Is the Atlantic Forest protected area network efficient in maintaining viable populations of Brachyteles hypoxanthus?

Habitat loss and fragmentation are serious threats to biodiversity conservation in the Atlantic Forest. A network of protected areas is essential to the protection of native biodiversity. However, internal and external factors may threaten the preservation of biota, thus population viability analyses (PVA) are important tools in protected area design and management planning. A PVA was carried out, using the computer package VORTEX, to assess the effectiveness of the protected area network within the Atlantic Forest in Brazil in retaining viable populations of the endemic primate Brachyteles hypoxanthus. The Brazilian Atlantic Forest has 42 protected areas within B. hypoxanthus geographic distribution area, and only five of those were considered to retain viable populations for 50 generations, whereas 28 were predicted to suffer from genetic decay, seven from both genetic decay and demographic stochasticity, and two of them are probably extinct populations. The model indicates that although the protected area network of the Atlantic Forest will likely keep B. hypoxanthus populations for the next 50 generations, most of them (35 out of 42, or 83%) will be facing some kind of demographic and/or genetic problem and will probably need management actions to be implemented in order to ensure their persistence.     

Parasites and Conservation Biology: The ‘Ibex-Ecosystem’

Parasites, as organisms with a particular way of life, form an important part of biodiversity, not only regarding the number of known species, but also because of their relevant role within ecological processes. These two facts should justify conservation of parasites, at least within natural and protected areas. Little is known about such complex communities of parasites but they are often considered as pests, even out of the fields of public (human) health and animal production, that is, just in the natural environment or under natural conditions. It is increasingly assumed that wildlife diseases, including those produced by parasites, are one of the main bases for managing animal populations. Parasitic diseases may also be managed and, at this point, we can find multiple technical problems which, in certain occasions, lead into philosophical questions or true dilemmas. These considerations are illustrated by revising parasites of the Spanish ibex (Capra pyrenaica), an Iberian mountain ungulate the parasitofauna of which is relatively well known. As a big game species, its trophies become more and more appreciated. Therefore, human dimensions involved in management of its populations are considerably increased. Finally, reasons and opportunities for managing parasitic diseases affecting ibex are revised and discussed, under a global goal or perspective of conserving parasites within natural areas, particularly those that are protected.     

用空间多样性指数分析辽河三角洲野生动物生境的格局变化

在利用遥感(RS)和地理信息系统(GIS)对辽河三角洲土地覆被变化进行研究的基础上,引用空间多样性指数(Sd)对本区野生动物的生境格局进行了定量描述,并分析了其1988～1998年间的生境格局变化,结果表明,研究区野生动物生境格局受人为和自然干扰的双重影响而发生了较明显的变化,整体趋势是生境适宜性逐渐降低,适宜生境和较适宜生境(Sd≥0．35)的面积10年间减少7637hm^2。且破碎化程度加深,在空间上呈现由北向南推进、由东向西压缩之势,生境质量呈下降趋势,同时,空间多样性指数能够定量地反映野生动物生境的适宜程度,并能直观地描述生境的空间格局,为进一步揭示生境格局的变化规律及原因提供了有效措施和依据,对于协调区域经济发展与生物多样性保护具有重要意义。     

Protecting imperiled “paper parks”: potential lessons from the Sierra Chinajá, Guatemala

In many developing nations, “paper parks”, or protected areas that have little or no formal management on the ground, have resulted from the failure of protected area systems to achieve their foremost goal: biodiversity conservation. This analysis incorporates biophysical, socioeconomic, and land use/tenure data collected by a multi-disciplinary team of Guatemalan and American researchers in order to identify potential management plans and multiple-use/concession arrangements. The Sierra Chinajá is a classic paper park protected area in Guatemala. Many factors have rendered Guatemalan protected areas management policies ineffectual in the Sierra Chinajá despite the fact that it has been an “area of special protection” since 1989. Proximate causes of forest conversion mask underlying driving forces responsible for rapid biodiversity loss. Despite the fact that Guatemala’s protected areas management system is similar to that promoted by international conservation organizations it has yet to effectively conserve biodiversity. These factors suggest that protected areas management in Guatemala, and other developing nations possessing unique cultural and natural histories, must be rooted in the local context as promulgated by the local non-governmental organization ProPéten in their proposal for an official Indigenous Reserve category. The proposal suggests the devolution of management responsibilities from federal institutions to local communities in the effort to develop a community-based, site specific conservation agenda.

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Resumen  En muchos países en desarrollo, las “áreas protegidas en papel” o parques que no poseen un plan de manejo formal, han sido el resultado de la incapacidad del sistema nacional de áreas protegidas de alcanzar su meta mas importante: la conservación de la biodiversidad. El siguiente análisis incorpora datos biofísicos, socioeconómicos, de uso y tenencia de la tierra recolectados por un grupo multidisciplinario de investigadores guatemaltecos y norteamericanos con el objetivo de formular una estrategia de conservación que incorpore concesiones de usos múltiples. La Sierra de Chinajá es un ejemplo clásico de un “área protegida en papel” en Guatemala. Muchos son los factores por los cuales la política de áreas protegidas ha fracasado en la Sierra de Chinajá, a pesar de estar clasificada como un “área de Protección Especial” desde 1989. Las causas subyacentes responsables por el cambio en la cobertura forestal están escondidas debajo de los síntomas más visibles de la perdida de biodiversidad. A pesar de que el Sistema Guatemalteco de áreas Protegidas es similar al promovido por organizaciones internacionales aun no es efectivo en la conservación de la biodiversidad. Estos factores sugieren que el manejo de las áreas protegidas en Guatemala, y en otros países en desarrollo que poseen historias naturales y culturales únicas, deben estar enraizadas en el contexto local, como ha sido propuesto por la organización Pro-Peten en su propuesta por una categoría de manejo denominada Reservas Comunitarias Indígenas. La propuesta sugiere la delegación de la protección la biodiversidad de instituciones estatales a las comunidades locales con el propósito de establecer una agenda de conservación basada en el manejo comunitario.

     

Where the bears roam in Majella National Park,Italy

The Brown bear (Ursus arctos Linnaeus, 1758) occupies contiguous areas in Eastern and Northern Europe. In Western Europe, the largest remnant populations occur in Cantabria, Spain and the Apennines, Italy. Under Italian law the bear and its occupied range are protected. The occupied range of the Apennine brown bear includes Majella National Park. However, information on the distribution within Majella NP is extrapolated and inconsistent, thus precluding evidence-based protected area and species management. To address this lack of information, bear presence records (1996–2010) were collated and corrected for observational bias. Multiple Species Distribution Models (SDMs) were created at 800 m resolution to predict year-round and seasonal bear distribution. A hierarchical, stepwise maxent SDM approach was applied using climatic, terrain, vegetation, and anthropogenic predictors of bear distribution. Occupied ranges were identified by point density analysis of bear presence. Our climate-only SDMs predicted bear presence in areas with relatively low snowfall and temperate temperatures. Year-round bear distribution was also accurately predicted by using temperate-montane elevations and mesic, mesotrophic vegetation substrates, irrespective of vegetation. Ski-resorts were negative predictors of year-round bear occurrence. Bears were predicted in autumn and winter by beech forest, in spring by meadows and in summer by a variety of vegetation categories. The regional and our local models predicted bear throughout the south. However, our predicted and occupied range in the north includes the Orta valley and exclude alpine heights, contrary to the regional models. Only our summer bear range is similar to a regional SDM. We demonstrated that multiple maxent SDMs using a modest number of observations and a comprehensive set of environmental variables may generate essential distributional information for protected area and species management where full wildlife and food source censuses are lacking.     

Assessing protected area network effectiveness through the temporal change in avian communities’ composition

Current rates of land use are driving temporal changes in avian communities. Thus, it is essential to properly designate and manage protected areas since they mitigate the adverse effects of temporal changes on species populations. By using common bird monitoring data in Czechia from two periods (2005/2006 and 2014/2015), we calculated two indices of temporal change per each site, the Jaccard dissimilarity index (temporal dissimilarity between the community composition) and the difference in bird species richness between both periods (delta bird species richness). We tested three main predictions on temporal change in bird communities between protected and unprotected areas: (i) bird species richness will be higher inside protected areas, (ii) temporal changes in avian communities will be lower inside protected areas, (iii) the effect of protected areas will interact with land-use types, land-use richness, and altitudinal zones. Bird species richness was higher inside protected areas in 2014/2015, ten years after the implementation of Natura 2000 in Czechia. Both indices of temporal change were lower inside protected areas. The interactions of protected areas and land-use types on the indices of temporal change were not significant. However, interactions with altitudinal zones had a significant positive effect on the indices, i.e., in higher altitudes, delta bird species richness and higher dissimilarity levels. Our study underlines the importance of protected areas for conservation by buffering the consequences of factors driving temporal community changes. Together, our results indicate a positive ‘umbrella’ effect of protected areas on avian communities that was likely facilitated by the implementation of Natura 2000.     

GIS-Based Multicriteria Evaluation and Fuzzy Sets to Identify Priority Sites for Marine Protection

There is an increasing momentum within the marine conservation community to develop representative networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) covering up to 30% of global marine habitats. However, marine conservation initiatives are perceived as uncoordinated at most levels of planning and decision-making. These initiatives also face the challenge of being in conflict with ongoing drives for sustained or increased resource extraction. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop large scale theoretical frameworks that explicitly address conflicting objectives that are embedded in the design and development of a global MPA network. Further, the frameworks must be able to guide the implementation of smaller scale initiatives within this global context. This research examines the applicability of an integrated spatial decision support framework based on geographic information systems (GIS), multicriteria evaluation (MCE) and fuzzy sets to objectively identify priority locations for future marine protection. MCE is a well-established optimisation method used extensively in land use resource allocation and decision support, and which has to date been underutilised in marine planning despite its potential to guide such efforts. The framework presented here was implemented in the Pacific Canadian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) using two conflicting objectives - biodiversity conservation and fisheries profit-maximisation. The results indicate that the GIS-based MCE framework supports the objective identification of priority locations for future marine protection. This is achieved by integrating multi-source spatial data, facilitating the simultaneous combination of multiple objectives, explicitly including stakeholder preferences in the decisions, and providing visualisation capabilities to better understand how global MPA networks might be developed under conditions of uncertainty and complexity.     

Biological quality of running waters in protected areas: the influence of size and land use

There are still substantial questions about whether protected areas affect the quality and biodiversity of surface waters within their borders. In this study, the size and land use of 19 protected areas of Latium Region (central Italy) were related to the biological quality of 32 streams running inside them. Additionally, the biological quality of 18 out of the 32 streams was compared with the quality recorded on the same streams outside the boundaries of the protected areas. The biological quality was assessed using the Extended Biotic Index, which indicates the macroinvertebrate community health. The quality of 32 study streams running through the protected areas was not related to the size of these areas, but it did reflect land use. On average, the 18 study sites inside protected areas had biological quality similar to external control sites. In the protected areas, the biological quality of streams was higher than for the same streams in the surrounding territory provided that anthropogenic changes were fewer. These data indicate that the creation of protected areas per se does not increase freshwater biodiversity and that land use has a major impact on the biological quality of the stream in a protected area. As a consequence, a higher number of reserves or landscape designations specifically created for aquatic conservation is necessary and recovery programs aimed at restoring physical habitats and reducing sources of impact to aquatic life have to be pursued. Also, where the anthropogenic impact is high (e.g., as in the case of strongly urbanised areas), the creation of effective protected areas might improve the biological quality of water courses.     

Responsibilization dynamics in naṭural resource management: Insights from two protected areas in Cameroon

The theoretical construct on responsiblization is gaining grounds as a novel analytical lens in the field of governmentality – an approach to the study of strategies for shaping people’s conduct and decisions in line with specific objectives. However, not enough scientific evidence exists on the mechanisms through which protected area communities are rendered responsible by international conservation agencies, and the (un)intended outcomes linked to this process. Through a synthesis of 14 project intervention reports in two Protected Areas (PAs) in Cameroon – the Bakossi National Park (BNP) and the Campo Ma’an National Park (CMNP), complemented by expert interviews (N = 10), this paper: (i) explores the mechanisms employed by conservation responsibilizers in the two PAs, and (ii) examines the (un)intended protected area management outcomes. The thematic and directed content analysis led us to three key findings: Firstly, while interventions in the CMNP are embedded in the ecotourism development model, the case of the BNP centres on the Green Business and Sustainable Oil Palm Production models. This validates the claim that responsibilization and targeted interventions are intertwined and discursively constructed to shape the conduct of local people towards specific goals. Secondly, responsibilization in both cases manifest through poor institutionalization and fragmented capacity building interventions; this undermines the importance of responsive governance. Third, both cases established the incongruence between the capabilities of responsibilizees and the targets set by responsibilizers. This paper provides context-specific evidence to edify the on-going theoretical construct on responsiblization and underscores the need for studies to identify pathways to overcome the capacity gaps of responsibilizees. Policy wise, there is an urgent need to defragment the interventions by responsibilizers to assure long-term strategic interventions.     

Environmental diagnosis: Integrating biodiversity conservation in management of Natura 2000 forest spaces

The conservation of biodiversity in Europe is defined by Directive 92/43/EEC – commonly known as the Habitats Directive – relating to the conservation of natural habitats and of wild flora and fauna. This Directive established the creation of an ecological network of European protected areas – the Natura 2000 network – , and also recognised the need to manage these areas to maintain their “favourable conservation status”.This paper proposes a methodology which enables the conservation of biodiversity to be integrated into the management of Natura 2000 forest spaces. The methodology comprises an “environmental diagnosis” in three phases. The first phase evaluates the current conservation status of habitats using the following criteria: vital functions; floristic richness; forest structure; area occupied by the habitat; and recovery capacity. The second phase assesses the fragility of the space to determine the degree of vulnerability of habitats. This involves evaluating the fire hazard, erosion hazard, and the fragility of the vegetation. The last phase combines the two previous ones to generate management areas (optimum, intermediate or unfavourable) and to prioritise management actions.This methodology was applied in a protected forest area in the Natura 2000 network, located in Avila (Spain). Different management areas were generated for biodiversity conservation, and each habitat was associated to one of them. Finally, actions were prioritised and designed to raise the habitats to a “favourable conservation status”.     

Recovering threatened plant species and their habitats: The need for integrated action

As an introduction to the Special Issue on the restoration of threatened plant species and their habitats,this editorial shows how the various papers in the issue address the range of in situ interventions involved in species population management and restoration of their habitat, together with examples of case studies implementing these actions. It stresses the need for integrating these various interventions.It highlights the importance of protected areas in providing a degree of protection for threatened species but also the need to complement this with actions at the species level to ensure the effective conservation and long term persistence of these species. It emphasizes that ecological restoration is a complement to, not a substitute for conservation, and that the balance of effort and allocation of resources between them is a key issue.     

Roadkills of vertebrate species on two highways through the Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve,southern Brazil

We assessed the magnitude, composition, and spatial and temporal patterns of road mortality of native vertebrates on two highways in southern Brazil from 18 January 2003 to 26 January 2004. The highways cross remnants of the Atlantic Rainforest, a global biodiversity hotspot, and differ in vehicle traffic and surrounding landscape. We compared the road-kill magnitude and composition of birds, mammals, and reptiles between roads and seasons. We used a modified K statistic to depict the spatial patterns of roadkills of these groups and tested the association between vehicle traffic and road mortality through linear regression. We recorded 869 kills of 92 species. The two roads differed regarding the abundance and composition of roadkills. Reptile road mortality was higher in summer than winter, but all other groups did not show significant difference in the magnitude of mortality between seasons. The composition of killed assemblages differed significantly for some of the taxonomic groups among seasons. We found only one positive association between roadkills and vehicle traffic (reptiles on one of the roads), suggesting that vehicle flow does not explain the road-kill temporal variation on these roads. Total vertebrate, bird, and mammal roadkills showed significant spatial aggregations possibly due to variation in vehicle traffic, highway design, and local landscape condition and arrangement. With expected expansion of the road network, mitigation measures for multi-species assemblages should include habitat protection, soil use regulation, road crossing structures, speed reducers, and campaigns to raise people’s awareness about road impacts on wildlife.     

Spatial Variation of Bird Species in Landscapes Dominated by Old-growth Forests in Northern Boreal Finland

An important issue in conservation planning is to study the distribution and abundance patterns of species in natural landscapes. Information of concordant and clumped species distribution pattertns can enhance attempts to focus conservation efforts in sites/areas preferred by various species. We compared bird species abundance, community composition and species distribution patterns in three large old-growth forest areas (size 40–120 km²) in northern boreal Finland on the basis of quantitative bird censuses. Total bird density and species composition, and mean density and variances of the most abundant species were highly similar between the three areas. Most of the bird species were distributed randomly within the areas and species preferring old-growth forests showed compensatory density variation without preference for any sub-area. Mean density of species preferring old-growth forests was significantly higher in the studied large old-growth forests than in smaller old-growth forests and was about threefold higher than regional density of species in a predominantly managed landscape matrix. Bird species preferring old-growth forests are probably not dependent on a certain specific part of a virgin boreal forest landscape but rather on the overall size of the high-quality and diverse old-growth forest area.     

Representation of Andean Dry Ecoregions in the Protected Areas of Bolivia: The Situation in Relation to the New Phytogeographical Findings

Bolivia is a megadiverse country. A large part of its biodiversity is due to the fact that in its territory different biogeographical regions meet. As a preliminary means to understand how this biodiversity is being protected, three previous studies undertook an evaluation of how well represented the ecological regions were in the National System of Protected Areas (NSPA). However, the most recent biogeographical findings in Bolivia call for a new analysis of this sort. We try to achieve this, emphasizing the situation in the Andean dry regions, which have been given scarce priority, despite their high biological value. In general, xeric ecoregions are under-represented while humid ones are over-represented. The Prepuna and the central altiplano (which includes the Dry Puna sub-ecoregion) are not represented within the NSPA, nor is the Beni Cerrado sub-ecoregion. The Inter-Andean Dry Valleys cover only ca. 0.5% of the protected area, in spite of their diverse flora and status as one of Bolivia’s most important centers or endemism. Although the diverse Chiquitos Dry Forest is well represented, it is protected mostly as an ‘Integrated Management Natural Area’, and thus lacks full protection. The Semi-Humid Puna and the Flooded Savannas of the Moxos Plains, important subdivisions of two main ecoregions, are markedly under-represented in the NSPA, despite the importance of Moxos plains as a center of endemism for birds. Other ecoregions have a representation in the NSPA which can be considered adequate or even excessive. The over-representation of the humid Yungas mountain forests seems to be justified as this is probably Bolivia’s most important center of diversity and endemism. There is a need for a more proper distribution of some protected areas which consider true limits, size, diversity, endemism and other attributes of the different ecoregions in a more rigorous manner.