Are directly transmitted from animals to humans via various routes of transmission (e.g. air - influenza; bites and saliva - rabies).

Mental lenses through which humans social groups perceive, think about, interpret, inhabit and modify the world. Rooted in cultural traditions, they shape and are shaped by knowledge systems, languages and values. Epistemic worldviews pertain to diverse knowledge systems that hold often implicit philosophical assumptions about how nature and values can be known, while human-nature worldviews guide perspectives on our conceptualization of and relationship with nature based on underlying value systems.

Defined by the connections between networks of concepts and systems of knowledge, values, norms and beliefs. Individual person's worldviews are moulded by the community the person belongs to. Practices are embedded in worldviews and are intrinsically part of them (e.g. through rituals, institutional regimes, social organization, but also in environmental policies, in development choices, etc.). See also Perceptions; Concepts; Reality.

Defined by the connections between networks of concepts and systems of knowledge, values, norms and beliefs. Individual person's worldviews are moulded by the community the person belongs to. Practices are embedded in worldviews and are intrinsically part of them (e.g. through rituals, institutional regimes, social organization, but also in environmental policies, in development choices, etc.). See also Perceptions; Concepts; Reality in this Glossary.

A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area which is selected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as having cultural, historical, scientific or other form of significance, and is legally protected by international treaties. The sites are judged important to the collective interests of humanity.

Increasing dominance of shrubs in grasslands and trees in shrublands.

Estimate of the amount people are prepared to pay in exchange for a certain state or good (e.g. WTP for protection of an endangered species).

Estimate of the amount people are prepared to accept in exchange for a certain state or good (e.g. WTA for protection of an endangered species).

Ecosystems, landscapes and seascapes with a very low degree of human influence, at present with full recognition that they are often inhabited and managed by people, and have been so for centuries or millennia, often at low population densities, and therefore their native biodiversity and ecological and evolutionary processes have not been reconfigured by human drivers to a significant degree. Not all areas designated as wilderness conform to this definition, especially in Europe where abandoned agricultural areas ‘managed’ by ‘wild living’ large herbivores are also called wilderness.

Wild species watching is defined as a non-extractive practice where humans observe, and in some cases interact, with wild species in their natural environment in a way that does not involve the harvest or removal of any part of the organism. Wild species watching activities vary greatly in the level of wild species involvement, ranging from photographing animals from afar to more invasive practices of habituating, feeding and touching animals (UNEP/CMS, 2006, p. 2006). Wild species watching also is an economically important segment of nature-based tourism.