Tobias Kuemmerle
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tkuemmerle.bsky.social
Tobias Kuemmerle
@tkuemmerle.bsky.social

Geographer @ Humboldt-University Berlin | working on land use and its impact on biodiversity

Environmental science 68%
Geography 17%

Reposted by Tobias Kuemmerle

Data collection at the breeding grounds has been coordinated by @acbk.bsky.social (M. Koshkin/R. Urazaliyev). We are currently summarizing population trends in relation to weather/grazing pressure - birds seem either to continue to decline locally despite predicted higher habitat availability....

Overall, habitat for the sociable lapwing increases - yet populations continue to decline. This points to the importance of other factors than habitat, particularly hunting during migration and at stopover sites.

More here: wadertales.wordpress.com/2021/01/03/f...

Mixed trends in stopover sites - increasing habitat suitability in some (due to expanding irrigation agriculture), declines in others (agricultural intensification). This highlights the importance of monitoring all parts of migratory species' ranges!

We linked satellite imagery to bird tracking data to assess year-round habitat suitability (1990–2024) - results:
✔ Breeding grounds in Kazakhstan improved after livestock recovery
✔ Winter habitats in India & Sudan improved due to expanding with low-intensity farming

Reposted by Richard D. Gregory

Increasing habitat suitability for the critically endangered Sociable Lapwing over the past 30 years - across its range!

Paper by Tejas Bhagwat out in the Journal of Ornithology: doi.org/10.1007/s103...
@biogeoberlin.bsky.social @consbiogoe.bsky.social
#Conservation #MigratoryBirds

super interesting paper in @conbiology.bsky.social on how different groups feel about 'native' versus non-native species decline in Canada, particularly how White people put a much greater emphasis on nativeness in their response.
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
How much biotic nativeness matters across human demographic groups
Many central concepts of conservation biology—such as nativeness—are structured by ecological and social factors. However, the social consequences of using these concepts to make conservation decisio...
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Danke an alle, die hinter uns stehen. Das gibt uns Kraft für das, was noch kommt. Unsere Mail-Accounts könnten z. B. schon morgen gesperrt werden. Wir sorgen jetzt vor, damit Menschen, die online angefeindet werden, uns weiter erreichen. Unterstützt uns dabei: hateaid.org/spenden/?don...

Reposted by Tobias Kuemmerle

Stellet Euch vor, die Brandmauer ist abgebrannt und niemand sieht hin.

Rechts-konservative Mehrheiten im Europäischen Parlament sind in Brüssel zur Normalität geworden, haben 3 große Auswirkungen, mit denen wir uns kurz vor dem Jahresewechel näher beschäftigen müssen.

Der neue Newsletter👇🏽
Stellet Euch vor, die Brandmauer ist abgebrannt und niemand sieht hin
Liebe Leserinnen und Leser, stellt euch vor, die Brandmauer ist abgebrannt und niemand sieht hin. Genau das ist eingetreten.
www.linkedin.com

Reposted by Tobias Kuemmerle

Income inequality and the erosion of democracy in the twenty-first century

www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....
Turns out people still actually link climate change to stuff happening in their actual lives and care about action being taken on it, despite the now widespread idea that we need to stop mentioning it to be successful

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
William Bond challenged the idea that forests are nature’s default, arguing grasslands & savannas are ancient ecosystems.

As mass tree-planting boomed, he warned that blanket afforestation can harm biodiversity and water systems. His work pushed conservation to start with how landscapes function.
William Bond, grasslands researcher who reminded conservation that context matters, has died
Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In recent years, one of the loudest ideas in environmental policy…
news.mongabay.com

Nice outcome of the Vanishing Treasures project with @unep.org and a large team of regional collaborators (🙏).

Once again: context specificity matters! Even under the same climate change scenario in the same ecoregion, some landscapes will require conflict mitigation measures, while others will offer restoration opportunities.

Regionally diverging results under climate change:
- more overlaps between snow leopards and pastoralism in the future Tajikistan (below)
- less overlaps and increasing spatial separation of wildlife and pastoralists in Kyrgyzstan

We used species distribution models to analyze the current and future distributions of (a) snow leopards, (b) their prey, and (c) pastoralist - and how they overlap - for two large landscapes in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Spatial overlaps signal interactions and the potential for conflict.

Climate change impacts on the potential for coexistence between snow leopards and people in Central Asia's mountains - new paper out, led by @arashghoddousi.bsky.social in @ambio-journal.bsky.social @biogeoberlin.bsky.social
Our new review lays out a framework for understanding the social-ecological benefits of protected areas to their surroundings - just published in One Earth:
www.cell.com/one-earth/ab...
doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2025.101462
Come work with us! #PhD position on #ecosystem and #biodiversity effects of large #herbivores on the Eurasian steppes now announced: www.euraxess.de/jobs/395512

Nice combination of fieldwork and meta-analysis, co-supervised by @jonastrepel.bsky.social and ejlundgren.github.io

Reposted by Tobias Kuemmerle

🎓PhD position in bioacoustics, statistics, and AI for forest biodiversity in Sweden! 🌲

🔊🐦If you have a strong interest in wildlife conservation technology, specifically the use of passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) and AI then go check it out here:
www.slu.se/en/about-slu...
PhD position in bioacoustics, statistics, and AI for forest biodiversity | slu.se
SLU - Science and Education for Sustainable Life
www.slu.se

Reposted by Tobias Kuemmerle

Heute ist Tag der Menschenrechte.
Gestern haben sich die EU-Gremien auf eine deutliche Abschwächung der Lieferkettenrichtlinie geeinigt.🤯
Das ist ein Schlag ins Gesicht für Menschenrechte entlang von Lieferketten.💔

What does this mean? Actual habitat use of E. bison does not support views that they are forest specialists or that they are restricted to forests 👉 Restoration opportunities across diverse landscapes. However: potential for crop damages --> reintroductions should focus on low-conflict areas.

- Wild E. bison inhabit a wide range of landscapes
- Human influence strongly mediated habitat use
- Higher human influence --> bison used forests more and grasslands less during the day and more during the night

Some key findings:
- E. bison select for forests and avoid open areas at the landscape scale
- Within home-ranges, selection for forests during summer, for croplands during winter
- Grasslands were never strongly selected
- Within forests, younger and disturbed forests were selected

Analyzing these data in a functional response framework revealed variation in E. bison habitat use
- across spatial scales (home range vs. landscape)
- in different seasons (winter vs. summer)
- during day vs. night
This helped to reveal a more complex picture of E bison habitat use.

Past habitat assessments have often focused on individual herds, with many herds never analyses. Thanks to a broad collaboration among E. bison researchers and practitioners, we could analyze data from >240 GPS-tracked 🦬! Massive thanks to all collaborators!

Wild European bison can thrive in a wide variety of landscapes - including human-dominated ones.

New paper out @jappliedecology.bsky.social by Gabriele Retez analyzing habitat selection across 22 populations -->
doi.org/10.1111/1365...

@biogeoberlin.bsky.social
🌍 African #savanna science is heavily skewed: 46% of studies come from just 2% of #ProtectedAreas. Using the new ADSPA geodatabase, this work identifies five #bioclimatic groups and reveals major research gaps across underrepresented savannas. 🐘

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/ddi....

Reposted by Tobias Kuemmerle

A place-based assessment of biodiversity intactness in sub-Saharan Africa
Clements+
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

based on "place-based knowledge of 200 African biodiversity experts"

approach can be used "to integrate contextual, place-based knowledge into multiscale" biodiversity assessments
A place-based assessment of biodiversity intactness in sub-Saharan Africa - Nature
Regional, place-based biodiversity information is used to comprehensively map and quantify biodiversity intactness of sub-Saharan Africa to inform national and global sustainability policies and plann...
doi.org