Perceived impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on protected area management and conservation outcomes in Mexico

Protected areas are under immense pressure to safeguard much of the remaining global biodiversity and can be strained by unpredicted events such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Understanding the extent of the effects of the pandemic on protected area management and conservation outcomes is critical for recovery and future planning to buffer against these types of events. We used survey and focus group data to measure the perceived impact of the pandemic on protected areas in Mexico and outline the pathways that led to these conservation outcomes. Across 62 protected areas, we found substantial changes in management capacity, monitoring and tourism, and a slight increase in non-compliant activities. Our findings highlight the need to integrate short-term relief plans to support communities dependent on tourism, who were particularly vulnerable during the pandemic, and to increase access to technology and technical capacity to better sustain management activities during future crises.

Postgraduate medical education in pandemics: Challenges and opportunities

NOVEL INTRODUCTION: With the presence of COVID-19 in all human activities, the medical world has faced a radical change in the way that medical practice develops all around the world. A necessary cog in the physician's life is the teaching-learning process that is lived daily in the clinical setting during medical residencies. The new reality that is being contemplated warrants a new way of thinking, acting, teaching, and learning. OBJECTIVE: To identify challenges and opportunities for the physician's formation in medical residencies ever since the onset of the pandemic. AUTHOR'S POSITIONING: One of the essential tools that a human being must have to survive any given crisis is his/her capability to adapt and modify conducts in order to better respond to uncertainty. The system under which physicians with specialties have developed throughout the years was sufficient for that specific reality under which it was first conceived;however, as time went by and with the current emergency, this is no longer efficient nor sufficient. Therefore, it's necessary to analyze the education model and reevaluate the competences required to instruct in a specialist. CONCLUSIONS: The clinical formation, particularly, represents a new opportunity to design, plan and implement the education process with a social responsibility sense and innovation through a new and different approach. In this new proposal, both education and health institutions work collaboratively in the generation of excellent medical specialists, not only in the cognitive aspect, but also, in the human aspect.