Everyone loves a success story: optimism inspires conservation engagement. BioScience, 69(4), 274-281. McAfee, D., Doubleday, Z. A., Geiger, N., & Connell, S. D. (2019). 

In this era of unprecedented environmental change, optimism could help unite people to act. In the present article, we bring together insights from psychology, business, politics, and media to illustrate humanity's innate attraction to optimism and the influence it can yield in driving positive change.

Turning a lost reef ecosystem into a national restoration program. Conservation Biology, 36(6), e13958.  McAfee, D., McLeod, I. M., Alleway, H. K., Bishop, et al. (2022). 

Achieving a sustainable socioecological future now requires large‐scale environmental repair across legislative borders. Yet, enabling large‐scale conservation is complicated by policy‐making processes that are disconnected from socioeconomic interests, multiple sources of knowledge, and differing applications of policy. We considered how a multidisciplinary approach to marine habitat restoration generated the scientific evidence base, community support, and funding needed to begin the restoration of a forgotten, functionally extinct shellfish reef ecosystem.