Mediterranean marine protected areas

A collection of five recent papers assesses the role and effectiveness of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Mediterranean. The papers provide a broad perspective of MPAs and include social, economic, cultural, biological and statistical components.     

The management effectiveness of protected areas in Kenya

Merely designating new and/or expanding existing protected areas (PAs) does not guarantee the protection of critical ecosystems and species. The management of PAs must be effective to sustain meaningful conservational outcomes. We inferred the management effectiveness of PAs in Kenya based on the representation of ranges and distribution of multiple diversity dimensions of terrestrial mammals and their association with governance and designation types. We hypothesized that different governance types underlie variable management efficacies, such that stricter-managed PAs have better habitats that attract more wildlife, translating to higher species diversity compared to less strictly-managed PAs, especially for focal species groups (large carnivores, large herbivores, and endangered species). The results showed nearly all terrestrial mammals in Kenya represented in at least one PA. However, the relative proportion of represented ranges were low, and analysis of spatial conservation prioritization showed significant expansion beyond current PAs needed to achieve a one third coverage of focal species’ ranges in a best-solution reserve system. Differences in PA governance and designation types were not systematically associated with diversity variances, and while there were more unique species in state-managed PAs than in privately-managed ones, averaged diversity coefficients were comparable between categories. Diversity variances explained by PA size and status year were low in a combined species pool but increased in focal species groups. These findings suggest that success in terrestrial mammal conservation in PAs in Kenya require clearly and formally streamlined definition, performance feedback, and collaboration terms between state-managed and privately-managed PAs.

     

保护区的分类系统与标准

保护区是一个泛称,根据建立的目的和本身的特点可以划分不同的类型,以利于管理工作的开展。每一个国家都应制订一个与本国资源和要求相适应的保护区分类系统。本文着重讨论按保护对象和保护区性质划分的保护区类型,以供判断每一个保护区的归属和管理重点。     

European protected areas go upmarket

A meeting of the IUCN, the World Conservation Union, and a subsidiary, the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) Europe Members was held in Pörtschach am Wörther See, Carinthia, Austria from 12 to 15 June 2002.     

Determining high value areas for steppe birds in Spain: hot spots,complementarity and the efficiency of protected areas

We have examined the distribution of 26 species of steppe birds in the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands within a grid of 5,070 10 × 10 km grid cells. The most valuable areas for steppe birds have been identified by selecting the upper 5% of the 10 × 10 km grid cells after a simple ranking based on the following criteria: species-richness, richness of rare species, rarity index, species vulnerability at Spanish, European and Global levels, and using an index combining the previous criteria. We have also used a heuristic algorithm to select those areas which offered most complementarity. The results have been analysed on a national scale and have been compared with those obtained by species assessments in previous status summaries. Finally, we have performed an analysis of the coverage afforded to locations which are valuable for steppe species by Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) and Special Protected Areas (SPAs), and an evaluation of the potential effects of temporal changes in species’ threat-status. The combined index was the most reliable criterion for defining hotspots, encompassing 15% of the species’ distributions within 5% of the total area considered. This index showed a high level of geographical concordance with the other criteria (nearly 70% of the selected grid cells coincided). Analysis of complementarity delivered poorer results than simple rank-scoring. The analysis of the efficiency of NPA network showed a very low coverage (less than 2%) of the hotspots selected according to the Combined Index. Coverage of the SPA network was higher (nearly 45%), although it diminished (to <35%) when only steppe-defined SPAs were included. The geographical concordance between high-value areas selected using current status summaries and those chosen using earlier ones was low for European threat status (53.4%), intermediate (63.2%) for Spanish threat status and high for SPEC status (78.1%). The Combined Index showed a high level of geographical concordance between the old and new data (76.6%). We conclude that automatic scoring methods (identifying hotspots) are useful for selecting valuable areas and for analysing the efficiency of the network of protected natural spaces, as well as for examining the potential effects of status changes on hotspot definition. Furthermore, the Spanish SPA network does not cover the most important areas for steppe birds adequately.     

Marine protected areas in 'nonlinear' ecosystems

The very large changes observed within marine communities, owing to excessive harvesting, have been attributed to switches between alternative stable states. Correspondingly large reductions in overall fishing effort are usually difficult to implement. For such 'nonlinear' ecosystems, introducing large marine protected areas, with low to zero harvesting, but without reduction in overall fishing effort, can give a marked increase in total yield of the depleted stocks. These increases, however, are still less than can be achieved by reducing fishing effort.     

Evaluating the ecological performance of protected areas

While protected areas are a key component of the global conservation strategy, quantitative demonstrations of their positive ecological performance, meaning the extent to which they conserve the biodiversity features they were designated for, is broadly lacking. This commentary presents the emerging field of impact of evaluation of protected areas, with a focus on establishing their ecological performance. It highlights recent advances in protected area evaluations and explores the challenges remaining in developing a more credible evidence base to demonstrate the biodiversity conservation benefits of protected areas.     

The potential impacts of global climate change on marine protected areas

The potential effects of global climate changeon marine protected areas do not appear to havebeen addressed in the literature. This paperexamines the literature on protected areas,conservation biology, marine ecology,oceanography, and climate change, and reviewssome of the relevant differences between marineand terrestrial environments. Frameworks andclassifications systems used in protected areadesign are discussed. Finally, a frameworkthat summarizes some of the importantoceanographic processes and their links to thefood chain are reviewed. Species abundance anddistribution are expected to change as a resultof global climate change, potentiallycompromising the efficacy of marine protectedareas as biodiversity conservation tools. Thisreview suggests the need for: furtherinterdisciplinary research and the use oflinked models; an increase in marine protectedareas for biodiversity conservation and asresearch sites for teasing apart fishingeffects from climate effects; a temporallyresponsive approach to siting new marineprotected areas, shifting their locations ifnecessary; and large-scale ecosystem/integratedmanagement approaches to address the competinguses of the oceans and boundary-less threatssuch as global climate change and pollution.     

The potential impacts of global climate change on marine protected areas

Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries - The potential effects of global climate changeon marine protected areas do not appear to havebeen addressed in the literature. This paperexamines the...     

Introduction to special issue on protected areas

Papers

Introduction to special issue on protected areas     

Conservation biology: beyond marine protected areas

Socioeconomic and ecological analyses of eleven coral reef conservation efforts make clear that marine protected areas are not the answer, and that in fact support of local communities is far more important than some government mandated 'fishing closure'. Apparently there are marine 'paper parks' just as there are terrestrial 'paper parks'.     

Size-dependent resistance of protected areas to land-use change

One of the major threats facing protected areas (PAs) is land-use change and habitat loss. We assessed the impact of land-use change on PAs. The majority of parks have been effective at protecting the ecosystems within their borders, even in areas with significant land-use pressures. More in particular, the capacity of PAs to slow down habitat degradation and to favour habitat restoration is clearly related to their size, with smaller areas that on average follow the dominant land-use change pattern into which they are embedded. Our results suggest that small parks are not going to be viable in the long term if they are considered as islands surrounded by a 'human-dominated ocean'. However, small PAs are, in many cases, the only option available, implying that we need to devote much more attention to the non-protected matrix in which PAs must survive.     

Ecological science and the management of protected areas

This paper aims to survey a few among many ecological principles that are particularly relevant to the management of protected areas. Various aspects of the relation between area of protected habitat and numbers of constituent species preserved are discussed, with emphasis of edge effects and other factors. Particular attention is given to those species which persist via local extinctions and recolonizations within a shifting mosaic of patches, and to the counter-intuitive things that can happen to such species or communities when a fraction of the patches is destroyed. The paper concludes with comments about making choices as to which areas to preserve — the calculus of biodiversity — and about more general social and economic considerations.     

The value of endangered species in protected areas at risk: the case of the leatherback turtle in the Dominican Republic

Protected areas are considered essential elements for global biodiversity conservation. They may not necessarily result in an effective conservation of resources in developing countries due to lack of funding for management and enforcement. In addition, poor governance aligned with conflicts of economic interests related to their use can further threaten their integrity and persistence. In the Dominican Republic, the western beaches of the Jaragua National Park (JNP), a protected area which is also part of a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, have been proposed for development using a mass-tourism model. One of the most charismatic species found in this area is the leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea). In the present study, we assess hatching success, and factors affecting it, to determine the reproductive value across the area for the leatherback turtle. The main factors found driving hatching success at the study beaches are beach sector, incubation duration, date of lay and clutch size. Our results show that clutches in La Cueva (located in the buffer zone of the park) and Bahía de las Águilas (located inside the limits of the park) have an unusually high hatching success (~75 %) for this species, highlighting the importance of increasing protection efforts at these sites. We strongly recommend including La Cueva inside the limits of the JNP.     

Effectiveness of protected areas in maintaining plant production

Given the central importance of protected area systems in local, regional and global conservation strategies, it is vital that there is a good understanding of their effectiveness in maintaining ecological functioning. Here, we provide, to our knowledge, the first such global analysis, focusing on plant production, a "supporting" ecosystem function necessary for multiple other ecosystem services. We use data on the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) as a measure of variation in plant production in the core, boundary and surroundings of more than 1000 large protected areas over a 25 year period. Forested protected areas were higher (or similar), and those non-forested were lower (or similar), in NDVI than their surrounding areas, and these differences have been sustained. The differences from surrounding areas have increased for evergreen broadleaf forests and barren grounds, decreased for grasslands, and remained similar for deciduous forests, woodlands, and shrublands, reflecting different pressures on those surroundings. These results are consistent with protected areas being effective both in the representation and maintenance of plant production. However, widespread overall increases in NDVI during the study period suggest that plant production within the core of non-forested protected areas has become higher than it was in the surroundings of those areas in 1982, highlighting that whilst the distinctiveness of protected areas from their surroundings has persisted the nature of that difference has changed.     

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.     

The unpredictability of favourability: condition assessment and protected areas in England

The probability that protected areas will deliver their potential for maintaining or enhancing biodiversity is likely to be maximised if they are appropriately and effectively managed. As a result, governments and conservation agencies are devoting much attention to the management of protected areas. In the U.K., the demand for performance accountability has resulted in Public Service Agreements (PSA) that set out targets for government departments to deliver results in return for investments being made. One such target for England is to ensure that all nationally important wildlife sites are in favourable condition by 2010. Here, we tested the hypothesis, of potential strategic importance, that the ecological condition of these sites is predictable from relationships with a range of physical, environmental and demographic variables. We used binary logistic regression to investigate these relationships, using the results of English Nature’s 1997–2003 condition assessment exercise. Generally, sites in unfavourable condition tend to be larger in area, located at higher elevations, but with higher human population density and are more spatially isolated from units of the same habitat. However, despite the range of different parameters included in our models, the extent to which the condition of any given site could be predicted was low. Our results have implications for the delivery of PSA targets, funding allocation, and the location of new protected areas.