The campaign to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030, supported by more than 70 nations, is known mostly for soaring ambition and scant achievement so far. In fact, just 7 percent of the seas are protected and only 2.7 percent are highly protected. “It is very optimistic to think we’ll reach ‘30 by 30’,” says Patricia Majluf, a Peruvian fisheries scientist who has worked to create a deep-sea protected area off Peru in the face of strong resistance from the fishing industry. Peru has protected less than half a percent of its offshore waters.

Setting aside nearly a third of the oceans, the fishers say, is an idea developing nations in South America and elsewhere can ill afford. And the gap between sea-protection and fishing interests has grown wider as fishing stocks decline and the appetite for seafood grows along with the global population.

However, research published today in Nature aims to dramatically change that narrative. The study suggests that protecting 30 percent of the oceans not only could restore biodiversity to ocean habitats, but it could also increase the annual global catch by eight million tons—about 10 percent of the catch today. And, as a bonus, it would provide a “cheap, natural solution” to climate change by reducing the amount of seafloor carbon emitted into the seas by fishing trawlers(拖网渔船).

“The only way to get more food from the ocean is to protect more,” says lead author, Enric Sala, a marine ecologist and explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, which in part underwrote the study. “The catch has been declining since the mid-1990s and this would provide a benefit forever.”

A research team led by the University of Göttingen has shed new light on the importance of plant roots for belowground life, particularly in the tropics (热带).

Millions of small creatures working hard in a single hectare of soil including earthworms, springtails, mites, insects, and other arthropods (节肢动物) are crucial for decomposition and soil health. For a long time, it was believed that leaf litter is the primary resource for these animals. However, this recent study is the first to provide proof that resources from plant roots drive soil animal communities in the tropics.

The researchers divided plots (地块) within natural ecosystems and separated the plots from accessing plant roots with a plastic barrier. Their study included rainforest, as well as both rubber and oil palm plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. They removed all dead leaves, the main resource of decomposer animals, from other experimental plots to compare them.

They found that without living roots, animal abundance in the rainforest plots decreases by 42 percent and in plantations by 30 percent. By contrast, removing the dead leaves has almost no effect on the animals in the underlying soil, but decreased the total animal abundance (in the soil and dead leaves) by 60 percent in rainforest and rubber plantations due to physical litter removal.

The study also revealed that living roots are especially important for the smaller soil animals, such as mites and springtails. Interestingly, after adding artificial plastic leaves in oil palm plantations, abundance of some animal groups-such as prostigmata-increased, highlighting that improving habitat structure can promote soil food networks and the services they provide.

“The study provides new perspectives for the management of the resources provided by plant litter in tropical plantations, contributing to soil animal biodiversity. This is important to develop sustainable agricultural landscapes in the tropics,” says Professor Stefan Scheu, head of the Animal Ecology Working Group at the University of Göttingen.

When the explorers first set foot upon the continent of North America, the skies and lands were alive with an astonishing variety of wildlife. Native Americans had taken care of these precious natural resources wisely. Unfortunately, it took the explorers and the settlers who followed only a few decades to decimate a large part of these resources. Millions of waterfowl (水禽) were killed at the hands of market hunters and a handful of overly ambitious sportsmen. Millions of acres of wetlands were dried to feed and house the ever-increasing populations, greatly reducing waterfowl habitat (栖息地).

In 1934, with the passage of the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act (Act), an increasingly concerned nation took firm action to stop the destruction of migratory (迁徙的) waterfowl and the wetlands so vital to their survival. Under this Act, all waterfowl hunters 16 years of age and over must annually purchase and carry a Federal Duck Stamp. The very first Federal Duck Stamp was designed by J.N. “Ding” Darling, a political cartoonist from Des Moines, Iowa, who at that time was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as Director of the Bureau of Biological Survey. Hunters willingly pay the stamp price to ensure the survival of our natural resources.

About 98 cents of every duck stamp dollar goes directly into the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund to purchase wetlands and wildlife habitat for inclusion into the National Wildlife Refuge System—a fact that ensures this land will be protected and available for all generations to come. Since 1934, better than half a billion dollars has gone into that Fund to purchase more than 5 million acres of habitat. Little wonder the Federal Duck Stamp Program has been called one of the most successful conservation programs ever initiated.