The place of nature in conservation conflicts

Conservation conflicts are gaining importance in contemporary conservation scholarship such that conservation may have entered a conflict hype. We attempted to uncover and deconstruct the normative assumptions behind such studies by raising several questions: what are conservation conflicts, what justifies the attention they receive, do conservation-conflict studies limit wildlife conservation, is scientific knowledge stacked against wildlife in conservation conflicts, do conservation-conflict studies adopt a specific view of democracy, can laws be used to force conservation outcomes, why is flexibility needed in managing conservation conflicts, can conservation conflicts be managed by promoting tolerance, and who needs to compromise in conservation conflicts? We suggest that many of the intellectual premises in the field may defang conservation and prevent it from truly addressing the current conservation crisis as it accelerates. By framing conservation conflicts as conflicts between people about wildlife or nature, the field insidiously transfers guilt, whereby human activities are no longer blamed for causing species decline and extinctions but conservation is instead blamed for causing social conflicts. When the focus is on mitigating social conflicts without limiting in any powerful way human activities damaging to nature, conservation-conflict studies risk keeping conservation within the limits of human activities, instead of keeping human activities within the limits of nature. For conservation to successfully stop the biodiversity crisis, we suggest the alternative goal of recognizing nature's right to existence to maintenance of ecological functions and evolutionary processes. Nature being a rights bearer or legal person would imply its needs must be explicitly taken into account in conflict adjudication. If, even in conservation, nature's interests come second to human interests, it may be no surprise that conservation cannot succeed.     

Sustainability: a Dissent

Abstract:  Broadly conceived and considered in its many usages, sustainability has grave defects as a planning goal, particularly when used by conservationists: it confuses means and ends; it is vague about what is being sustained and who or what is doing the sustaining; it is uninspiring; it is little more than Pinchot-era conservation (and thus ignores the many lessons learned since then); it need not be linked to land, to the land's functioning, or to any ecological science; it need not include a moral component; it is consistent with the view of humans as all-powerful manipulators of the planet; and, in general, it is such a malleable term that its popularity provides only a facade of consensus. When sustainability is defined broadly to include the full range of economic and social aspirations, it poses the particular risk that ecological and biodiversity concerns will be cast aside in favor of more pressing human wants. Given these many defects, the conservation movement should discard the term in favor of a more alluring goal, attentive to nature and its ecological functioning. A sound goal would incorporate and distill the considerable ecological and moral wisdom accumulated since Pinchot's day while giving conservationists the rhetorical tools needed to defend the land against competing pressures. In our view, conservation would be well served by an updated variant of "land health," Aldo Leopold's ecologically grounded goal from the 1940s. Land health as an independent understanding should set the essential terms of how we live and enjoy the earth, providing the framework within which we pursue our many social and economic aims.     

Economic and Spatial Impacts of an Existing Reserve Network on Future Augmentation

An optimization model for land reservation was developed that explicitly selects parcels in the most compact or contiguous manner possible while meeting habitat requirements and a budget limitation. The model was used to compare the effects of an existing reserve network on future parcel spatial locations and total cost. Using habitat and land value data from Josephine County, Oregon, it was found that a system of existing reserves created by various policies and overseen by different agencies can decrease future reserve compactness and contiguity, and increase total cost. This work suggests that coordinated planning can result in more efficient conservation efforts for less cost.     

腾冲县北海湿地自然保护区生态旅游开发初探

充分利用自然保护区的旅游资源优势发展旅游业，但不合理的开发会使生态环境遭到破坏、生物多样性逐渐丧失、湿地水质面临污染等等。在分析腾冲北海湿地自然保护区发展生态旅游的基础上对旅游开发中存在的问题提出对策和建议。     

国外城市自然保护与生态重建及其对我国的启示

论文对当前国外的城市自然保护与生态重建活动作了介绍。城市自然保护包括野生生物生境保护、城市地区湿地及自然景观保护等内容。城市生态重建则主要有生态公园建设、废弃地生态重建、城市扩散廊道体系建设等方面。城市自然保护与生态重建具有以生态学为基础,多学科交叉;注重生态过程的恢复;多目标、多层次规划设计的特点。在此基础上,论文给出了4点对于我国城市生态建设的启示。     

Vegetation patterns and nature reserve construction in an extremely-arid desert in Anxi,NW China's Gansu Province

Anxi County is located in the northwestern part of the Hexi Corridor in gansu Province and has the sole national level nature reserve of extremely-arid desert in China.Phytosociological methods (Braun-Blanquet,1964) are used to classify plant community types in this area.Eleven are disting uished,including six of deserts,four of oases and one transitional type between deserts and oases.Direct gradient analysis (DCA) is employed to correlate the distribution of plant communities to physiogeographic conditions.This study makes clear that water is the most important ecological factor for the distribution of plant species and communities in this area.The effects of water have been demonstrated in different ways.A vegetation gradient from lower altitude to higher altitude in the southern part of the reserve is driven by a precipitation gradient.The effects of the depth of ground water table contribute to the differentiation of vegetation from desert to oasis in the flat area.In a finer scale,the washed gullies have obviously higher species richness and also higher vegetation cover than the surround gobi surfaces,possibly caused by the effects of floods.The vegetation patterns demonstrate that the area of Anxi County is a complete landscape unit.The range of the current nature reserve is not large enough for the purpose of conserving the unique biodiversity in this area.     

自然·水·人

人类社会向前发展,人向自然界的索取不断增加,对自然的干扰也逐步加剧,致使自然界的承受能力受到影响,人与自然的关系出现紧张。为此,人必须处理好与自然的关系,以免人的生存环境受到威胁。水是自然界的重要因素,和人的生存与人类社会的发展关系密切。由于用水量不断增加和用水不当,一些地区出现水资源危机,人在和水旱灾害进行抗争中,也出现了由于措施不当带来的人为加大灾害的问题。因此,人必须在处理好与自然关系的框架中,认真处理好与水的关系,以保障水资源的永续利用和人类社会的可持续发展。     

昆明市自然保护区可持续发展对策探讨

昆明市7个自然保护区存在管理机构不健全、体制不顺、基础工作薄弱、经费不足和保护与开发矛盾突出等问题。应加强立法、建立条块相互协调的管理机制,建立保护区经济补偿机制,加强规划,增加投入,改善基础设施,以实现自然保护区的可持续发展。     

羌塘高原美马错自然保护区的初步评价

拟建的羌塘高原美马错自然保护区是我国青藏高原高寒草原生态系统保存最完好的地区之一,区内含有野牦牛、藏野驴、藏羚等多种珍稀野生动物,其密度之高为西藏所仅见。该地区具有极高的自然保护价值,应作为代表青藏高原高寒草原生态系统的典型地区,列为国家级自然保护区。     

锡林浩特市可持续发展规划

首次提出锡林浩特市应以可持续发展的观点规划设计，这一规划将使使锡林浩特市以可持续方式扩大与发展，并使得位于这一地区的锡林郭勒草原自然保护区受到最小的影响。文中每项设计建议都根据现在的城市规则，经济发展和锡林郭勒自然保护区的关系得来，将对锡林浩特市的未来发展建设起到重要的参考价值。