The northern Myanmar region has been identified as a potential transit and source place for the illegal trade of pangolins and their scales. In this study, we surveyed the trade links between Kachin State (northern Myanmar) and China and Kachin and India based on interviews, market surveys and online seizure data. From our results we cannot extrapolate that there is a link between Myanmar and India. Based on the results from interviews (17 of 38), we found that around 140–168 pangolins/year are smuggled into China via three different routes from Kachin to China. Scales are the most traded parts of pangolins in this part of Myanmar. Based on the online sources, 30 seizures of pangolin and their products were made on the Kachin–China route during 2010–2016, with all seizures made on the Chinese side of the border. We thus, recommend an increase in law enforcement on the Myanmar side, with focused effort at identifying trade hubs and deterring wholesalers. We further suggest investigating possible trade links between Kachin and other source areas. We recommend, a reclassification of the pangolins’ protection status in China from a Class II to a Class I Key Protected Species, and the prohibition of the use of pangolins’ scales for Traditional Chinese Medicine

Spatial synchrony of population fluctuations is ubiquitous in nature. Theoretical models suggest that correlated environmental stochasticity, dispersal, and trophic interactions are important promoters of synchrony in nature to leave characteristic signatures of distance‐dependent decays in synchrony. Recent refinements of this theory have clarified how distance‐decay curves may steepen if local dynamics are governed by different density‐dependent feedbacks and how synchrony should vary regionally if the importance and correlation of environmental stochasticity is location‐specific. We analysed spatiotemporal data for the common vole, Microtus arvalis from 49 districts in the Czech Republic to examine the pattern of population synchrony between 2000 and 2014. By extending the nonparametric covariation function, we develop a quantitative method that allows a dissection of the effects of distance and additional variables such as altitude on synchrony. To examine the pattern of local synchrony, we apply the noncentered local‐indicators of spatial association (ncLISA) which highlights areas with different degrees of synchrony than expected by the region‐wide average. Additionally, in order to understand the obtained pattern of local spatial correlations, we have regressed LISA results against the proportion of forest in each district. The common vole abundances fluctuated strongly and exhibited synchronous dynamics with the typical tendency for a decline of synchrony with increasing distance but, not with altitude. The correlation between the neighbor districts decreases as the proportion of forest increases. Forested areas are suboptimum habitats and are strongly avoided by common voles. The investigation of spatiotemporal dynamics in animal populations is a key issue in ecology. Although the majority of studies are focused on testing hypotheses about which mechanisms are involved in shaping this dynamics it is crucial to understand the sources of variation involved in order to understand the underlying processes.

We studied the response of the barn owl annual productivity to the common vole population numbers and variability to test the effects of environmental stochasticity on their life histories. Current theory predicts that temporal environmental variability can affect long-term nonlinear responses (e.g., production of young) both positively and negatively, depending on the shape of the relationship between the response and environmental variables. At the level of the Czech Republic, we examined the shape of the relationship between the annual sum of fledglings (annual productivity) and vole numbers in both non-detrended and detrended data. At the districts’ level, we explored whether the degree of synchrony (measured by the correlation coefficient) and the strength of the productivity response increase (measured by the regression coefficient) in areas with higher vole population variability measured by the s-index. We found that the owls’ annual productivity increased linearly with vole numbers in the Czech Republic. Furthermore, based on district data, we also found that synchrony between dynamics in owls’ reproductive output and vole numbers increased with vole population variability. However, the strength of the response was not affected by the vole population variability. Additionally, we have shown that detrending remarkably increases the Taylor’s exponent b relating variance to mean in vole time series, thereby reversing the relationship between the coefficient of variation and the mean. This shift was not responsible for the increased synchrony with vole population variability. Instead, we suggest that higher synchrony could result from high food specialization of owls on the common vole in areas with highly fluctuating vole populations.