Conserving the abundance of nonthreatened species.

Human modification of the environment is driving declines in population size and distributional extent of much of the world's biota. These declines extend to many of the most abundant and widespread species, for which proportionally small declines can result in the loss of vast numbers of individuals, biomass, and interactions. These losses could have major localized effects on ecological and cultural processes and services without elevating a species' global extinction risk.

A decision tree for assessing the risks and benefits of publishing biodiversity data.

Inadequate information on the geographical distribution of biodiversity hampers decision-making for conservation. Major efforts are underway to fill knowledge gaps, but there are increasing concerns that publishing the locations of species is dangerous, particularly for species at risk of exploitation. While we recognize that well-informed control of location data for highly sensitive taxa is necessary to avoid risks, such as poaching or habitat disturbance by recreational visitors, we argue that ignoring the benefits of sharing biodiversity data could unnecessarily obstruct conservation efforts for species and locations with low risks of exploitation.

Biological, ecological, conservation and legal information for all species and subspecies of Australian bird.

We introduce a dataset of biological, ecological, conservation and legal information for every species and subspecies of Australian bird, 2056 taxa or populations in total. Version 1 contains 230 fields grouped under the following headings: Taxonomy & nomenclature, Phylogeny, Australian population status, Conservation status, Legal status, Distribution, Morphology, Habitat, Food, Behaviour, Breeding, Mobility and Climate metrics. It is envisaged that the dataset will be updated periodically with new data for existing fields and the addition of new fields.