智慧“鸟爷”王三益:给湿地精灵一个“人间天堂”

在安徽省沿江湿地美丽的菜子湖畔,有一个64岁的智慧老人,为了守护鸟儿们的自由乐土,他倾尽积蓄与违法偷猎者斗智,使其不敢越雷池半步,还创造出一种全新的"社区+协会"湿地群众公益组织,广建QQ群微博,发动全社会力量参与候鸟保护,给每年来这里"度假"的200多只东方白鹳、数千只白头鹤、扁嘴鸭等国宝级迁徙精灵以及5万多只大雁、天鹅、鸿雁等候鸟,营造出一个乐不思蜀的鸟类天堂!     

保护候鸟,官民互补在行动

正雁南飞,雁南飞,每年10月一过,大批候鸟又从遥远的北方迁徙落户水草丰美鱼虾成群的安庆沿江湿地。严冬将至,那些可爱的精灵们过得还好吗?我们每个人还应该为鸟儿做些什么?本刊记者近日再度赶赴安庆沿江湿地菜子湖与武昌湖,与湿地精灵亲密接触。     

调查:升金湖白头鹤数量“缩水”

去冬以来,升金湖国家级自然保护区管理局联合保护点的巡湖员庞子钦心里一直很不安。统计资料表明,今年在升金湖越冬的白头鹤数量已降至近年来历史最低值,基本维持在     

升金湖边的环保童话：鸟儿与工厂一个家

一提到工厂,人们总会油然想起冒烟的大烟囱和难闻怪味,就连居家过日子也惟恐避之不及。可世界上究竟有没有这样的工厂：来自绿色世界的美丽精灵鸟儿们可以无忧无虑地在工厂里的人工湖中嬉戏栖息觅食,可以成群结伴悠闲地在工厂上空翱翔,可以携妻带子安家厂区大摇大摆闲庭漫步呢？回答     

From Experiential Knowledge to Public Participation: Social Learning at the Community Fisheries Action Roundtable

Extensive research demonstrates that public participation in environmental decision making can increase understanding of diverse worldviews and knowledge bases, public faith in governance institutions, and compliance with resulting rules. Concerns linger around costs, possibilities of polarization and decreased legitimacy in cases of poorly executed processes, and the ability of newly empowered groups to gain political leverage over others. If participants in public processes can bracket their personal experience to better assess other viewpoints, establishing mutual respect and understanding through deliberative exchange, they increase the likelihood of maximizing participatory benefits and minimizing risks. Such reflexivity indicates double-loop social learning, change undertaken through collective discussion and interaction. A capacity-building workshop program aims to foster such learning within the Maine fishing industry. Case material draws primarily on participant observation and interview data, using a grounded theory approach to qualitative analysis. Evidence indicates that in social contexts removed from the norms of daily life and the frustrations of past fishery management confrontations, harvesters acquire knowledge and skills that facilitate more strategic and productive behavior in formal and informal marine resource decision venues. Suspensions of longstanding spatio-temporal assumptions around the prosecution and management of fisheries comprise key learning moments, and yield corresponding changes in industry attitudes and actions. With heightened appreciation for a diversity of experiences and management priorities, harvesters can better mobilize a broad spectrum of local knowledge to develop viable regulatory proposals and collaborative decision processes.     

Community Responses to Government Defunding of Watershed Projects: A Comparative Study in India and the USA

When central governments decentralize natural resource management (NRM), they often retain an interest in the local efforts and provide funding for them. Such outside investments can serve an important role in moving community-based efforts forward. At the same time, they can represent risks to the community if government resources are not stable over time. Our focus in this article is on the effects of withdrawal of government resources from community-based NRM. A critical question is how to build institutional capacity to carry on when the government funding runs out. This study compares institutional survival and coping strategies used by community-based project organizations in two different contexts, India and the United States. Despite higher links to livelihoods, community participation, and private benefits, efforts in the Indian cases exhibited lower survival rates than did those in the U.S. cases. Successful coping strategies in the U.S. context often involved tapping into existing institutions and resources. In the Indian context, successful coping strategies often involved building broad community support for the projects and creatively finding additional funding sources. On the other hand, the lack of local community interest, due to the top-down development approach and sometimes narrow benefit distribution, often challenged organizational survival and project maintenance.     

Of Small Streams and Great Lakes: Integrating Tributaries to Understand the Ecology and Biogeochemistry of Lake Superior

Lake Superior receives inputs from approximately 2,800 tributaries that provide nutrients and dissolved organic matter (DOM) to the nearshore zone of this oligotrophic lake. Here, we review the magnitude and timing of tributary export and plume formation in Lake Superior, how these patterns and interactions may shift with global change, and how emerging technologies can be used to better characterize tributary–lake linkages. Peak tributary export occurs during snowmelt‐driven spring freshets, with additional pulses during rain‐driven storms. Instream processing and transformation of nitrogen, phosphorus, and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) can be rapid but varies seasonally in magnitude. Tributary plumes with elevated DOC concentration, higher turbidity, and distinct DOM character can be detected in the nearshore during times of high runoff, but plumes can be quickly transported and diluted by in‐lake currents and mixing. Understanding the variability in size and load of these tributary plumes, how they are transported within the lake, and how long they persist may be best addressed with environmental sensors and remote sensing using autonomous and unmanned vehicles. The connections between Lake Superior and its tributaries are vulnerable to climate change, and understanding and predicting future changes to these valuable freshwater resources will require a nuanced and detailed consideration of tributary inputs and interactions in time and space.     

Community engagement as a component of revitalization: Lessons learned from the Technical Outreach Services to Communities programme

Community involvement has been identified as an important factor in the successful redevelopment of contaminated land, and access to technical resources has been a barrier for some communities. This paper describes how the US Environmental Protection Agency funded Technical Outreach Services to Communities programme was used to support four communities involved in land revitalization. The four New England case studies were used to retrospectively draw lessons learned that could be useful to others interested in similar community work. We suggest that the broad lessons point to four factors for success, namely, where there is: (1) a common vision in the community; (2) a cohesive community; (3) an opportunity for co-learning; and (4) a commitment among the parties for long-term engagement. We conclude that technical support can serve as a useful framework for developing trustful and long-term relationships with communities.     

A simple model to assess nitrogen and phosphorus contamination in ungauged surface drainage networks: application to the Massaciuccoli Lake Catchment, Italy

Modeling is a common practice to evaluate factors affecting water quality in environmental systems impaired by point and nonpoint losses of N and P. Nevertheless, in situations with inadequate information, such as ungauged basins, a balance between model complexity and data availability is necessary. In this paper, we applied a simplified analytical model to an artificially drained floodplain in central-western Italy to evaluate the importance of different nutrient sources and in-stream retention processes and to identify critical source areas. We first considered only a set of chemical concentrations in water measured from February through May 2008 and from November 2008 through February 2009. We then broadened available data to include water discharge and hydraulic-head measurements to construct a hydrogeological model using MODFLOW-2000 and to evaluate the reliability of the simplified method. The simplified model provided acceptable estimates of discharge (ranging from 0.03-0.75 m s) and diffuse nutrient inputs from water table discharge and in-stream retention phenomena. Estimates of PO-P and total P retention (ranging from 1.0 to 0.6 μg m s and from 1.18 to 0.95 μg m s for PO-P and total P, respectively) were consistent with the range of variability in literature data. In contrast, the higher temporal variability of nitrate concentrations decreased model accuracy, suggesting the need for more intensive monitoring. The model also separated the dynamics of different reaches of the drainage network and identified zones considered critical source areas and buffer zones where pollutant transport is reduced.     

Understanding the Barriers to Community Forestry Delivering on its Potential: An Illustration From Two Heterogeneous Districts in Nepal

Environmental Management - Community forestry (CF) is increasingly recognized as one of the key solutions to forest management and governance challenges in the developing world. At its heart is the...     

Building Local Community Commitment to Wetlands Restoration: A Case Study of the Cache River Wetlands in Southern Illinois, USA

Natural resource professionals are increasingly faced with the challenges of cultivating community-based support for wetland ecosystem restoration. While extensive research efforts have been directed toward understanding the biophysical dimensions of wetland conservation, the literature provides less guidance on how to successfully integrate community stakeholders into restoration planning. Therefore, this study explores the social construction of wetlands locally, and community members’ perceptions of the wetland restoration project in the Cache River Watershed of southern Illinois, where public and private agencies have partnered together to implement a large-scale wetlands restoration project. Findings illustrate that the wetlands hold diverse and significant meanings to community members and that community members’ criteria for project success may vary from those identified by project managers. The case study provides managers with strategies for building community commitment such as engaging local citizens in project planning, minimizing local burdens, maximizing local benefits, and reducing uncertainty.