Less than a decade  ago,  the  number of urban dwellers globally surpassed that of rural  dwellers  for the first  time in history and the gap will continue to grow over the next half century. This social and economic transition is  the  most  visible  manifestation  of  the  Anthropocene  and  has multiple  implications  for  human  well‐being,  human perceptions of and interaction with nature, how urban and rural landscapes are used and the supply and value of ecosystem services and disservices.

The  social,  economic  and  ecological  changes  associated  with  or  resulting  from  urbanisation  directly  or  indirectly are not restricted to urban landscapes, but are also manifest in the peri‐urban (e.g. via urban sprawl or  waste  disposal)  and  rural  landscapes  (e.g.  supply  of  food  to  cities;  pollution  and  invasive  species  in cities  spilling over to rural areas) both close to and afar from urban centres. Given the typically higher intensity of resource  use  and  ecological  footprints  of  urban  areas,  the  implications  of  increasing  urbanisation  for  conservation of populations, species, landscapes and processes are profound, especially as urban contexts and processes are increasingly implicated in eco‐evolutionary change (Alberti, Marzluff & Hunt 2017). The effects and challenges are likely to be spatially and temporally variable in different regions and depend on the scale of measurement. Moreover, the perceptions of biodiversity of future urban generations, and hence conservation of biodiversity, are likely to be immutably altered unless urban planners, conservationists and policy makers are able to envision the future and adopt appropriate strategies sooner rather than later. Hence this call for papers for a themed issue in Environmental Conservation.

The journal will consider papers from different continents, biomes, landscapes, contexts with a range of urbanisation rates, and from rural, peri‐urban and urban settings. Papers from social, economic and ecological disciplines and interdisciplinary studies are welcome provided the relevance to the theme is clear.  Potential sub‐themes include:  

• How conservation practice, processes and challenges within cities differ from those elsewhere
• Urban encroachment and spillover into designated protected areas
• Analysis of community structure and population persistence in urban settings
• Urban demand for ecosystem services as a driver of land‐use and land‐cover change
• Location and nature of urban green infrastructure and the conservation services it provides
• Conservation needs and implications of cities as novel ecosystems
• Perceptions or knowledge of biodiversity and its uses by urban dwellers
• Implications of/addressing the extinction of experience by urban dwellers

Interested researchers and policy analysts from anywhere on the globe are invited to submit original papers to Environmental Conservation online. Standard research papers (max 6,000 words including references but not title page) are of particular interest but Reviews (max 8,000 words), Reports (max 4,000 words) and Comments (max 2,000 words) may also be submitted provided they conform to the Instructions for Contributors. All papers will be subject to the usual rigorous, peer-review and editing practices.

Theme Lead Editor: Professor Charlie Shackleton, Rhodes University, South Africa c.shackleton@ru.ac.za

Important  Dates: Manuscript  submission  deadline:  1  October  2017,  provisional  publication  date  of  themed issue: September 2018.