Burning Forests,Rising Power: Towards a Constitutionality Process in Mount Carmel Biosphere Reserve

Powerful states and elites frequently manage protected areas with little or no concern for historic land uses, people, or governance practices, justified by ideologies that portray these areas as “pure nature” to be protected from humans. New international participatory platforms, such as the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Program, coupled with strategic active agency, have provided an opportunity for challenging the fortress model of conservation in Israel. We examine the change in Israel’s government ecological policies following its failure in managing the Carmel forests, whereby its bargaining power with the local Druze-Arab minority was significantly reduced, opening a window of opportunity for the Druze to take advantage of new UNESCO rules on local participation to create management institutions for the local forest commons.     

Effectiveness of strict vs. multiple use protected areas in reducing tropical forest fires: a global analysis using matching methods

Protected areas (PAs) cover a quarter of the tropical forest estate. Yet there is debate over the effectiveness of PAs in reducing deforestation, especially when local people have rights to use the forest. A key analytic problem is the likely placement of PAs on marginal lands with low pressure for deforestation, biasing comparisons between protected and unprotected areas. Using matching techniques to control for this bias, this paper analyzes the global tropical forest biome using forest fires as a high resolution proxy for deforestation; disaggregates impacts by remoteness, a proxy for deforestation pressure; and compares strictly protected vs. multiple use PAs vs indigenous areas. Fire activity was overlaid on a 1 km map of tropical forest extent in 2000; land use change was inferred for any point experiencing one or more fires. Sampled points in pre-2000 PAs were matched with randomly selected never-protected points in the same country. Matching criteria included distance to road network, distance to major cities, elevation and slope, and rainfall. In Latin America and Asia, strict PAs substantially reduced fire incidence, but multi-use PAs were even more effective. In Latin America, where there is data on indigenous areas, these areas reduce forest fire incidence by 16 percentage points, over two and a half times as much as naïve (unmatched) comparison with unprotected areas would suggest. In Africa, more recently established strict PAs appear to be effective, but multi-use tropical forest protected areas yield few sample points, and their impacts are not robustly estimated. These results suggest that forest protection can contribute both to biodiversity conservation and CO2 mitigation goals, with particular relevance to the REDD agenda. Encouragingly, indigenous areas and multi-use protected areas can help to accomplish these goals, suggesting some compatibility between global environmental goals and support for local livelihoods.     

Interacting Social and Environmental Predictors for the Spatial Distribution of Conservation Lands

Conservation decisions should be evaluated for how they meet conservation goals at multiple spatial extents. Conservation easements are land use decisions resulting from a combination of social and environmental conditions. An emerging area of research is the evaluation of spatial distribution of easements and their spatial correlates. We tested the relative influence of interacting social and environmental variables on the spatial distribution of conservation easements by ownership category and conservation status. For the Appalachian region of the United States, an area with a long history of human occupation and complex land uses including public-private conservation, we found that settlement, economic, topographic, and environmental data associated with spatial distribution of easements (N = 4813). Compared to random locations, easements were more likely to be found in lower elevations, in areas of greater agricultural productivity, farther from public protected areas, and nearer other human features. Analysis of ownership and conservation status revealed sources of variation, with important differences between local and state government ownerships relative to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and among U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) GAP program status levels. NGOs were more likely to have easements nearer protected areas, and higher conservation status, while local governments held easements closer to settlement, and on lands of greater agricultural potential. Logistic interactions revealed environmental variables having effects modified by social correlates, and the strongest predictors overall were social (distance to urban area, median household income, housing density, distance to land trust office). Spatial distribution of conservation lands may be affected by geographic area of influence of conservation groups, suggesting that multi-scale conservation planning strategies may be necessary to satisfy local and regional needs for reserve networks. Our results support previous findings and provide an ecoregion-scale view that conservation easements may provide, at local scales, conservation functions on productive, more developable lands. Conservation easements may complement functions of public protected areas but more research should examine relative landscape-level ecological functions of both forms of protection.     

Employing participatory surveys to monitor the illegal killing of elephants across diverse land uses in Laikipia–Samburu,Kenya

Levels and trends of illegal killing of elephants are measured by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme in sites across Africa and Asia. In the mostly unprotected Laikipia–Samburu MIKE site in northern Kenya, elephant mortality data were collected using both standard law enforcement monitoring procedures, relying on patrolling, and participatory methods involving local communities. Qualitatively, traditional patrolling techniques were more successful in protected areas whereas participatory approaches provided more information outside protected areas, where elephant were most at risk from ivory poachers. A minimum of 35% of the 389 verified carcasses during 2001–2003 were illegally killed. In this baseline study, land uses ranked from highest to lowest by the proportion of illegally killed elephants (PIKE) were community conservation areas, government trust lands, forest reserves, private ranches, settlement areas and national reserves. PIKE trends derived from traditional and participatory data sources were similar across years and indicate elephants were at greater risk in regions outside government or privately patrolled areas. We suggest that PIKE is a useful index for comparing levels and trends in illegal killing of elephants, and that carcass ratios and presence/absence of tusks are useful proxy indicators of mortality and its causes.     

Creating Protected Areas on Public Lands: Is There Room for Additional Conservation?

Most evaluations of the effectiveness of PAs have relied on indirect estimates based on comparisons between protected and unprotected areas. Such methods can be biased when protection is not randomly assigned. We add to the growing literature on the impact of PAs by answering the following research questions: What is the impact of Chilean PAs on deforestation which occurred between 1986 and 2011? How do estimates of the impact of PAs vary when using only public land as control units? We show that the characteristics of the areas in which protected and unprotected lands are located differ significantly. To satisfactorily estimate the effects of PAs, we use matching methods to define adequate control groups, but not as in previous research. We construct control groups using separately non-protected private areas and non-protected public lands. We find that PAs avoid deforestation when using unprotected private lands as valid controls, however results show no impact when the control group is based only on unprotected public land. Different land management regimes, and higher levels of enforcement inside public lands may reduce the opportunity to add additional conservation benefits when the national systems for PAs are based on the protection of previously unprotected public lands. Given that not all PAs are established to avoid deforestation, results also admit the potential for future studies to include other outcomes including forest degradation (not just deforestation), biodiversity, wildlife, primary forests (not forests in general), among others.     

Protected areas for the 21st century: working to provide benefits to society

Since the first national park was created at Yellowstone in the USA in 1872, over 8500 protected areas have been established worldwide. Virtually all countries have seen the wisdom of protecting areas of outstanding importance to society, and such sites now cover over 5% of Earth's land surface. However, many of these protected areas exist only on paper, not on the ground. Most are suffering from a combination of threats, including pollution, over-exploitation, encroachment, poaching, and many others. In a period of growing demands on resources and shrinking government budgets, new approaches are required to ensure that protected areas can continue to make their contributions to society. First and foremost, protected areas must be designed and managed in order to provide tangible and intangible benefits to society. This will involve integrating protected areas into larger planning and management frameworks, linking protected areas to biodiversity and climate change, promoting greater financial support for protected areas, and expanding international cooperation in the finance, development and management of protected areas.     

Integrated approach towards conservation of Gir National Park: the last refuge of Asiatic Lions, India

The Gir National Park and sanctuary is one of the seven protected areas selected for biodiversity conservation through the Eco-Development Project funded by the Global Environmental Facility and implemented by the World Bank. Together with forest conservation by the forest officials, simultaneously global efforts started towards conservation of the last refuge of Asiatic Lions. The prohibition of resource use and resettlement of people from the protected area were done to meet the need of national policy (Wildlife Protection Act). However, the perception of the locality was that one of the major steps taken was restricting the inhabitants of the forest from entering the National Park and thus restricting them to the fringes of the protected areas. This has brought about a restriction in using the forest resources and thus has created an unspoken conflict between the forest and its dwellers. Over the years, however, it has been realized that effective management of the protected area is not possible without addressing the legitimate needs of the local people. The present study is an attempt to examine and understand the people's perception towards the forest conservation, and benefits realized by the people from the forest. Surveys carried out in a few sample villages were selected from three categories, that is, revenue, forest settlement, and nesses, from both the west and east division of the protected areas. The study revealed that the concept of conservation is well supported. However, the sense of insecurity due to resettlement and limitation in using the forest is a major hindrance towards proper protection of forest. Except for the low-income group, the actual dependence on the forest is not significant. To some extent humans/animals/crops conflict and the apathetic attitude of the Forest Department is also responsible for the antagonism of the people.     

Multidimensional analysis of landscape dynamics in a Central African forest-savannah mosaic

Most landscape cover assessments for conservation programmes rely largely on remote sensing analyses. These analyses, however, neglect how people inhabiting protected zones perceive and structure land cover. Using socio-ecological systems (SES) analysis in a forest-savannah mosaic on the Congo Basin forest edge (Democratic Republic of Congo), we investigated how human practices, landscape perceptions and land use patterns affected forest cover. We conducted remote sensing analysis using a Sentinel-2 satellite image and 187 GPS landmarks, producing a land cover map with 11 classes. Our results yielded an 81.85% correspondence with additional 164 GPS landmarks, a robust score in tropical areas. We conducted 40 individual interviews, eighteen focus group discussion workshops and nine months of participant observation of human practices to identify 19 land units and elaborate a granular SES system structuring the landscape. Integrating local knowledge and practices with general ecological and agronomic processes, we developed a landscape dynamics model revealing progressive forest colonisation of savannahs. Our methods demonstrate that a forest-edge landscape cover evaluation through remote sensing and local knowledge can contribute to finer-grained assessment of land cover and ecosystem services. This assessment can assist conservation efforts by considering local populations' practices on and perceptions of landscape change.     

Conserving what,where and how? Cost-efficient measures to conserve biodiversity in Denmark

Biodiversity conservation efforts in Europe have traditionally focused on farmland and open nature areas such as grasslands, heathlands and meadows, while little attention has been devoted to conservation actions in forest. Using detailed information on the geographical distribution of about 900 terrestrial species in Denmark we apply systematic conservation planning techniques to identify how to protect biodiversity at the lowest cost to society. The results suggest that conservation actions in forest should be given a higher priority. Thus, three to four times the number of forest species are protected per million € compared with species living in open land natural areas. Furthermore, a gap analysis finds the current designation of Natura 2000 and other protected areas is skewed toward open land natural areas, and insufficient to meet the conservation targets on forest species.     

Bird communities of natural and modified habitats in Panama

Only a small proportion of land can realistically be protected as nature reserves and thus conservation efforts also must focus on the ecological value of agroecosystems and developed areas surrounding nature reserves. In this study, avian communities were surveyed in 11 habitat types in central Panama, across a gradient from extensive forest to intensive agricultural land uses, to examine patterns of species richness and abundance and community composition. Wooded habitats, including extensive and fragmented forests, shade coffee plantations, and residential areas supported the most species and individuals. Nearctic-Neotropical migratory species were most numerous in lowland forest fragments, shade coffee, and residential areas. Introduced Pinus caribbea and sugar cane plantations supported the fewest species compared to all other habitats. Cattle pastures left fallow for less than two years supported more than twice as many total species as actively grazed pastures, such that species richness in fallow pastures was similar to that found in wooded habitats. Community similarities were relatively low among all habitat types (none exceeding the observed 65% similarity between extensive and fragmented lowland forests), but communities in shade coffee and residential areas were 43% and 54′% similar to lowland forest fragments, respectively. Fallow pastures and residential areas shared 60% of their species. Bird communities in shade coffee and residential areas were characterized by higher proportions of frugivorous and nectarivorous species than in native forests. These same guilds also were better represented in fallow than in grazed pastures. Raptors and piscivorous species were most prevalent in cattle pastures and rice fields. These results, though based upon only species richness and abundance, demonstrate that many human-altered habitats have potential ecological value for birds, and conservation efforts in tropical areas should focus greater attention on enhancement of agricultural and developed lands as wildlife habitat. To understand the true conservation value of these modified lands will require examination not only of numbers but also of the types of species supported by these habitats, their reproductive output and survival rates.     

Rehabilitation of degraded forests in Thailand: policy and practice

Thailand has suffered from severe deforestation during the last century. Forest cover has declined drastically both in terms of area and quality, mostly due to the expansion of human activities. Much of the deforested area has been used for agricultural purposes, but much has also been left in a degraded condition. In late 1980s, the forest declined to a point where the nation decided that the remaining forest should be kept for conservation rather than further exploitation. Consequently, forest policy has shifted its focus from exploitation to sustainable management and protection. Thailand has set a goal of increasing its forest area to 40% of the total land area, while at present, forests occupy around 28.9% of the land. With the intention to retain most of the remaining forest as protected areas and, at the same time, achieve the goal set, several reforestation and rehabilitation initiatives have been implemented, especially on those lands in a degraded condition. This paper focuses on the significant issues affecting both the policy and practice of forest rehabilitation. Given that the large number of people whose livelihood depends on the forests for subsistence and other purposes normally has been excluded from the decision-making process in forest management, most important among these issues are the integration of the socio-economic and environmental needs into rehabilitation initiatives together with the active participation of local communities in the rehabilitation program. Case studies of reforestation and rehabilitation initiatives are also discussed.     

Local people value environmental services provided by forested parks

Garnering support from local people is critical for maintaining ecologically viable and functional protected areas. However, empirical data illustrating local people’s awareness of the importance of nature’s services is limited; hence possibly impeding effective ecosystem (environmental)-services based conservation efforts. Using data from five protected forests in four developing Southeast Asian countries, we provide evidence that local people living near parks value a wide range of environmental services, including cultural, provisioning, and regulating services, provided by the forests. Local people with longer residency valued environmental services more. Educated as well as poor people valued forest ecosystem services more. Conservation education has some influence on people’s environmental awareness. For conservation endeavors to be successful, large-scale transmigration programs should be avoided and local people must be provided with alternative sustenance opportunities and basic education in addition to environmental outreach to reduce their reliance on protected forests and to enhance conservation support.     

Integrating Indigenous Resource Management with Wildlife Conservation: A Case Study of Batang Ai National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia

This paper examines the indigenous land and forest management systems of the community of seven Iban longhouses whose territories comprise the area of Batang Ai National Park in Sarawak, Malaysia. It also discusses the integrated conservation and development program (ICDP) at the park. This project is attempting to work within the existing system of customary law to build on traditional legislative infrastructure and management practices, in order to enlist the cooperation of local people and their leaders in implementing a new conservation strategy. In addition to reinforcing local authority, park planners recognize the need for local people to be given strong incentives to participate in co-management of the protected area. This paper argues that, despite a history of conflict with indigenous peoples, State officials have in this instance demonstrated a willingness to work with local people and community leaders. At the same time, they are encouraging community development, helping people to find alternatives to activities that threaten the park's wildlife.     

Conservation in the community: the Kilum-Ijim Forest Project,Cameroon

Thomas, D.H.L., Anders, S. & Penn, N.J. 2000. Conservation in the community: the Kilum-Ijim Forest Project, Cameroon. Ostrich 71 (1 & 2): 157–161.

BirdLife International has worked for ten years in Cameroon's North-West Province to assist the local people and government of Cameroon in achieving the conservation and sutainable management of the last significant remnant of a unique montane forest ecosystem. The Kilum/Ijim forests are almost certainly the last remaining habitat for the conservation of two endemic and threatened bird species, Bannerman's Turaco Tauraco bannermani and Banded Wattle-eye Platytiera laticincta. The forests have no legal designation as formal protected areas but have been conserved through local concern and knowledge of the multiple values of an intact forest ecosystem, backed up by the enforcement of traditional regulations, and support from the project to finding solutions to peoples' land use and natural resource management needs within and outside the forests. The project is now working under the umbrella of a national Biodiversity Conservation and Management Programme in Cameroon, funded by the Global Environment Facility, to establish the Kilum/Ijirn as the first community-managed forest in the country. A brief history and background to the project is presented, with emphasis on lessons learned by BiraLife and the success of current efforts to achieve the conservation of the forests through community management. The issues are discussed in the general context of an integrated conservation and development programme (ICDP).     

Maximising return on conservation investment in the conterminous USA

Efficient conservation planning requires knowledge about conservation targets, threats to those targets, costs of conservation and the marginal return to additional conservation efforts. Systematic conservation planning typically only takes a small piece of this complex puzzle into account. Here, we use a return‐on‐investment (ROI) approach to prioritise lands for conservation at the county level in the conterminous USA. Our approach accounts for species richness, county area, the proportion of species' ranges already protected, the threat of land conversion and land costs. Areas selected by a complementarity‐based greedy heuristic using our full ROI approach provided greater averted species losses per dollar spent compared with areas selected by heuristics accounting for richness alone or richness and cost, and avoided acquiring lands not threatened with conversion. In contrast to traditional prioritisation approaches, our results highlight conservation bargains, opportunities to avert the threat of development and places where conservation efforts are currently lacking.     

Spatio-temporal occurrence and sensitivity to livestock husbandry of Pallas's cat in the Mongolian Altai

Biased research and conservation efforts result in some faunal groups (e.g., small felids) being understudied, and hence these groups are often declining without adequate knowledge to manage for threat reduction. The Pallas's cat (Otocolobus manul) occurs across central and western Asia with declining populations and the largest population is likely in Mongolia. A potential threat to this felid is livestock encroachment across its range, including within protected areas, yet we lack a clear understanding of the impact of livestock husbandry on this cat. We used motion-sensitive camera data from 216 sites in 4 study areas in western Mongolia to study the occurrence probability of Pallas's cat in relation to habitat characteristics and occurrence of livestock, and conducted a local assessment within a strictly protected area where we obtained the highest number of detections. We estimated a relatively low occupancy (0.33 ± 0.10), which is associated with sites with natural vegetation, steeper slopes, and greater prey abundance. Occupancy also increased with increasing livestock occurrence, particularly large herds of sheep and goats. Such co-occurrence was partially adjusted by diel activity segregation, presumably to limit direct encounters. Our results suggest that the preferred habitat by Pallas's cat in the study region coincides with areas encroached by livestock. The Pallas's cat's habitat is specialized and its dependence on areas that are increasingly used for grazing may eventually threaten the cat with habitat degradation, prey depletion, predation by dogs, and poisoning from pest control. Relevant conservation actions should regulate livestock encroachment within protected areas and improve grazing regimes. The Pallas's cat is an indicator species of mountainous and steppe ecosystems in central Asia; hence, further research towards the preservation of its populations would also benefit other key species across its range.     

Patterns of local wood use and cutting of Philippine Mangrove Forests

Small-scale wood harvesting from mangrove forests is a commonplace yet barely studied phenomenon. This paper integrates bio-ecological and ethnographic methods to examine local wood use and cutting of mangrove forests in two areas of the Philippines. Findings reveal considerable site variation in cutting intensity, with heavier cutting typically closer to settlements and in forest stands that are not effectively regulated by government or private interests. Overall, cutting is responsible for almost 90% of stem mortality in both natural and plantation forests. Field measurements confirm ethnographic evidence indicating that harvesting for construction wood, but not fuelwood, is both species- and size-selective. Mangrove management and conservation efforts can be made more effective by better understanding how local people are harvesting wood resources from these forests.     

The Impacts of Global and National Policy on the Management and Conservation of Sacred Groves of India

India is home to thousands of community-protected forests, called sacred groves. Sacred forests or groves are sites that have cultural or spiritual significance to the people who live around them. These areas may also be key reservoirs of biodiversity. In India, most sacred groves are managed by a community group, not by a government agency. They are often private or community land, not formal protected areas or parks. This poses an interesting challenge in terms of future management and possible policy relating to the sacred groves. On the international level, organizations such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and UNESCO have created guidelines for management of sacred sites. On the national level, India’s past Forest Acts and recent Forest Rights Act have relevance to the sacred groves. Local differences in land tenure also affect the groves. Ethnographic research conducted in 2009 and 2010 in the states of Meghalaya and Karnataka, India, evaluated the historic and current management and beliefs associated with sacred forests. Cultural change and pressure to use natural resources within the groves is leading to reduction of these forest areas. In the future, a creative combination of policy approaches to conserve groves that respects their spiritual values is recommended.     

The importance of conserving biodiversity outside of protected areas in mediterranean ecosystems

Mediterranean-type ecosystems constitute one of the rarest terrestrial biomes and yet they are extraordinarily biodiverse. Home to over 250 million people, the five regions where these ecosystems are found have climate and coastal conditions that make them highly desirable human habitats. The current conservation landscape does not reflect the mediterranean biome's rarity and its importance for plant endemism. Habitat conversion will clearly outpace expansion of formal protected-area networks, and conservationists must augment this traditional strategy with new approaches to sustain the mediterranean biota. Using regional scale datasets, we determine the area of land in each of the five regions that is protected, converted (e.g., to urban or industrial), impacted (e.g., intensive, cultivated agriculture), or lands that we consider to have conservation potential. The latter are natural and semi-natural lands that are unprotected (e.g., private range lands) but sustain numerous native species and associated habitats. Chile has the greatest proportion of its land (75%) in this category and California-Mexico the least (48%). To illustrate the potential for achieving mediterranean biodiversity conservation on these lands, we use species-area curves generated from ecoregion scale data on native plant species richness and vertebrate species richness. For example, if biodiversity could be sustained on even 25% of existing unprotected, natural and semi-natural lands, we estimate that the habitat of more than 6,000 species could be represented. This analysis suggests that if unprotected natural and semi-natural lands are managed in a manner that allows for persistence of native species, we can realize significant additional biodiversity gains. Lasting biodiversity protection at the scale needed requires unprecedented collaboration among stakeholders to promote conservation both inside and outside of traditional protected areas, including on lands where people live and work.     

Willingness of rural communities to reforest with native tree species in central Chile

Economic development of rural people is not always feasible along with concomitant forest restoration, especially when meager reforestation incentives are oriented to poor rural people who probably are not willing to plant native species in their small plots of land. Forest restoration incentives have been created by the Chilean government to engage poor rural people in reforestation using native tree species to recover degraded lands. Our objective was to compare the willingness of people from rural communities to plant native species if they had to bear the costs or if the government did, and we related the answers to environmental and socioeconomic variables. Of the 217 respondents 53.9% were interested in planting native trees if subsidies became available. Interest decreased if the respondents had to pay for the cost, but only slightly. The willingness to reforest was significantly greater at lower distance from the community to the nearest native forest for those with lower income level, and was higher when there was use of nontimber forest products or wood by the respondents. However, in spite of the positive disposition to plant native trees, only 23% of the respondents were interested in planting on their own land, which is a requirement to receive the economic incentives. Most respondents were willing to plant in open sites and on degraded hillsides that surround their communities. We conclude that despite monetary incentives, benefits cannot reach most rural inhabitants because of their lack of interest in reforesting their own land.