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Temperate old-growth forests are essential biotic microrefugia, providing high carbon storage, biodiversity, and stable microclimates. Their resilience to drought and disturbance makes them more effective than younger forests. Conserving existing old-growth patches and restoring connectivity through the management of younger stands are critical for biodiversity protection and climate adaptation.

Global forest restoration efforts must monitor native forest loss and plantation-driven tree cover gains on private farmland. Using government land records and high-resolution satellite imagery, we show that 0.17 million hectares of native forest loss in India is masked by 0.44 million hectares of gains on private lands.

Tree plantations dominated by exotic species did not improve biodiversity connectivity in western Rwanda. In contrast, home gardens supported higher woody plant and bird diversity and acted as ecological stepping stones.

Livestock shape much of the environmental and social change sweeping South America’s dry woodlands, yet existing maps show only livestock density, obscuring the diverse production systems shaping these landscapes. Drawing on largely untapped data (livestock vaccination records, farm registers, and transaction permits), we combined active learning with spatial modelling to map eleven livestock systems across 4.2 million km² of the Caatinga, Cerrado, Chaco and Chiquitano. Our maps reveal a sharp spatial segregation of production: capitalised cattle ranching dominates the most productive land in the Cerrado and Humid Chaco, while pastoralists and smallholders are concentrated in the driest and least productive areas. This pattern reflects both the adaptive capacity of pastoralist systems in drylands and their ongoing marginalisation by agribusiness expansion. The resulting geography offers a foundation for context-sensitive conservation and land-use policy in some of the world’s most contested deforestation frontiers.

Millions of hectares of tropical woodland are cleared for agricultural projects that ultimately are not productive. This study examines failed land investments that lead to deforestation, finding that projects are largely stalled by local resistance or poor planning. The research reveals a grim reality: even after an investment fails, illegal deforestation sometimes persists, and local communities are frequently left without access to their land. These findings highlight an urgent need for governments to learn from these failures, prioritize local voices, and reevaluate priorities in land governance.

By reconstructing 40 years of fire history and combining the resulting map with land-use reconstruction and climate data we show that agriculture – and not climate change – is the main driver of changing fire dynamics in the Chaco.

Conservation rangers play a vital role in protecting biodiversity but often work under perilous and highly stressful conditions, exposing them to substantial psychological strain and mental health challenges. Despite their critical role, mental health support for rangers remains limited worldwide. This perspective proposes four priority actions: routine mental health monitoring, recognition of rangers as essential workers, sustainable financing, and stronger institutional wellbeing support. Addressing ranger wellbeing is both an ethical responsibility and essential for effective, long-term biodiversity conservation.

Tropical forest loss is a major global challenge. In deforestation frontier regions, decisions by diverse actors – including smallholders, Indigenous communities, and agribusinesses – shape whether forests persist or disappear. Using data from nearly 1 million km² across two major deforestation hotspots, we show that forests are lost more slowly where forest-dwelling smallholders are present – even as agriculture expands. Because agribusinesses mainly expand onto land already used by smallholders, securing smallholders’ land rights can both support livelihoods and protect forests and biodiversity.

Using satellite based forest structure indicators in a Bayesian Hierarchical Modelling framework we show that deforestation-driven edge effects reach up to 700m into surrounding forests, releasing an additional 15% of carbon from Chacoan forests.

Critically endangered, Sociable lapwing is a long-distance migratory bird that moves in the Central-Asian flyway. While its populations continue to decline, our results suggest that the overall habitat suitability for the species has increased over the past three decades through the annual cycle largely due to agricultural developments.