food failure years are expected to increase in frequency with global climate change, alternative methods of reducing urban human-bear conflict are required if the goal is to prevent urban areas from becoming population sinks.

India has committed to reduce emissions with a goal to increase renewable energy production to 175 gigawatts (GW) by 2022. Achieving this objective will involve rapidly increasing the deployment of solar and wind energy, while at the same time addressing the related challenges of the financing requirements, environment impacts, and power grid integration. Developing energy on lands degraded by human activities rather than placing new infrastructure within natural habitats or areas of high production agriculture would reduce cumulative impacts and minimize land use conflicts. We estimated that converted lands have the potential capacity of 1789 GW across India, which is >10 times the 2022 goals. At the same time, the total land footprint needed to meet India’s 2022 renewable energy target is large, ranging from ~55,000 to 125,000 km², which is roughly the size of Himachal Pradesh or Chhattisgarh, respectively. If renewable energy is advanced with the singular aim of maximizing resource potential, approximately 6700–11,900 km² of forest land and 24,100–55,700 km² of agricultural land could be impacted. Subsidies and incentive programs aimed at promoting low-impact renewable energy deployment and establishing mitigation obligations that raise costs for projects that create land-impacts could improve the public support for renewable energy.

In Kennedy et al. (2019), we presented findings that terrestrial ecosystems have higher human modification than previously reported and that most ecoregions are intermediately modified. Our findings were based on the Global Human Modification (HM), which maps the degree of land modification based on the spatial extent and the potential intensity of impact of 13 anthropogenic stressors.

Overexploitation of wildlife is one of the greatest global drivers of biodiversity loss. Yet, despite this well-established risk, data on extraction and trade are both incomplete and highly fragmented. The IPBES Global analysis estimated 50,000 species to be in trade, yet our review of wildlife trade monitoring programs found at least double that, at 107,356 species in use and trade globally. This included up to 47,685 animal species, covering 42% of all described vertebrate species. Most countries lack any systematic data on trade for species not listed in Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), with the exception of the US-specific dataset Law Enforcement Management Information System, which frequently had higher diversity of species in trade than global databases. This highlights the importance of national monitoring efforts and the need for standardized collation of wildlife trade data beyond CITES-listed species. Without these changes, global indicators on trade meant to guide sustainability and conservation will continue to focus on less than 2% of traded species.