Sustainable Squirrel Conservation

This book attempts to move the rodent family of the squirrels (Sciuridae) out of the shadow of large charismatic mammals to exemplify their marginalization and management failure of modern global conservation, towards a more inclusive and improved approach. Besides that, it focuses on the influence of taxonomic science on the species' conservation success or lack thereof. In addition, the authors show how the power of human-driven climate change, global change, and modern politics are shaping the global squirrel populations on a landscape scale as a meso-predator and their surrounding environment and ecosystem services.  Squirrels are widespread around the globe, naturally occurring on every continent except Antarctica and Oceania, and they rank among the most commonly known animals in the public eye and human culture. Even though approximately 300 hundred different species exist from this family, and their identificatory value for biodiversity-rich environments is well known, their conservation is still drastically failing. Nowadays, and as part of ongoing science-based conservation management, in most countries, squirrels are openly hunted without relevant regulations, trapped, poached, stressed, and fully compromised in the absence of any proper background knowledge of population sizes, taxonomies, trends, or even relevant legislation. The marginalization of this family and the missing conservation effort can result in severe population declines and even species extinction. By assessing their discrepant taxonomic situation, the evolution and divergence of their family around the globe, their well-being on islands, in cities, and in the tropics (including habitat fragments), and their habitat trends, the authors set a baseline to assess future investigations. Additionally, the authors focus on the influences of climate change, unsustainable growth, and various man-made threats to the future of this family.