Celebrating the golden jubilee of the Journal of Applied Ecology

Abstract

The Journal of Applied Ecology was founded to publish the results of original research, particularly of a quantitative and experimental kind, on ecological subjects that are of economic or social importance. Fifty years ago, applied ecology was widely viewed as the poor relation of the more glamorous fundamental areas of this young science. Scientific research relating to the conservation of biological diversity was in its infancy, journals such as Conservation Biology were not even on the horizon, while it would be more than a decade before the integration of agriculture and the environment became a recognized area of research with the launch of the journal Agriculture, Ecosystem and Environment in the 1970s. The Journal of Applied Ecology had already celebrated a quarter of a century of publishing the best applied ecological research when the Ecological Society of America launched Ecological Applications. Few applied journals can compete with the Journal of Applied Ecology in terms of its heritage and its contribution to establishing applied ecology as an important discipline in its own right.