IUCN Motion 046: Natural Darkness as a Conservation Priority

In late 2025, the IUCN World Conservation Congress passed Motion 046: a resolution that recognises light pollution as a critical threat to nocturnal biodiversity and calls for concrete action. The motion urges countries to establish light pollution exclusion zones in sensitive habitats, develop national darkness restoration strategies, and integrate light sensitivity into environmental planning.

This is a monumental step towards shifting how we collectively think about the night. The resolution explicitly addresses the impacts on migratory birds (disoriented by artificial light, leading to fatal collisions), bats (whose hunting and pollination behaviours are disrupted), and insects (essential to nocturnal ecosystems).

Likely due to a human focus on daytime ecosystems and implicit biases against darkness, natural darkness has taken this long to be recognised alongside other essential environmental resources worth protecting. This motion builds on pioneering work by the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), which developed the first International Light Pollution Guidelines for Migratory Species.

For those working in conservation and astrotourism, this resolution provides a framework and global mandate to advocate for protecting the night. It’s pertinent to see this filter into into how we approach sustainable and regenerative tourism: while the merits of conservation during the day are obvious to most people, the growing use of lighting in and around sensitive habitats, from increasing human development, vehicles and spotlights during night safaris, and in human-wildlife conflict mitigation in wild areas, is creating an issue that people haven’t yet recognised as a problem. The recognition of excessive lighting as an environmental pollutant can hopefully trickle down into on the ground conservation and filter into policy and practice around nocturnal tourism as nighttime tourism grows in Africa.