Conservation Without Borders: Building Communication and Action Across Disciplinary Boundaries for Effective Conservation

Interdisciplinary approaches to conservation research and environmental management continue to garner interest among practitioners, academics, and students. Yet, cases of practitioners and researchers from different disciplines successfully working in concert towards an integrated conservation approach are rare. What is preventing practitioners of multiple disciplines from harmoniously working together? Why are practitioners and academics struggling to apply their graduate training to real world conservation? What is preventing the benefits of cooperation and partnerships between different disciplines addressing conservation from being realized? This special issue “Conservation without Borders: Building Communication and Action across Disciplinary Boundaries for Effective Conservation” asks readers to consider the numerous interpretations and implications of the phrase “Conservation without Borders” and to reflect on how different academic and disciplinary lenses can contribute to a more integrated approach to tackling conservation challenges. The articles that comprise this special issue offer readers insights into the ways in which different disciplines view conservation work and interdisciplinary approaches to environmental problems. Bringing these perspectives and approaches together in one place is a step towards improving communication across disciplines for the purpose of achieving more successful biodiversity conservation.     

The South African Experience of Conservation and Social Forestry Outreach Nurseries

Outreach nurseries are favored conservation and social forestry tools globally, but, as with many integrated conservation and development programs (ICDPs), they do not always produce anticipated results. A synopsis of the experience of South African practitioners is provided in this study of 65 outreach nurseries. South African outreach nurseries frequently include financial objectives, creating additional challenges in simultaneously attaining conservation and socioeconomic goals. Progress was hindered by biophysical problems (e.g., lack of water, poor soils, etc.) as well as the harsh socioeconomic conditions facing most communities in which nurseries had been established. Attaining financial viability was challenging. Business management skills were often restricted, and few viability studies included adequate market research. Costs to community participants were usually high, and benefits were limited. Conservation objectives were frequently lost in the struggle to attain financial viability. The management of social processes also proved challenging. Although small scale and relatively straightforward compared with many ICDPs, nurseries usually require substantial institutional support, including a range of technical, business, and development services. Project time frames need to be reconsidered, as practitioners estimate that it takes 5–10 years for nurseries to start meeting objectives, and donors and implementing agencies often operate on 2–3-year project cycles. Detailed viability studies are essential, incorporating a social probe and an assessment of potential impacts of projects on community participants. Progress needs to be continuously evaluated to enable institutions and community participants to adapt to changing conditions as well as ensure that the spectrum of objectives are being achieved.     

Conserving biodiversity that matters: practitioners' perspectives on brownfield development and urban nature conservation in London

Policies designed to conserve sites of nature conservation importance are an important aspect of city planning in the UK. London has led the way in putting in place a spatial hierarchy of sites of nature conservation importance designed to protect wildlife habitats from development. Some wasteland habitats associated with derelict and vacant land receive protection in this way but development pressure on these so-called 'brownfield sites' is high and is likely to continue. This paper examines how conservation professionals in the private, public and voluntary sectors are responding to the threats of biodiversity loss and opportunities for habitat creation posed by re-development of brownfield sites. The study draws on in-depth interviews conducted with conservation professionals and the practices employed by ecological advisers employed by developers seeking to re-develop wasteland sites. It finds that practitioners are negotiating their role in the re-development process in different ways. Key issues relate to the role of ecological science in codifying wasteland habitats, uncertainties about how best to evaluate the conservation importance of such sites and the strategies and tactics employed by different practitioners as they seek to mobilise a range of knowledges and practices to secure ecologically sensitive proposals. Scientific knowledge about wasteland habitats has not stabilised in ways that can consistently inform conservation policy and practice. As a result biodiversity issues of wasteland sites are often discounted in the re-development process. Investment in studies of the basic ecology of urban wastelands could provide a firmer scientific foundation on which conservation policies could build. At the same time, many conservation professionals involved in urban re-development are struggling to promote a pro-active approach to secure environmentally sensitive development. The knowledge and co-operation networks being mobilised to support this approach are fluid and unstable, and favourable development outcomes as yet are few. Formalising these networks to achieve more effective engagements with developers and the construction industry could consolidate ecological practices designed to conserve and re-create the biodiversity of wasteland habitats.     

Seeing (and doing) conservation through cultural lenses

In this paper, we first discuss various vantage points gained through the authors’ experience of approaching conservation through a “cultural lens.” We then draw out more general concerns that many anthropologists hold with respect to conservation, summarizing and commenting on the work of the Conservation and Community Working Group within the Anthropology and Environment Section of the American Anthropological Association. Here we focus on both critiques and contributions the discipline of anthropology makes with regard to conservation, and show how anthropologists are moving beyond conservation critiques to engage actively with conservation practice and policy. We conclude with reflections on the possibilities for enhancing transdisciplinary dialogue and practice through reflexive questioning, the adoption of disciplinary humility, and the realization that “cross-border” collaboration among conservation scholars and practitioners can strengthen the political will necessary to stem the growing commoditization and ensuing degradation of the earth’s ecosystems.     

Gathering “wild” food in the city: rethinking the role of foraging in urban ecosystem planning and management

Recent “green” planning initiatives envision food production, including urban agriculture and livestock production, as desirable elements of sustainable cities. We use an integrated urban political ecology and human–plant geographies framework to explore how foraging for “wild” foods in cities, a subversive practice that challenges prevailing views about the roles of humans in urban green spaces, has potential to also support sustainability goals. Drawing on research from Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia, and Seattle, we show that foraging is a vibrant and ongoing practice among diverse urban residents in the USA. At the same time, as reflected in regulations, planning practices, and attitudes of conservation practitioners, it is conceptualised as out of place in urban landscapes and an activity to be discouraged. We discuss how paying attention to urban foraging spaces and practices can strengthen green space planning and summarise opportunities for and challenges associated with including foragers and their concerns.     

From “What is” to “What Should Become” Conservation Biology? Reflections on the Discipline’s Ethical Fundaments

In this essay, I build on the article by Soulé that established the foundation for the field of conservation biology. I analyze the presuppositions that have guided the discipline’s ethics in the 30 years since that article first appeared. I argue that conservation biology’s normative postulates introduced a paradigm shift that placed the diversity of the biota instead of the biota itself at the center of its ethics. I show that the ensuing priorities in the valuation of nature entail several contradictions at the ethical level and are justifiable only through scientific postulates. Identifying potential revisions and latent ideological issues in science, I defend the position that such scientific legitimization of conservation measures becomes disputable when this option undermines the ethical status of non-human life. Furthermore, I explain the absence of social feedback regarding conservation measures from the perspective of this shift. I conclude with an invitation to critically rethink the ethical basis of conservation sciences so that these fields may achieve their intention of playing a key role in halting the destruction of nature and in encouraging society’s support.     

Measuring conservation success beyond the traditional biological criteria: the case of conservation projects in Costa Rica,Mekong Valley,and Cameroon

Traditionally, the criteria used to measure conservation success or failure are based on biological factors. Biological factors include changes in the amount of targeted conserved species, biodiversity, and total area conserved. However, conservation efforts are not simply a matter of biological concern; environmental, political, social, and conflict pressures on different scales (ranging from local to global) also have strong influences on the outcome of conservation. These other factors can either pose threats to or enhance conservation, but are not addressed by current criteria. Using a proposed holistic rubric that includes interdisciplinary fields, this paper examines a set of conservation factors on different scales – ranging from local to global – to determine their importance in conservation. The paper analyses positive factor influences with more successful conservation and negative factor influences with less successful, or failed, conservation attempts. Neutral and non‐applicable factor influences are also identified, defined, and ranked as a standardization mechanism. The determination of success changed when the holistic rubric was applied to conservation projects in Costa Rica, Mekong Valley, and Cameroon. In the Costa Rica case study, conservation success for Guanacaste and Talamanca national parks is rated ‘moderately low’. In the case of Mekong Valley, conservation success is rated ‘low’ for Lower Mekong, ‘moderately low’ for Greater Annamites, and ‘low’ for Phong Nha‐Ke Bang national parks. Cameroon's Congo Basin and Sangha Tri‐National conservation efforts are both rated ‘low’, while Dja Faunal is rated ‘very low’. We conclude that if conservation efforts are to attain a high level of success, the strategy for global conservation must move away from the traditional biological approach, which focuses mainly on biological concerns, and embrace a holistic approach, which in addition to biological concerns, addresses environmental, political, social, and conflict pressures, which have strong influences on the outcomes of conservation.     

Participation, Process Quality, and Performance of Marine Protected Areas in the Wider Caribbean

Throughout the wider Caribbean, marine protected areas (MPAs) are rapidly gaining momentum as a conservation tool, but management performance of existing MPAs is considered low. To enhance MPA management performance, stakeholders are increasingly being invited to discuss, debate, and develop rules about how people should interact with marine ecosystems. Using social and ecological data from a rapid assessment of 31 MPAs and their associated communities in the wider Caribbean, this study investigates stakeholder participation in MPA planning and management, and how participants' views of process quality relate to MPA performance. Findings indicate that (1) participants tended to be male, resource users, participate in community organizations, and have lived fewer years in the community associated with an MPA than non-participants; (2) simply participating was not associated with perceptions of the social and ecological performance of MPAs, however, perceptions of process quality were positively related to views of performance; and (3) resource users' perceptions of an MPA's ecological performance were likely shaped by a variety of factors. Conservation practitioners should be aware that participatory MPA processes are complex and require careful planning if they are to contribute positively to marine conservation efforts.     

Conservation and Management of the Endangered Fiji Sago Palm, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Metroxylon vitiense</Emphasis>, in Fiji

Recovery planning is a key component of many threatened species conservation initiatives and can be a powerful awareness raising tool. One of the largest impediments to conservation efforts in the Pacific region however, is the lack of ecological data and its subsequent effects on the development of feasible and useful recovery plans for threatened species. Without these plans, the understaffed, underfunded and often technically ill-equipped conservation agencies face huge difficulties in planning, prioritizing and conducting conservation activities to adequately protect biodiversity. The Fiji sago palm, Metroxylon vitiense, is an endemic endangered palm species whose survival is heavily dependent on a feasible species recovery plan. It is geographically restricted and threatened by habitat destruction and overexploitation for thatch for the tourism industry and palm heart consumption by local consumers. Despite its threatened status, M. vitiense is not currently protected by national or international legislation. Recent field surveys and extensive stakeholder consultation have resulted in the production of a species recovery plan highlighting the importance of the species and advocating sustainable harvesting rather than complete bans to promote conservation. This article summarizes the recovery plan and its current effects on the status of M. vitiense in Fiji. We also discuss the role of different stakeholders in the conservation of M. vitiense, including the absence of significant behavioral changes by the largest consumer - the tourism industry, and the importance of recovery plans for biodiversity conservation in the Pacific.     

Indicators Assessment for Habitat Conservation Plan of Yolo County, California, USA

/ Whereas habitat conservation plans (HCPs) have been intended to provide comprehensive environmental mitigation for multiple species, they often narrow in focus to one species and either one mitigation site or unspecified sites. We developed an indicators framework from which to rate land units for their ecological integrity, collateral values (nonbiological qualities that can improve conservation), and restoration and conservation opportunities. The ratings of land units were guided by the tenets of conservation biology and principles of landscape and ecosystem ecology, and they were made using existing physical and floral information managed on a GIS. As an example of how the indicators approach can be used for HCPs, the 29 legally rare species targeted by the Yolo County HCP were each associated with vegetation complexes and agricultural crops, the maps of which were used for rating some of the landscape indices. The ratings were mapped so that mitigation can be directed to the places on the landscape where the legally rare species should benefit most from conservation practices. The most highly rated land units for conservation opportunity occurred along streams and sloughs, especially where they emerged from the foothills and entered the Central Valley and where the two largest creeks intersected the Sacramento River flood basin. We recommend that priority be given to mitigation or conservation at the most highly rated land units. The indices were easy to measure and can be used with other tools to monitor the mitigation success. The indicators framework can be applied to other large-area planning efforts with some modifications.KEY WORDS: Ecosystem; Indicators; Landscape; Mitigation; Planning; Yolo County; California     

Environmental Awareness, Economic Orientation, and Farming Practices: A Comparison of Organic and Conventional Farmers

/ This study examines similarities and differences between organic and conventional farmers. We explore the factors that underlie farmers' conservation attitudes and behaviors, including demographic and farm characteristics, awareness of and concern for environmental problems associated with agriculture, economic orientation toward farming, and self-reported conservation practices. A series of intensive personal interviews was conducted with 25 farmers in Washtenaw County, Michigan, USA, using both qualitative and quantitative survey methods. The findings indicate that both groups of farmers share a concern for the economic risks associated with farming, although the organic farmers reported a significantly greater concern for long-term sustainability and a greater willingness to incur present risk to gain future benefits. Organic farmers expressed a greater awareness of and concern for environmental problems associated with agriculture. Organic farmers also scored significantly higher on a multifaceted measure of conservation practices, although both groups had a fairly high adoption rate. Implications of these findings are discussed, relative to economic risks of farming, implications for new farmers, effectiveness of conservation education and government programs, and impact of farm size and crop diversity.KEY WORDS: Environmental attitudes; Conservation behaviors; Organic farming; Agricultural sustainability     

Green infrastructure and planning policy: a critical assessment

Advocates of the green infrastructure (GI) concept claim it offers a progressive planning approach that facilitates synergies between economic growth, environmental conservation and social development. Although widely endorsed by both planning practitioners and academics, little academic literature exists critically evaluating what GI entails or the potential implications of its institutionalisation within planning practice. This paper addresses this deficit by critically examining the interpretation and representation of the GI concept in planning policy. The paper first critically analyses international interpretations of GI. Following this, the particular attributes of GI's interpretation in the Republic of Ireland are investigated. The paper demonstrates how the emergence of GI in Ireland relates to broader debates on attempts to reconcile environmental concerns with development aspirations in planning policy. It is deduced that GI may represent an approach to planning policy formulation wherein habitat conservation initiatives are primarily designed and justified relative to the ecosystems services they are seen to provide to society. The paper also cautions against the risks posed by confining GI debates to the deliberations of technical specialist. The paper concludes by identifying some issues that may arise in the implementation of a GI approach and suggests ways to enhance the potential benefit of the concept's use in spatial planning.     

Exploring the current status of water governance and outcomes of community-based monitoring across the Oak Ridges Moraine,Southern Ontario,Canada

ABSTRACT

Community-based monitoring (CBM) activities are becoming increasingly prevalent in response to multiple factors, including reduced governmental capacity and increased public interest in environmental management. This research aims to explore how CBM has evolved in the Oak Ridges Moraine (ORM), southern Ontario, including an examination of strengths and challenges. Interviews with CBM stakeholders, provincial government staff, and conservation authority staff were combined with document analysis to explore the evolution and outcomes of ORM CBM activities. Results indicate that there is active CBM on the ORM and conservation authorities play a role in the shaping of CBM activities, although significant barriers remain to civil society participation in water governance. The case study results from the ORM were also considered in light of research emerging from the Nova Scotia experience of numerous civil society organisations involved in CBM.     

Adaptive Management of Flows in the Lower Roanoke River, North Carolina, USA

The lower Roanoke River in North Carolina, USA, has been regulated by a series of dams since the 1950s. This river and its floodplain have been identified by The Nature Conservancy, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the State of North Carolina as critical resources for the conservation of bottomland hardwoods and other riparian and in-stream biota and communities. Upstream dams are causing extended floods in the growing season for bottomland hardwood forests, threatening their survival. A coalition of stakeholders including public agencies and private organizations is cooperating with the dam managers to establish an active adaptive management program to reduce the negative impacts of flow regulation, especially extended growing season inundation, on these conservation targets. We introduce the lower Roanoke River, describe the regulatory context for negotiating towards an active adaptive management program, present our conservation objective for bottomland hardwoods, and describe investigations in which we successfully employed a series of models to develop testable management hypotheses. We propose adaptive management strategies that we believe will enable the bottomland hardwoods to regenerate and support their associated biota and that are reasonable, flexible, and economically sustainable.     

Effective Planning and Implementation of Ecological Rehabilitation Projects: A Case Study of the Regional Municipality of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada)

The literature guides environmental planning and, specifically, how to use ecological rehabilitation projects to achieve long-term planning goals and landscape-scale environmental sustainability. There is, however, a perceived gap between principles in the literature and the use of them by practitioners involved in smaller-scale ecological rehabilitation projects. Using interviews with practitioners involved in 11 projects within the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, we tested whether practitioners used five principles for effective planning and implementation of ecological rehabilitation that we derived from the literature. These five principles were: establishing political and ecological context, using ecologically appropriate objectives and practices, using comparative multidisciplinary and cross-scale approaches, using adaptive planning and implementation, and establishing good communication within and external to projects. Few projects followed all five principles, and practitioners indicated that they used three more project-specific principles: obtaining political/social support, promoting projects and changing attitudes about projects, and securing sufficient and persistent funding to maintain a project's life. While the literature emphasizes that ecological rehabilitation is only effective if projects are coordinated on a watershed basis, most practitioners focused solely on the goals of their specific project. The gap between literature and practice may arise because most practitioners are new to the field of ecological rehabilitation and still are focused on the methods involved. Time pressures force practitioners to obviate the literature and get projects started quickly, lest support evaporate. Complicating these difficulties is decreased support from federal and provincial governments for large-scale environmental planning. It is unclear whether ecological rehabilitation projects in Waterloo Region (at least) will ever become effective at promoting landscape-scale ecological goals or remain smaller-scale stop-gaps.     

Education and advice contribute to increased density of broadleaved conservation trees, but not saplings, in young forest in Sweden

The effectiveness of different conservation policies is debated, but the policies are rarely evaluated quantitatively. A voluntary or 'soft' policy based mainly on education provides information about ecosystems and effects of land use, to encourage conservation action. Swedish forestry relies mainly on soft policy, with substantial resources for education and advice to more than 200,000 forest owners, while legal regulation is weak. Increased retention of broadleaved trees at clear-cutting, with environmental benefits in the conifer-dominated forestry, is important in the policy. We used the Swedish National Forest Inventory to analyse this policy for young forests in southern Sweden. Between 1983-1987 and 1998-2002 the policy had no positive effect on saplings (1.3m tall to 4.9 cm dbh) of birch, oak, beech and other species that mostly decreased in density, due to planting of conifers and browsing by ungulates. However, broadleaved conservation trees (>or=15 cm dbh) increased in density, e.g. to about one oak and six birches per ha in young coniferous forest in 1998-2002. The relative increase in density was higher for large (>or=20 cm dbh) than for small trees (15-20 cm dbh). The density of conservation trees was higher on forestland of high than of low productivity. Thus, the soft conservation policy did not influence regeneration of saplings in this type of forestry system, but large broadleaved trees were increasingly saved at 'clear-cuttings'. Advice and educational programmes probably contributed to this result. A continued increase in conservation trees at harvest may require economical support to forest owners.     

Watershed management program on Santiago Island,Cape Verde

The Watershed Management Program (WMP) was put into operation in early 1985 on Santiago Island, Cape Verde, with the stated purpose, “to develop and protect the soil and water resources of the Program-designated watersheds … to stabilize the natural environment and increase agricultural production potential in the Program area.” The approach to soil and water conservation in the program has been to build erosion and flood control structures (engineering approach) and plant trees (biological approach) to decrease rill and gully erosion, trap sediment behind control structures, provide flood protection, increase infiltration, increase fuelwood and fodder production, and increase water supplies for irrigation. There have been many successes resulting from specific management activities, but flawed approach or implementation in a few key areas has acted to impede the program's complete success, including lack of a scientific basis for evaluating its impact on soil and water conservation; poor design, placement, and maintenance of some major hydraulic structures; inadequate intervention in stabilizing farmlands or education of farmers and landowners in the need for and benefits of agroforestry; and incomplete integration of engineering and biological approaches.     

A Case Study of Landholder Attitudes and Behaviour Toward the Conservation of Renosterveld,a Critically Endangered Vegetation Type in Cape Floral Kingdom,South Africa

The attitudes and behaviours of private landholders toward the conservation of a highly transformed and critically endangered habitat, Overberg Coastal Renosterveld (OCR) (a grassy shrubland of the Cape Floral Region, South Africa) are described. Personal, semistructured interviews were conducted with landholders, representing 40 properties in the Overberg region, on topics such as management and utilisation of OCR, the depth of their knowledge of its conservation importance, what they perceive its value to be, and the extent of their willingness to conserve it. General attitudes toward conservation incentives and provincial conservation authorities were also investigated. Farmers more willing to conserve were younger, did not necessarily have a better education, and owned larger farms (>500 ha) with a greater amount of remnant renosterveld (>300 ha) than those less willing to conserve. Attitudes toward the OCR were largely negative, related to associated problem plants and animals and the fact that it is believed not to be economically advantageous to retain it. However, farmers are of the opinion that provision of incentives and increased extension support will provide practical positive inducements for conservation. Landholder education is paramount to prevent further transformation of critically endangered habitats. The success of private-conservation programs depends on the attitudes of landowners toward (1) the particular habitat or species to be conserved (which can vary depending on the type of land use practised and the associated benefits and disadvantages of that habitat type); (2) the conservation agency or extension officers responsible for that area; and (3) willingness of landowners to participate in a conservation program, which is influenced by landowner age, farm size, and the amount of natural habitat left to conserve.     

Land Claims and Comanagement of Protected Areas in South Africa: Exploring the Challenges

Comanagement has recently become the most popular approach for reconciling land claims and biodiversity conservation in South Africa and beyond. Following the resolution of land claims on protected areas in South Africa, comanagement arrangements have been created between the relevant conservation authorities and the land claimant communities who are legally awarded tenure rights to the land. However, it is doubtful that these partnerships constitute success for the former land claimants. Using the case of a “resolved” land claim in Mkambati Nature Reserve, Eastern Cape Province, as well as insights from comanagement literature, this paper identifies and discusses three key possible reasons for the unimpressive performance of comanagement in reconciling land restitution and conservation. The first one is the origins of the comanagement idea in the conservation of high value natural resources (e.g., fisheries, forestry), rather than in or including concerns for resource rights. The second reason is the neglect of key conditions for successful comanagement, as discussed in the comanagement literature. The final reason is the ambiguity in settlement agreements, including the use of terminology and concepts that reinforce unequal power relationships, with the state emerging as the powerful partner. This paper concludes that, unless there is a serious reassessment of the comanagement idea as a way of reconciling land reform and conservation, and a possible review of settlement agreements that have relied on comanagement, both the integrity of the “successful land claimant’s rights” and that of conservation remain under threat.     

Estimation of Regional, Local and Site-specific Profitability of Soil Conservation for the Wheat-Sheep Zone of New South Wales, Australia

Information about the net benefits of land degradation treatment is required at the relevant management level, such as regional, local or site-specific, to assist decision makers in the allocation of funds to soil conservation. In this paper, estimates of regional opportunity costs of erosion and costs of treatment are used to derive benefit-cost ratios to assess the profitability of gully erosion treatment for localities in the wheat-sheep zone of New South Wales. These results are then used to develop site-specific models which predict benefit-cost ratios of treatment from land attributes including gully length, slope, soil type and land use. These predictive models form the basis of a rapid appraisal method to aid soil conservation decisions.