Protected Area Management

Issues affecting the interplay among wildlife health, the health of domestic animals, and human health are receiving inadequate attention from protected area managers. This chapter encourages an innovative framework, called the "One Health Paradigm, " by taking a broad ecological definition of health that brings together many disciplines that too often have remained isolated from each other. This ecosystem approach to health issues is especially pertinent in the parts of the world where domestic animals often interact with the wild species of greatest interest to protected area managers. Steve Osofsky and his colleagues also provide a perspective on the many relationships between the health of wildlife and the health of people living in the often-remote areas adjacent to protected areas, where human health care is often in short supply. Building a more appropriate response to the problems of disease transmission across the interface between wildlife and domestic animals can also lead to improvements in the health status of the people living around protected areas, thereby building a more positive attitude towards the protected area and conservation authorities. This chapter also emphasises the highly dynamic relationship between people, domestic animals, and wildlife, calling for significant investments in training, monitoring and research in order to ensure a healthy outcome for all concerned. The elements in the "One Health" paradigm provide a solid basis for building support for protected areas from those living near them and those working on human and animal health.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have the potential to conserve marine resources as well as provide social and economic benefits to local communities. Yet the percentage of MPAs that might be considered “successful” or effective on ecological and/or socio-economic accounts is debatable. Measurement of biophysical and socio-economic outcome indicators has become de rigeur for examining MPA management effectiveness so that adaptive feedback loops can stimulate new management actions. Scholars and practitioners alike have suggested that more attention should be given to the inputs that are likely to lead to successful MPA outcomes. This paper briefly discusses the potential ecological and socio-economic outcomes of MPAs then reviews the literature on three categories of inputs – governance, management, and local development – that lead to effective MPAs. In conclusion, the paper presents a novel inputs framework that incorporates indicators for governance, management and development to be used in the design and analysis of MPAs.

The success of conserving biological resources in any Biosphere Reserve or protected area depends on the extent of support and positive attitudes and perceptions of local people have towards such establishments. Ignoring the dependence of the local people for their subsistence needs on resources of such areas leads to con¯icts between protected area managers and the local inhabitants. Crop yield losses and livestock depredation were serious problems observed in most buffer zone villages of Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve. In the present study 10 villages situated in the buffer zone of Nanada Devi Biosphere Reserve (1612 km 2 area) in Chamoli district of Uttaranchal, India were studied during 1996±97 using a questionnaire survey of each household (419 households; 2253 total population in 1991; 273 ha cultivated area). Estimates of crop yield losses were made using paired plots technique in four representative villages for each crop species. The magnitude of crop yield losses varied signi®cantly with the distance of agricultural ®eld from forest boundary. The total crop yield losses were high for wheat and potato in all the villages. The spatial distribution of total crop yield losses in any village indicated that they were highest in the area near to forest and least in the area near to village for all crops. Losses from areas near to forest contributed to more than 50% of total losses for each crop in all villages. However, in Lata, Peng and Tolma villages, the losses are high for kidney bean and chemmi (local variety of kidney bean) which varied between 18Á5% to 30% of total losses in those villages. Potato alone represents 43Á6% of total crop yield loss due to wildlife in Dronagiri village in monetary terms. Among the crops, the monetary value of yield losses are least for amaranth and highest for kidney bean. The projected total value of crop yield losses due to wildlife damage for buffer zone villages located in Garhwal Himalaya is about Rs. 5 38 620 (US$ 15 389). Besides food grains, horticultural crops i.e. apple, also suffered maximum damage. Major wildlife agents responsible for crop damage were wild boar, bear, porcupine, monkey, musk deer and partridge (chokor). Monkey and wild boar alone accounted for about 50% to 60% of total crop damage in the study villages. Goat and sheep are the major livestock killed by leopard. The total value of livestock losses at prevailing market rates is about Rs. 10 24 520 (US$ 29 272) in the study villages. Due to existing conservation policies and laxity in implementation of preventive measures, the problems for local inhabitants are increasing. Potential solutions discussed emphasize the need to undertake suitable and appropriate protective measures to minimize the crop losses. Change in cropping and crop composition, particularly cultivation of medicinal plants (high value low volume crops), were also suggested. Besides, fair and quick disbursement of compensation for crop loss and livestock killing need to be adopted. Local people of the buffer zone area already have a negative attitude towards park/reserve establishment due to socio-political changes inducing major economic losses and this attitude may lead to clashes and confrontations if proper ameliorative measures are not taken immediately.

Because of the role that peripheral forest landscapes played in postwar nation-building, the Lao military has long played a significant, even if often hard-to-see, role in the administration of the country’s protected areas. This role is becoming increasingly apparent as transnational market-based forest governance efforts begin to threaten military administration of protected areas. As a consequence, the multidimensional nature of security – both defensive in the classic military sense, but also increasingly economic and complex – is coming to light through uses of what we describe as the security exception: the invocation of national security, in this case by military actors, to manage the reach and efficacy of emerging forest governance efforts. Projects to reduce climate-related emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) have been especially prone to trigger the security exception due to their focus on forest measurement and change over time, and are examined here in two cases from protected areas in western and southern Laos. We suggest that even as conflicts over forest management may be interpreted through the lens of foreign domination and the loss of domestic sovereignty – indeed the security exception feeds on such interpretations – these conflicts are better understood as struggles within the Lao state and society over the how to manage and use forest resources in a context of economic uncertainty and persistent underdevelopment. In such a context, the role of conservation NGOs and Western donors as gatekeepers to ongoing transnational governance efforts is nonetheless highly significant.

There is a large volume of literature focusing on the factors determining the competitiveness of tourist destinations. Nevertheless, research delving deep into the dimensions comprising tourist competitiveness is still scarce; even more so when it comes to the competitiveness of specific types of destinations. In this contribution we tackle the conceptualization and measurement of the tourist competitiveness of protected areas, a specific type of destinations enjoying not just intrinsic, but even exceptional, features. More precisely, the topics of our research are as follows: to comprehend the notion of tourist competitiveness in the aforementioned type of territories, to identify the appropriate measuring scales, to establish the dimensions of the construct, and to characterize the relations existing among the latter dimensions. In order to do so we analyze a sample of 102 protected areas in Spain (National Parks, Natural Parks, and Biosphere Reserves). The results obtained entitle us to assert that the tourist competitiveness of protected areas is comprised of five dimensions significantly and positively related, to wit: (1) their capability to attract visitors, (2) the social welfare of the local community, and, tourist sustainability related with (3) the preservation of nature, (4) the creation of a sense of community, (5) the economic welfare of the local community. Since we also assert that in protected areas the maximization of attractiveness is compatible with, and even requires, pursuing the community's welfare and cohesion together with environmental sustainability, our study impinges on the management of tourist destinations by highlighting the need to consider jointly all five competitiveness dimensions.

A pesquisa proposta nesta dissertação buscou contribuir com a ampliação do conhecimento relacionado aos Termos de Compromisso (TC) entre populações tradicionais e unidades de conservação (UC) de proteção integral federais, bem como para o aprimoramento de seu uso, monitoramento e avaliação. Em um cenário em que a maioria dessas UCs enfrenta desafios com a presença de populações humanas em desacordo com o previsto na legislação, é fundamental o estabelecimento de acordos de convivência. Partiu-se de revisão bibliográfica, levantamento e análise documental e entrevistas com informantes-chave para a avaliação do quadro. Identificaram-se nove TC dessa natureza firmados até o momento, sendo cinco atualmente vigentes. Além destes, foram detectadas cerca de trinta novas demandas para uso desse instrumento. Constatou-se que o atendimento à demanda ainda é insuficiente, e há cinco principais controvérsias que permeiam recorrentemente a construção dos TC: tradicionalidade, vigência, residência, reassentamento como solução definitiva e divergências quanto aos tipos de uso passíveis de autorização. A experiência de implementação revelou que o principal desafio consiste em buscar formas de resolução do conflito diante da baixa capacidade de resposta do Poder Público e da colisão de direitos ambientais e sociais envolvidos. Por outro lado, importantes efeitos positivos para a gestão das UC, a conservação da biodiversidade e vida das comunidades têm sido verificados, indicando que os benefícios superam os custos, sendo um instrumento que poderia ser de grande utilidade para várias UC; todavia faltam uma série de iniciativas e definições, em sua grande maioria políticas, para que se possa alcançar os efeitos esperados.

We examined the influence of visitors' profile, information sources, environmental dispositions, and visit evaluation on visitors' willingness to pay (WTP) for the National Marine Park of Zakynthos. Regarding WTP amounts pledged, parameters of visit evaluation were the most significant predictors. The estimated annual revenue that could be gained could cover the operating costs of the Protected Area Management Body.

based in Kathmandu, Nepal. Globalisation and climate change have an increasing influence on the stability of fragile mountain ecosystems and the livelihoods of mountain people. ICIMOD aims to assist mountain people to understand these changes, adapt to them, and make the most of new opportunities, while addressing upstream-downstream issues. We support regional transboundary programmes through partnership with regional partner institutions, facilitate the exchange of experience, and serve as a regional knowledge hub. We strengthen networking among regional and global centres of excellence. Overall, we are working to develop an economically and environmentally sound mountain ecosystem to improve the living standards of mountain populations and to sustain vital ecosystem services for the billions of people living downstream -now, and for the future.

The Tapiche-Blanco region epitomizes Loreto’s extraordinary landscape diversity. It harbors large expanses of wetlands and peatland forests, white-sand forests, and hyperdiverse upland forests, and these are drained by a variety of black, white, and clearwater streams. Located within the global epicenter of amphibian, mammal, and bird diversity, and highlighted by recent maps as possessing the largest aboveground carbon stocks in Peru, the region has maintained continuous forest and a high conservation value despite a long history of unregulated logging, hunting, and fishing. The region has long been a conservation priority of the national and regional governments, and the high plant and animal diversity we recorded during the inventory make it clear that it deserves the designation.
We recorded 962 plant species and 741 vertebrate species during the inventory. Dozens of the species we recorded are distributed patchily in Amazonian Peru because they specialize on ‘islands’ of poor-soil vegetation. Based on our fieldwork and on maps of diversity in these groups, we estimate that the total number of vascular plant and vertebrate species in the Tapiche-Blanco region is 3,878–4,478.

Después de un extraordinario periodo de crecimiento en cuanto al monto del financiamiento fiscal destinado a las áreas naturales protegidas mexicanas que se inició en el año 2000, a partir en 2009 la crisis financiera mundial afectó substancialmente tanto la capacidad del Estado mexicano para continuar incrementando el presupuesto destinado a la conservación de sus áreas naturales protegidas al mismo ritmo, como la cuantía de los montos de los apoyos externos nacionales e internacionales destinados a dicho fin.
No obstante el alto nivel de certidumbre relativo a la inversión fiscal dedicada a las áreas naturales protegidas, la información relativa al financiamiento proveniente de fuentes gubernamentales y privadas, nacionales y internacionales, es aun sumamente deficiente y es por esto que se requiere efectuar un esfuerzo serio para colectar la información necesaria para efectuar un análisis mucho más profundo.
Para cubrir la creciente brecha financiera existente en cuanto al financiamiento de las áreas naturales protegidas de México, será necesario instrumentar una serie de estrategias innovadoras, que contemplen la creación y mantenimiento de un amplio conjunto de fuentes de financiamiento diversificadas y sostenibles a largo plazo

Roads are a main threat to biodiversity conservation in the Amazon, in part, because roads increase access for hunters. We examine how increased landscape access by hunters may lead to cascading effects that influence the prey community and abundance of the jaguar (Panthera onca), the top Amazonian terrestrial predator. Understanding such ecological effects originating from anthropogenic actions is essential for conservation and management of wildlife populations in areas undergoing infrastructure development. Our study was conducted in Yasuní Biosphere Reserve, the protected area with highest potential for jaguar conservation in Ecuador, and an area both threatened by road development and inhabited by indigenous groups dependent upon bushmeat. We surveyed prey and jaguar abundance with camera traps in four sites that differed in accessibility to hunters and used site occupancy and spatially explicit capture-recapture analyses to evaluate prey occurrence and estimate jaguar density, respectively. Higher landscape accessibility to hunters was linked with lower occurrence and biomass of game, particularly white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) and collared peccary (Pecari tajacu), the primary game for hunters and prey for jaguars. Jaguar density was up to 18 times higher in the most remote site compared to the most accessible site. Our results provide a strong case for the need to: 1) consider conservation of large carnivores and other wildlife in policies about road construction in protected areas, 2) coordinate conservation initiatives with local governments so that development activities do not conflict with conservation objectives, and 3) promote development of community-based strategies for wildlife management that account for the needs of large carnivores.

Las especies exóticas invasoras amenazan la biodiversidad. Existen diferentes opciones para su manejo: prevención, detección temprana, erradicación, control, exclusión e incluso la “no acción”. A mayor complejidad de manejo, más información se requiere para ejecutarlo exitosamente. Además, gestores e investigadores abordan la  problemática con enfoques e intereses diferentes. Mientras los primeros priorizan acciones de manejo, los segundos encuentran una oportunidad para estudiar aspectos básicos y/o teóricos, no siempre aplicados al manejo. La gestión de estas especies ofrece una ocasión única para que ambos grupos trabajen juntos en busca de beneficios mutuos. Actualmente, las decisiones de manejo suelen basarse en experiencias o información de otros países, no siempre adaptables a la problemática local. En este trabajo presentamos varias experiencias de manejo en la Administración de Parques Nacionales para exponer logros, dificultades y desafíos a los que usualmente se enfrenta la gestión institucional. Encontramos que: a) ante recursos escasos es
importante generar herramientas de priorización efectivas y redes de trabajo; b) es imprescindible involucrar a la comunidad en las acciones de manejo; c) se requieren investigaciones aplicadas al manejo específico; y d) es necesario una detallada planificación previa y un monitoreo de las acciones ejecutadas y de sus resultados, basados en información técnica de primer nivel, ya que son aspectos claves para un manejo exitoso. Finalmente, gestores e investigadores deben cerciorarse que los resultados de estas investigaciones aplicadas sean conocidos y comprendidos por los tomadores de decisiones y la opinión pública, para asegurar el apoyo a la gestión.