Animal Conservation

Edited by:
  • Michael W. Bruford,
  • John L. Gittleman,
  • Georgina M. Mace &
  • Robert K. Wayne
Cambridge University Press. 4/yr. £89, $145 (institutional), £41, $69 (individual), £19, $31 (student)

If politics is the art of the possible and science the art of the soluble, then conservation is surely the art of the saveable. The widespread concern over local and global environmental change has produced an outburst of interest among students, a redirection of ecological research towards applied questions and an expanding community of conservation biologists.

Animal Conservation is a very welcome contribution to the art. It covers the spectrum of conservation science (with a particular strength in evolution and genetics) and balances practicalities with fundamental issues. Thus the latest issue includes the genetic management of chondrodystrophy in California condors, whether fluctuating asymmetry can be used to detect inbreeding in endangered species, a protocol for re-establishing the beaver in Scotland and using human densities to interpret declines of large carnivores. The contents are usually so interesting and topical that I find myself reading most of the journal, and the students on our MSc course in conservation biology successfully petitioned our librarian to start subscribing!

Animal Conservation focuses on conservation science and excludes associated subjects such as policy and education. It is thus more narrow in scope than the market leader, Conservation Biology. The restriction to animals seems somewhat old-fashioned, especially as so many concepts apply equally to the rest of biodiversity; general papers on communities, biodiversity and ecosystem processes are likely to be submitted elsewhere.

The journal has started well. Even the first issue contained a series of interesting papers, and this quality has been maintained. Animal Conservation has the potential to become the major conservation science journal within a few years.

→http://uk.cambridge.org/journals/ani