Reconciling conflicting perspectives for biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene

We introduce a framework - based on experiences from oceanic islands - for conserving biodiversity in the Anthropocene. In an increasingly human-dominated world, the context for conservation-oriented action is extremely variable, attributable to three largely independent factors: the degree of anthropogenic change, the importance of deliberate versus inadvertent human influence on ecosystems, and land-use priorities. Given this variability, we discuss the need to integrate four strategies, often considered incompatible, for safeguarding biodiversity: maintaining relicts of historical biodiversity through intensive and continuous management; creating artificial in situ, inter situ, and ex situ conservation settings that are resilient to anthropogenic change; co-opting novel ecosystems and associated opportunistic biodiversity as the wildlands of the future; and promoting biodiversity in cultural landscapes by adapting economic activities.