Journal of Applied Ecology celebrates its 60th birthday in 2024. In this Editorial, we explore how the journal’s role has changed since its launch and investigate whether the articles we publish are achieving real-world impact. We designed and ran an author survey for all authors who have published with us between 2017-2021. Authors were asked if their publication achieved real-world impact, and if so, how they achieved it. Forty four percent of respondents achieved real-world impact with their paper, primarily citing engagement with key stakeholders as the reason for this impact. We also assessed our impact in online policy documentation, comparing this to our citations in the published scientific literature. We are the most highly cited British Ecological Society journal for policy mentions with over 2800 citations in total. We also found a weak correlation between policy citations and citations in academic literature, which highlights that fact that paper with relatively few academic citations can have large real-world impact. Synthesis and application. Whilst these results are encouraging, there are significant challenges involved in achieving and measuring impact scale. To help address some of these, we launch here a suite of new author services to help our authors to achieve real-world impact with their work. This includes offering plain language summaries and the opportunity to present findings to British Ecological Society’s stakeholder community.

Traditional agricultural landscapes are vital reservoirs of biocultural heritage and agrobiodiversity, yet traditional farming systems and their unique crop landraces face increasing marginalization and genetic erosion. Using northwest Himalaya as a case study, we examine the ecological resilience and genetic diversity of an understudied traditional crop, black pea (scientific name unclear), alongside barley (Hordeum vulgare), and compare them to the introduced cash crop, green pea (Pisum sativum L.). Participatory field experiments with local farmers revealed that traditional crops outperform introduced varieties in survival and reproduction traits across sites. We generate the first whole-genome sequencing data for black peas. Clustering and nutritional analyses highlight black pea’s genetic richness and dietary potential. Our findings underscore the importance of integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge with ecological science to sustain agrobiodiversity, enhance climate resilience, and promote sustainable food systems. We provide insights for global agri-food innovations and socio-ecological stability in fragile mountain ecosystems.

Conservation policy for the high mountains of Asia increasingly recognises the need to encompass large multi-use landscapes beyond the protected area network. Due to limited long-term research in this region, our understanding of even fundamental processes, such as factors regulating large mammal populations is poor. Understanding the factors that regulate animal populations, especially those generating cyclicity, is a long-standing problem in ecology. Long-term research across multiple taxa (mainly from Europe and North America) has focused on the relative roles of food and predation in generating cyclicity in population dynamics. It remains unclear how trophic interactions that are influenced by anthropogenic stressors can affect population dynamics in human-modified landscapes.  We present a 10-year study to compare the effects of livestock grazing on density dependent dynamics in two populations of bharal, Pseudois nayaur, in the Himalaya. We combine this with a mechanistic understanding of whether density dependence in these two sites acts predominantly by affecting adult survival or recruitment. We compared and quantified density dependence in the bharal population by fitting Bayesian Gompertz state‐space (GSS) models. We found evidence for negative density dependence which indicates possible cyclic dynamics in the bharal population of the site (Tabo) with low livestock density. The population dynamics of this site were driven by recruited offspring – with a 2-year density dependent lag effect – rather than adult survival. In the site with high livestock density (Kibber), this density dependence was not detected. We postulate the potential role of excessive grazing by livestock in affecting offspring recruitment, thereby affecting the bharal population in Kibber. Synthesis and applications: Our results suggest that conservation action to facilitate wild herbivore population recovery, such as the development of protected areas and village reserves, needs to account for density dependent regulation. Sites with trophy hunting require continuous monitoring to understand the effects of density dependence so that appropriate hunting quotas can be formulated.

1. Climate over Asian montane rangelands is changing faster than the global average, posing serious threats to the future of the region’s livestock-based economies and cultures. Effects of climate change on rangeland vegetation likely depend on grazing by herbivores but the potential responses of vegetation to such changes in climate and grazing regimes remains unclear. 2. We examined vegetation responses to experimentally simulated climate change (warming, drought and increased rainfall) and grazing (clipping vegetation) between 2015-2018 at two mountain rangeland sites: Spiti valley, in the Indian Trans-Himalaya and Tost, in the Gobi-Altai Mountains in Mongolia. 3. Clipping and climate change manipulations interactively reduced vegetation cover and biomass but did not affect species richness. Treatment effects and their interactions varied between sites. In ungrazed plots, vegetation cover and biomass declined sharply in response to warming (18-35%) and drought (20-50%) at the two sites, and, surprisingly also declined slightly in response to increased rainfall (20%) at Tost. While the effects of climate treatments were largely similar in the grazed and ungrazed plots in Tost, they were larger in the ungrazed plots in Spiti. The decline in vegetation cover was driven by a decline in the cover of both forbs and grasses. 4. In combination, grazing and warming (Tost) or drought (Spiti) had sub-additive effects, i.e., the decrease in vegetation cover in response to grazing and warming/drought was less than the sum of their independent effects but greater than the effect of either manipulation alone. Of the two, warming had a greater effect than drought at the more arid site (Tost), while drought had a larger effect at the more mesic site (Spiti). Synthesis and applications. Our findings show that future changes in climate, including just over 1oC of warming, could undermine the sustainability of pastoral economies and the persistence of wildlife across Asian montane rangelands. Further, grazing by herbivores will play an important role in mediating rangeland responses to climate change; thus, pasture management in concert with local pastoralists will be crucial in mitigating the adverse effects of climate change on rangelands, pastoral livelihoods and wildlife populations.