Dr. José L. Martín Esquivel

Ph.D. in Biology and member of the technical staff of Canary Government (government functionary).

My academic backgrounds are in La Laguna University (Tenerife, Canary Islands), first as student, after that as researcher and, finally, as teacher.

Since 1990, I carried out an extensive activity in nature conservation as environmental manager in protected areas on the biology and ecology of the Macaronesian archipelagos.

I have been involved in several expeditions to all these islands exploring their biodiversity, thanks to them I have described several new species for the science.

As environmental manager I am interested in avoiding the loss of biodiversity and in exploring ways to conciliate conservation and development in insular ecosystems overpopulated by humans. In this sense, one of my main worries is how to optimize the conservation actions in a scenery of limited management resources. 

Latest relevant events

• in 2009, the Journal for Nature Conservation has published my paper "Are the IUCN standard home-range thresholds for species a good indicator to prioritize conservation urgency in small islands? A case study in the Canary Islands (Spain)". See coments in newspaper, research news pages [a] [b], and blogs.

  

• in 2010, the journal "Biodiversity and Conservation" published one research with several colleagues of Azores and Canary Islands, concerning with a method to setting species's priorities in islands "Using taxonomically unbiased criteria to prioritize resource allocation for oceanic island species conservation".

• In 2010, The Canary Islands Government published my book "Atlas de Biodiversidad de Canarias. [downloaded]
  

• In 2011 begins to run the project ClimaImpacto under my technical coordination. This proyect of the Canary Agency for sustainable development and Climate Change is cofunded by the MAC Transnational Cooperation Programme of the European Union. His goal is to investigate the effects of climate change in Canary Islands and Cabo Verde

• In 2011, the scientific revue "Biological Conservation" publishes the paper "Adapting the IUCN red listing criteria for invertebrates" written with colleagues from the University of Azores, Smithsonian Museum (Washington), University of Athens and the "Spanish Society for the Study and Conservation of Spiders", where we analyze the problem of applying the IUCN categories of threat to invertebrates, especially when they are used in insular biotas. The article has generated some debate. In a reply of 2012, under the title "the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of invertebrates in the IUCN red list", are provided answer to some of the issues raised.

• In 2012, the journal "Climatic Change" publishes the paper "Assessment of global warming on the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands (Spain). Trends in minimum, maximum and mean temperatures since 1944", written with colleagues of Izaña Atmospheric Research Centre. In this paper we have shown how the temperature has warmed since the middle of last century in Tenerife at a rate of almost one tenth of a degree per decade. [spanish]
  

• Just recently the editors of "Biodiversity and Conservation" have agreed to publish our article "Applying the IUCN Red List criteria to small-sized plants on oceanic islands: conservation implications for threatened bryophytes in the Canary islands", resulting from the collaboration with a team of bryologists under the leaderships of Dra JM Gonzalez-Mancebo, from La Laguna University.