The Boundless Treasures of the Mountains and the Seas

People often use the term "treasures" to describe the lives and resources existing in the mountains and the seas; however, they do not keep or care for the treasures carefully like they treat precious gemstones. Overconsumption is what humans do to the treasures. With the aim of preventing the treasures from being completely depleted in the near future, the Summer Edition's cover stories will continue the spirit of this year's theme "Grand Perspectives with no Boundaries" by sharing stories about a group of people who are committed to protecting the boundless treasures of the mountains and the seas through transnational, interagency, and intersectoral exchange and collaboration for the concept of conservation to prevail in different corners of the world.

Cover Story I took the "2023 International Conservation Symposium" as a starting point to explore how international exchanges can create more opportunities for conservation practices, and share information about the world's largest online collaborative ecological database platform "iNaturalist", and "eBird", an online bird database with 300,000 users worldwide. Through experiences shared by national park staff and volunteers in using the online resources, we can understand how citizen scientist platforms have helped national parks more comprehensively grasp the increase/decrease and distribution changes of species. When entering Cover Story II, we will follow researchers' footsteps to witness how digital monitoring facilitates the development of ecological, coastal, and geological conservation research through stories related to the monitoring of Formosan black bear, coasts in Kinmen, Datun volcano group, and other research fields.