Conservation Biology brings together theory, applied research, basic research, and hundreds of real-world examples and stories from dozens of disciplines to teach students how to become practicing conservation biologists who protect and manage Earth's biodiversity. A major theme throughout the book is the active role that researchers, local communities, the general public, conservation organizations, and governments can play in protecting biodiversity, even while maintaining a high quality of life for humankind.

Bradley Cardinale is a Professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan where he also serves as Director of the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research. Cardinale is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Ecological Society of America (ESA). His research and teaching integrate perspectives from the natural sciences, social sciences, engineering, and design disciplines to improve efforts to conserve and restore biodiversity, and to protect the ecosystem services that biodiversity provides to society. He has published more than 120 scientific papers and popular articles, and has ranked as a Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Ecology & Environment for most of the past decade. In 2014, Cardinale was named one of 'The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds' by Thomson Reuters, one of the main sources of impact factors used in the assessment of scientific work.

Richard Primack is a Professor of Biology at Boston University with a specialization in plant ecology, conservation biology, tropical rain forest ecology, and climate change biology. He has been a visiting professor in Germany, Japan, China, and the Czech Republic, and a Guggenheim Fellow and a Humboldt Research Fellow. He is the author of two widely used conservation biology textbooks; local coauthors have helped to produce thirty-six translations of these books with local examples. He is also the author of the popular book Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau's Woods (2014). He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biological Conservation and as the President of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. His research has centered on the ecology of tropical rain forests in Malaysia and the impacts of climate change on the plants and animals of Massachusetts.

James D. Murdoch is an Associate Professor and Director of the Wildlife and Fisheries Biology Program in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. He is a wildlife biologist and received his doctorate through the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) at the University of Oxford. Much of his research focuses on the behavior, ecology, and conservation of carnivores, and examines questions related to the effects of landscape change on the abundance and distribution of species at field sites in Asia, Africa, and North America. He also served as a Fulbright Scholar in Mongolia, and is a member of the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group and Board of Trustees of The Nature Conservancy in Vermont.

Preface

Part I: Foundations of Conservation Biology
Chapter 1. State of Our Planet
Chapter 2. The Rise of Conservation Biology
Chapter 3. Biodiversity Concepts and Measure
Chapter 4. Global Patterns and Drivers of Biodiversity

Part II: Importance of Biodiversity
Chapter 5. The Many Values of Biodiversity
Chapter 6. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Chapter 7. Ecological Economics

Part III: Threats to Biodiversity
Chapter 8. Extinction
Chapter 9. Habitat Loss, Fragmentation, and Degradation
Chapter 10. Overexploitation
Chapter 11. Invasive Alien Species
Chapter 12. Climate Change

Part IV: Approaches to Conservation
Chapter 13. Species-Level Conservation
Chapter 14. Community and Ecosystem Conservation
Chapter 15. Landscape Scale Conservation
Chapter 16. Ex Situ Conservation
Chapter 17. Conservation and Sustainable Development

Glossary
Chapter References
Index