Main description:

This book attempts to move the family of squirrels (Sciuridae) out of the shadow of large charismatic mammals and to highlight management failures with the goal of moving towards an improved conservation approach. Particular attention is paid to the influence of taxonomic science on squirrel conservation. In addition, the authors show how human-driven climate change, global change and modern politics are shaping global squirrel populations as well as their surrounding environments and ecosystems.

Squirrels are widespread around the globe, naturally occurring on every continent except Antarctica and Oceania, and they are certainly among the animals most commonly encountered in everyday life. Despite this, the authors of this volume identify worrying gaps in squirrel conservation. Squirrels are often hunted, trapped, poached, and stressed, and management strategies and legislation are often devised in the absence of proper knowledge of issues such as population sizes, taxonomies, and trends. Together, this can result in severe population declines and even species extinction. By assessing their taxonomic situation, ecology, the evolution and divergence of Sciuridae around the globe, and squirrels' well-being across habitats, the authors set a baseline from which to launch future investigations into the conservation of squirrels and other species. Additionally, the authors highlight the influences of climate change, unsustainable growth, and various man-made threats to the future of this family.

Contents:

Part 1: Introduction to squirrels of the world and their conservation trends. Chapter 1: The World's Squirrel Taxonomy.- Chapter 2: Evolution, habitat trends, and extinction rate estimates of the world squirrels.- Part 2: Squirrels of the world in the Anthropocene. Chapter 3: Habitat Trends and the Squirrel-Human Interface.- Chapter 4: A Meta-analysis based on Open Access Big Data Mining of Global Predicted Squirrel Distribution Models with Machine Learning for IUCN Conservation Status and Trend Policy Assessments.- Chapter 5: Squirrels in Cities.- Chapter : Squirrels in the Tropics.- Chapter 7: Squirrels on Islands.- Chapter 8: Tree squirrels in old-growth forests?.- Chapter 9: Can squirrels be used as indicators to identify and protect old-growth forest reserves?.- Chapter 10: Squirrel Economics.- Part 3: Problems and governance in the squirrel world. Chapter 11: Squirrel Hunting Regulations and Enforcement (Or Lack Thereof).- Chapter 12: Where do the World's Squirrel Hotspots and Coldspots of 230+ species go with Climate change 2100?.- Chapter 13: Squirrel's marginalization and modern lack of conservation and poor sustainability outlook as a call to good action.- Part 4: First conclusions and the way forward. Chapter 14: A Conservation Management SWOT analysis for over 300 Squirrels of the World using 132 GIS layers confirming the PESTLE assessment.- Chapter 15: First Conclusions, Success stories, and Calls-to-action for the conservation of the world's squirrels.