8th European Congress of Conservation Biology (ECCB 2026)

Last week, some members of the Biodiversity and Global Change Lab attended the 8th European Congress of Conservation Biology (ECCB 2026) in Leiden, The Netherlands. The congress brought together researchers, policymakers and practitioners from across Europe to share knowledge, exchange ideas and discuss the future of biodiversity conservation. The venue itself was lovely, though the weather turned out to be unusually hot, an alarming reminder of the shifting climate. Luckily, we had plenty of cold cucumber water on hand to keep us refreshed and cool throughout the sessions.

Chiara Dragonetti had a talk on her project “Integrating rewilding into national restoration plans to support the EU Nature Restoration Regulation”, proposing a structured decision framework to support the integration of rewilding into national restoration planning. Giordano Mancini presented his poster on “Opportunities and challenges for applying Key Biodiversity Areas Criterion E at large spatial scales” in which he proposes potential challenges of Criterion E of Key Biodiversity Areas and its application with Species Distribution Models (preprint available at www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.16.682361v1.abstract). Lara Marcolin presented her poster titled “Functional strategies of parasitoid insects and their larvae under global change” (preprint available at www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.08.674822v1.abstract), which explores how functional strategies shift across the life cycles of European bristle flies to reveal if functional homogenisation exerts a double ecological pressure on these multi-stage organisms. Andrea Tonelli presented his work titled “Alien mammal introductions can reshape global viral sharing networks” addressing the potential viral sharing between alien and native mammals at the global scale (preprint available at www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7622438/v1).

The delegation of our early-career researchers particularly appreciated the policy-science discussions highlighting how achieving effective biodiversity conservation requires bridging the gap between science and policy through continuous dialogue, valuing nature as a measurable economic and societal asset, and fostering public empathy and collective action.

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