Rethinking the Effectiveness of Public Protected Areas in Southwestern China

Abstract:  It is internationally recognized that conservation policies should respect indigenous cultures and consider the livelihoods of people affected by conservation restrictions. Countering this are concerns that human occupation and use of natural reserves is incompatible with conservation aims. But in China today the continued use and management of natural areas by local communities is likely to deliver better conservation outcomes than the current drive to establish public protected areas. The effectiveness of many protected areas in China is compromised by institutional conflicts, lack of ongoing financial and technical support, confusion between the objectives of generating revenue and conservation, dubious scientific definitions, lack of community trust in policies, and obscure user rights and land tenures. Southwestern China—one of the most biologically and ethnologically diverse areas on Earth—is a good illustration of a place where culture and biological diversity are closely linked. The indigenous people in this area have shown that local livelihood practices can be advantageous for the long-term maintenance of conservation goals. Rather than creating new protected areas, we argue that China is better advised to support ongoing sustainable use of natural areas by the people who have lived and nurtured these environments for generations .     

Social Capital in Biodiversity Conservation and Management

Abstract:  The knowledge and values of local communities are now being acknowledged as valuable for biodiversity conservation. Relationships of trust, reciprocity and exchange, common rules, norms and sanctions, and connectedness in groups are what make up social capital, which is a necessary resource for shaping individual action to achieve positive biodiversity outcomes. Agricultural and rural conservation programs address biodiversity at three levels: agrobiodiversity on farms, nearby nature in landscapes, and protected areas. Recent initiatives that have sought to build social capital have shown that rural people can improve their understanding of biodiversity and agroecological relationships at the same time as they develop new social rules, norms, and institutions. This process of social learning helps new ideas to spread and can lead to positive biodiversity outcomes over large areas. New ideas spread more rapidly where there is high social capital. There remain many practical and policy difficulties, however, not least regarding the need to invest in social capital formation and the many unresolved questions of how the state views communities empowered to make their own decisions. Nonetheless, attention to the value of social relations, in the form of trust, reciprocal arrangements, locally developed rules, norms and sanctions, and emergent institutions, has clearly been shown to deliver a biodiversity dividend in many contexts. This suggests a need to blend both the biological and social elements of conservation.     

Conservation Science and Forest Service Policy for Roadless Areas

Abstract:  Questions persist regarding whether the science of conservation biology can successfully affect environmental decision making. One of the most prominent fields of intersection between conservation science and environmental policy is public-lands debates in the United States. I reviewed the role of conservation science in the roadless-area policies of the U.S. Forest Service. Since 1971, the Forest Service has systematically evaluated roadless areas on national forests three times, most recently during the Clinton administration's Roadless Area Conservation Review (1998–2000) ( U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service 2000b ). Drawing on the agency's environmental impact statements and supporting documents and the internal records of conservation organizations, I examined the changing goals, methodology, and outcome of roadless-area advocacy and policy. Since the 1970s, conservation science has successfully informed public and administrative concern for roadless-area protection. Conservation science has transformed public discourse regarding roadless areas and has changed the scope and rationale of national conservation organizations' goals for roadless-area policy from protecting some to protecting all remaining national forest roadless areas. The Forest Service has increasingly drawn on the lessons of conservation biology to justify its methodology and its administrative recommendations to protect roadless areas. The 2000 Roadless Area Conservation Review resulted in a recommendation to protect all remaining national forest roadless areas, up from 22% of roadless areas in the first roadless review. Despite the scientific merits of recent roadless-area advocacy and policy, however, such initiatives have faced political difficulties. The emphasis on large-scale, top-down, national approaches to conservation policy has rendered such policies politically problematic.     

生物多样性保护及其研究进展（综述）

由于人口的增长和人类经济活动的加剧,致使生物多样性受到了严重的威胁,引起国际社会的普遍关注．生物多样性是生物及其与环境形成的生态复合体以及与此相关的各种生态过程的总和,具有十分重要的价值,是人类生存的物质基础．各国政府和有关的国际组织积极投入到保护生物多样性的全球行动中．为了促进保护工作,国内外都开展了相关的研究工作．综观该领域的研究现状,可以看出以下７个方面已成为当前生物多样性研究的热点：①生物多样性的调查、编目及信息系统的建立;②人类活动对生物多样性的影响;③生物多样性的生态系统功能;④生物多样性的长期动态监测;⑤物种濒危机制及保护对策的研究;⑥栽培植物与家养动物及其野生近缘的遗传多样性研究;⑦生物多样性保护技术与对策．结合我国的具体情况,建议优先考虑以下４个方面的研究：①生物多样性的调查、编目与动态监测;②物种濒危机制及保护对策的研究;③生物多样性的生态系统功能与生态系统管理;④栽培植物与家养动物及其野生近缘的遗传多样性研究．     

关于制定我国区域生物多样性中心评价标准的思考

本文针对目前环境保护的热点之一——全球和地区性生物多样性保护,对其中的一个基础理论问题,即区域生物多样性评价标准进行了探索;从理论上对制定这一标准的必要性、可行性、生物多样性的基本内涵、区域生物多样性中心标准的意义及标准制定的原则和依据进行了阐述,并在此基础上提出了我国区域生物多样性中心标准的基本框架。     

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.     

Incorporating the Effects of Socioeconomic Uncertainty into Priority Setting for Conservation Investment

Abstract:  Uncertainty in the implementation and outcomes of conservation actions that is not accounted for leaves conservation plans vulnerable to potential changes in future conditions. We used a decision-theoretic approach to investigate the effects of two types of investment uncertainty on the optimal allocation of global conservation resources for land acquisition in the Mediterranean Basin. We considered uncertainty about (1) whether investment will continue and (2) whether the acquired biodiversity assets are secure, which we termed transaction uncertainty and performance uncertainty, respectively. We also developed and tested the robustness of different rules of thumb for guiding the allocation of conservation resources when these sources of uncertainty exist. In the presence of uncertainty in future investment ability (transaction uncertainty), the optimal strategy was opportunistic, meaning the investment priority should be to act where uncertainty is highest while investment remains possible. When there was a probability that investments would fail (performance uncertainty), the optimal solution became a complex trade-off between the immediate biodiversity benefits of acting in a region and the perceived longevity of the investment. In general, regions were prioritized for investment when they had the greatest performance certainty, even if an alternative region was highly threatened or had higher biodiversity value. The improved performance of rules of thumb when accounting for uncertainty highlights the importance of explicitly incorporating sources of investment uncertainty and evaluating potential conservation investments in the context of their likely long-term success.     

Utility of Mitochondrial DNA Barcodes in Species Conservation

Abstract:  Molecular tools are a standard part of many conservation studies and can be informative at many different levels of analysis, although there are inherent limitations and strengths of different genes or parts of genes to inform specific questions. Animal DNA barcodes, 600- to 800-base-pair segments of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome oxidase I, have been proposed as a means to quantify global biodiversity. Although mitochondrial (mt) DNA has a long history of use at the species level, recent analyses suggest that the use of a single gene, particularly mitochondrial, is unlikely to yield data that are balanced, universally acceptable, or sufficient in taxonomic scope to recognize many species lineages. Mitochondrial and nuclear genomes have different patterns of evolution and modes of inheritance, which can result in very different assessments of biodiversity. The ramifications of choosing a particular definition of species (species concept) need to be carefully considered because current efforts have designated DNA barcodes as the universal species concept without demonstrating its superiority over preexisting concepts. The results of such a barcoding paradigm may include a failure to recognize significant portions of biodiversity or nuclear/mitochondrial mixed lineages and could spuriously focus conservation resources on populations with relatively minor mtDNA divergence. DNA barcodes are most likely to provide potentially useful information for groups that are already well studied, and such taxa do not constitute the majority of biodiversity or those in most need of research attention. DNA barcode-length sequences are an important source of data but, when used alone or out of context, may offer only a fraction of the information needed to characterize species while taking resources from broader studies that could produce information essential to robust and informed conservation decisions.     

Priorities for Improving the Scientific Foundation of Conservation Policy in North America

Abstract:  The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) can enhance conservation of biodiversity in North America by increasing its engagement in public policy. Toward this end, the North America Section of SCB is establishing partnerships with other professional organizations in order to speak more powerfully to decision makers and taking other actions—such as increasing interaction with chapters—geared to engage members more substantively in science-policy issues. Additionally, the section is developing a North American Biodiversity Blueprint, which spans the continental United States and Canada and is informed by natural and social science. This blueprint is intended to clarify the policy challenges for protecting continental biodiversity, to foster bilateral collaboration to resolve common problems, and to suggest rational alternative policies and practices that are more likely than current practices to sustain North America's natural heritage. Conservation scientists and practitioners can play a key role by drawing policy makers' attention to ultimate, as well as proximate, causes of biodiversity decline and to the ecological and economic consequences of not addressing these threats.     

Economic Valuation of Biodiversity Conservation: the Meaning of Numbers

Abstract:  Recognition of the need to include economic criteria in the conservation policy decision-making process has encouraged the use of economic-valuation techniques. Nevertheless, whether it is possible to accurately assign economic values to biodiversity and if so what these values really represent is being debated. We reviewed 60 recent papers on economic valuation of biodiversity and carried out a meta-analysis of these studies to determine what factors affect willingness to pay for biodiversity conservation. We analyzed the internal variables of the contingent-valuation method (measure of benefits, vehicle of payment, elicitation format, or timing of payment) and anthropomorphic, anthropocentric and scientific factors. Funding allocation mostly favored the conservation of species with anthropomorphic and anthropocentric characteristics instead of considering scientific factors. We recommend researchers and policy makers contemplate economic valuations of biodiversity carefully, considering the inherent biases of the contingent-valuation method and the anthropomorphic and anthropocentric factors resulting from the public's attitude toward species. Because of the increasing trend of including economic considerations in conservation practices, we suggest that in the future interdisciplinary teams of ecologists, economists, and social scientists collaborate and conduct comparative analyses, such as we have done here. Use of the contingent-valuation method in biodiversity conservation policies can provide useful information about alternative conservation strategies if questionnaires are carefully constructed, respondents are sufficiently informed, and the underlying factors that influence willingness to pay are identified.     

生物多样性研究进展

生物多样性是自然资源中的一个重要组成部分。在最近的40年内,生物多样性的研究发展很迅速,有关多样性的测定方法已形成了数十个数学模型和多样性指数。生物多样性的功能也研究得比较多,生物多样性的保护技术也已逐渐系统化,并开始了持续利用和合理开发的研究。     

中国生物多样性保护立法现状与需求

生物多样性保护依赖于健全的国际立法和国家立法。中国已颁布一系列有关生物多样性保护的法律和条例。这些法规的实施，使生物多样性保护工作取得重大进展，但还存在许多不足和空白。本文概述了中国在生物多样性保护方面的立法现状，在此基础上，针对存在问题，并根据《生物多样性公约》要求，从生态系统、物种和遗传多样性保护３个层次上阐明需要完善和加强法规建设的若干方面和需求。     

论生物多样性的保护问题

当前，任何地区的生物多样性都是自然和社会因素长期综合作用所造成。生物多样性最丰富的地区不一定全部由顶极植被所覆盖，而常常是一些包括所有演替类型的地方。本文通过讨论自然环境的变化和人类生产活动对不同区域景观的影响，探讨有关生物多样性的保护问题。     

Enhancement of Farmland Biodiversity within Set-Aside Land

Abstract:  The efficacy of agricultural set-aside policies for protecting farmland biodiversity is widely debated. Based on a meta-analysis of 127 published studies, we found that land withdrawn from conventional production unequivocally enhances biodiversity in North America and Europe. The number of species of birds, insects, spiders, and plants is 1–1.5 standard deviation units higher on set-aside land, and population densities increase by 0.5–1 standard deviation units. Set-aside land may be especially beneficial for desirable taxa because North American bird species that have exhibited population declines react most positively to set-aside agricultural land. Larger and older plots protect more species and higher densities, and set-aside land is more effective in countries with less-intensive agricultural practices and higher fractions of land removed from production. Although policies specifically designed to protect biodiversity might work even better, current incentives clearly improve the standing of plants and animals in farmland.     

A Standard Lexicon for Biodiversity Conservation: Unified Classifications of Threats and Actions

Abstract: An essential foundation of any science is a standard lexicon. Any given conservation project can be described in terms of the biodiversity targets, direct threats, contributing factors at the project site, and the conservation actions that the project team is employing to change the situation. These common elements can be linked in a causal chain, which represents a theory of change about how the conservation actions are intended to bring about desired project outcomes. If project teams want to describe and share their work and learn from one another, they need a standard and precise lexicon to specifically describe each node along this chain. To date, there have been several independent efforts to develop standard classifications for the direct threats that affect biodiversity and the conservation actions required to counteract these threats. Recognizing that it is far more effective to have only one accepted global scheme, we merged these separate efforts into unified classifications of threats and actions, which we present here. Each classification is a hierarchical listing of terms and associated definitions. The classifications are comprehensive and exclusive at the upper levels of the hierarchy, expandable at the lower levels, and simple, consistent, and scalable at all levels. We tested these classifications by applying them post hoc to 1191 threatened bird species and 737 conservation projects. Almost all threats and actions could be assigned to the new classification systems, save for some cases lacking detailed information. Furthermore, the new classification systems provided an improved way of analyzing and comparing information across projects when compared with earlier systems. We believe that widespread adoption of these classifications will help practitioners more systematically identify threats and appropriate actions, managers to more efficiently set priorities and allocate resources, and most important, facilitate cross‐project learning and the development of a systematic science of conservation.     

The Sustainability of Subsistence Hunting by Matsigenka Native Communities in Manu National Park, Peru

Abstract:  The presence of indigenous people in tropical parks has fueled a debate over whether people in parks are conservation allies or direct threats to biodiversity. A well-known example is the Matsigenka (or Machiguenga) population residing in Manu National Park in Peruvian Amazonia. Because the exploitation of wild meat (or bushmeat), especially large vertebrates, represents the most significant internal threat to biodiversity in Manu, we analyzed 1 year of participatory monitoring of game offtake in two Matsigenka native communities within Manu Park (102,397 consumer days and 2,089 prey items). We used the Robinson and Redford (1991) index to identify five prey species hunted at or above maximum sustainable yield within the ∼150-km² core hunting zones of the two communities: woolly monkey (Lagothrix lagotricha), spider monkey (Ateles chamek), white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), Razor-billed Currasow (Mitu tuberosa), and Spix's Guan (Penelope jacquacu). There was little or no evidence that any of these five species has become depleted, other than locally, despite a near doubling of the human population since 1988. Hunter–prey profiles have not changed since 1988, and there has been little change in per capita consumption rates or mean prey weights. The current offtake by the Matsigenka appears to be sustainable, apparently due to source–sink dynamics. Source–sink dynamics imply that even with continued human population growth within a settlement, offtake for each hunted species will eventually reach an asymptote. Thus, stabilizing the Matsigenka population around existing settlements should be a primary policy goal for Manu Park.