Conservation planning at the landscape scale: A landscape ecology method for regional land trusts

This paper illustrates a landscape ecology approach for land trusts undertaking conservation at the watershed scale. A conservation plan was created for the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy (GTRLC) in the headwaters of Michigan's Manistee River Watershed (USA). Eight conservation drivers were devised to identify Conservation Focus Areas (CFAs) of highest ecological importance. The CFAs were ranked based on ecological importance, feasibility of protection and size. Parcels were ranked, totalling nearly 5000 ha, within the three highest-ranking CFAs in one key county. This approach is useful to land trusts trying to operationalize three distinct goals in conservation planning: to find areas of high ecological importance, to promote the landscape's spatial integrity and to delineate threats to ecological systems and processes.     

Making business integration work: A survival strategy for EHS managers

Realizing the benefits of environment, health, and safety (EHS) management systems requires more than just rewriting policies and procedures, EHS tasks and activities must be pushed out into all aspects of the organization. The success of this process necessitates an evolving role for EHS managers. For EHS managers, business integration involves the challenge of integrating environment, health, and safety awareness, responsibility, and action into multiple jobs and business processes, leveraging scarce resources to maximize value and minimize costs. Drawing on recent work in the fields of sociology and political science, this article presents conceptual tools for assisting EHS managers to plan and strategize the changing role of the EHS function. By assessing political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes, EHS managers can maximize the success of EHS programs, while adding value to companies' core operations.     

Aggregating high-priority landscape areas to the parcel level: an easement implementation tool

Landscape characteristics and parcel ownership information are often collected on different spatial scales leading to difficulties in implementing land use plans at the parcel level. This study provides a method for aggregating highly resolute landscape planning information to the parcel level. Our parcel prioritization model directly incorporates a Land Trust's conservation goals in the form of a compromise programming model. We then demonstrate the use of our approach for implementation decisions, including parcel selection under a budget constraint and the estimation of a total conservation budget necessary to meet specific conservation goals. We found that these cost constraints significantly alter the composition of the 'best' parcels for conservation and can also provide guidance for implementation. The model's results were integral to a local Land Trust's ability to further define and achieve their goals.     

India's Action plan for Wildlife Conservation and role of voluntary bodies

Summary This theme paper introduces India's Action plan for Wildlife Conservation. The author describes the historic development of conservation management as related to India's remarkably diverse range of wildlife, and briefly describes the National Wildlife Action Plan.This paper was presented to the Centenary Seminar of the Bombay Natural History Society. 6–10 December, 1983. The theme of the seminar was Conservation in Developing Countries — Problems and Prospects. Complete copies of the paper and theNational Wildlife Action Plan are available directly from the author.     

The exuberant planet: A global look at the role of utilities in protecting biodiversity

Biodiversity is a critical environmental issue. Biodiverse species as a source of unique genetic information, for example, continues to provide society with lifesaving drugs and important industrial chemicals. Since US utilities are substantial landholders and virtually every aspect of utility operations are in some way tied to environmental/biodiversity issues, it is important and essential that the utility industry step forward as a leader. This paper details the past, present, and future role that utilities have played and need to play in the very important arena of biodiversity.     

The Fate of Priority Areas for Conservation in Protected Areas: A Fine-Scale Markov Chain Approach

Park managers in alpine areas must deal with the increase in forest coverage that has been observed in most European mountain areas, where traditional farming and agricultural practices have been abandoned. The aim of this study is to develop a fine-scale model of a broad area to support the managers of Paneveggio Nature Park (Italy) in conservation planning by focusing on the fate of priority areas for conservation in the next 50–100 years. GIS analyses were performed to assess the afforestation dynamic over time using two historical maps (from 1859 and 1936) and a series of aerial photographs and ortho-photos (taken from 1954 to 2006) covering a time span of 150 years. The results show an increase in the forest surface area of about 35%. Additionally, the forest became progressively more compact and less fragmented, with a consequent loss of ecotones and open habitats that are important for biodiversity. Markov chain-cellular automata models were used to project future changes, evaluating the effects on a habitat scale. Simulations show that some habitats defined as priority by the EU Habitat Directive will be compromised by the forest expansion by 2050 and suffer a consistent loss by 2100. This protocol, applied to other areas, can be used for designing long-term management measures with a focus on habitats where conservation status is at risk.     

A strategy for integrated monitoring

Administrative machinery has been set up to regulate and control most of the emissions that are known to have severe local consequences, such as the discharge of raw sewage into rivers and lakes and the smokestack emission of air pollutants. Now, the nature of environmental degradation is usually different. We are faced with pollutants and effects with more subtle cause-effect relationships, often characterized by larger geographic areas of interest and longer term potential damage; the potential risk is now more chronic than acute. Acid rain and climate change are good examples, in that they are associated with a variety of pollutants from a number of sources and damage to ecosystems occurs over many years. It is argued that monitoring programs should evolve to reflect the changing nature of the environmental problems they are addressing. It is now necessary to consider interactions among many pollutants, mixing among the various media, and potentially affecting many components of the ecosystem in both indirect and direct ways. Here, integrated monitoring and analysis is presented as a unifying strategy to bring together different measurement methodologies in different disciplines, addressing environmental questions of complexity beyond the scope of many existing activites that have a classical narrower focus. The underlying concept is of nested networks, each tier being composed of sites selected for specific purposes but arranged to maximize the number of common sites where more multidisciplinary questions can be addressed.     

Industrial Development Versus Environmental Conservation at Local Scale: A Case Study from Southeastern Spain

Local scale has an important role in environmental management. In Spain, rapid industrialization has occurred in the last three decades, leading to substantial changes in socioeconomic relations and resulting in significant environmental degradation. This paper describes the environmental status of the township of Sax (Alicante, in southeast Spain), which has passed from agriculture to industrial manufacturing in 50 years. The human population has grown exponentially during the second half of the 20th century, with a 91% increase from 1955 to 1995, coinciding with strong growth in manufacturing (factories increased fivefold in the period 1955–1976) and important changes in the working population and land use. Illegal rubbish dumps, water pollution, forest fires, erosion, and degradation of wildlife habitats are the main outcomes of these dramatic socioeconomic and demographic changes. The administration has focused on the control of water pollution and waste management, while nongovernmental organizations have concentrated on the prevention of forest fires and the development of environmental education programs. These measures are insufficient to manage current environmental degradation, and an environmental management plan for the study area is discussed. Increasing effort in waste management and industrial wastewater control, changes in land-use policy, and the creation of an advisory committee to increase public participation in decision-making have been identified as environmental target objectives for the coming years.     

Integrative research on environmental and landscape change: PhD students' motivations and challenges

The growing demand for integrative (interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary) approaches in the field of environmental and landscape change has increased the number of PhD students working in this area. Yet, the motivations to join integrative projects and the challenges for PhD students have so far not been investigated. The aims of this paper were to identify the understanding of PhD students with regard to integrative research, their motivations to join integrative projects, their expectations in terms of integration and results, and to reveal the challenges they face in integrative projects. We collected data by a questionnaire survey of 104 PhD students attending five PhD Master Classes held from 2003 to 2006. We used manual content analysis to analyse the free-text answers. The results revealed that students lack a differentiated understanding of integrative approaches. The main motivations to join integrative projects were the dissertation subject, the practical relevance of the project, the intellectual stimulation of working with different disciplines, and the belief that integrative research is more innovative. Expectations in terms of integration were high. Core challenges for integration included intellectual and external challenges such as lack of knowledge of other disciplines, knowledge transfer, reaching depth, supervision, lack of exchange with other students and time demands. To improve the situation for PhD students, we suggest improving knowledge on integrative approaches, balancing practical applicability with theoretical advancement, providing formal introductions to other fields of research, and enhancing institutional support for integrative PhD projects.     

The latent structure of landscape perception: A mean and covariance structure modeling approach

Mean and covariance structure (MACS) modeling is used to explore a central question in contemporary environmental psychology: “How should human environments be conceptualized?”. Specifically, an expanded version of the preference model of landscape perception proposed by S. and R. Kaplan is presented. The proposed model not only constitutes a respecification and deepening of the Kaplans’ model but also presents an integrative perspective that simultaneously considers the interrelations among cognitive, motivational, affective, evaluative, and behavioral tendencies in landscape perception. In a series of four studies, we develop and validate multi-item measures of various constructs, test the measure invariances, and the structural model. The findings reveal the crucial role of various constructs that originally were hypothesized by the Kaplans but never included in the model tests. In addition, positive and negative feelings induced by the landscape emerge as antecedents to landscape perception. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Catalysts for change: the emerging role of participatory research in land management

Land management is a complex process which involves the interaction of biophysical and social variables. New demands are being placed on biophysical researchers working in land management to communicate more effectively with the public and to involve the public in the research process. The catalysts for change in the practice of land management research are clearly outlined with respect to pressures from new government policies, from institutions funding research, from communities in which the research is occurring and from within the academic environment itself. In order to meet these new demands, collaborative efforts – incorporating different academic disciplines and between researchers and communities – must occur. Traditional scientific approaches can benefit from the incorporation of techniques and approaches used within participatory research. The concept of participation and its relevance to biophysical research in land management is discussed, as well as the key characteristics of participatory research. Examples, predominantly from Australia, are provided; however the global scope of the changes is highlighted.It is increasingly recognized that agriculture is a complex social process, not simply a complex, diverse and risky technical activity. This implies new theoretical as well as methodological challenges..(present author's emphasis) (Scoones and Thompson, 1994, p. 5).     

The Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan: A Decade of Delays

This article describes the history of the Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan (CVMSHCP), in the Riverside County region of Southern California. When this collaborative biodiversity conservation planning process began, in 1994, local participants and supporters had numerous factors working in their favor. Yet, as of April 2007, nearly 13 years had passed without an approved plan. This is a common problem. Many multiple species habitat conservation plans now take more than a decade to complete, and the long duration of these processes often results in negative consequences. The CVMSHCP process became bogged down—despite strong scientific input and many political advantages—due to problematic relationships between the Plan’s local supporters, its municipal signatory parties, and officials from the state and federal wildlife agencies, particularly the regional office of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This case study demonstrates the crucial importance of institutional structures and relationships, process management, and timeliness in habitat conservation planning. We conclude by offering several related recommendations for future HCP processes.     

Facilitating Development of Multiple-Species Conservation Reserves and Habitat Conservation Plans: A Synthesis of Recommendations

The purpose of this paper is to outline briefly the process that workshop participants undertook to first identify and then resolve major issues hindering the development and implementation of MS-HCPs. In addition, a brief outline of     

Marine Conservation and Accession: The Future for the Croatian Adriatic

The European Union (EU) is the world’s largest trading bloc and the most influential supra-national organisation in the region. The EU has been the goal for many eastern European States, for Croatia accession remains a priority and underpins many of its national policies. However, entry into the EU requires certain commitments and concessions. In October 2003 the Croatian parliament declared an ecological and fisheries protection zone in the Adriatic. Under pressure the zone was suspended, finally entering into force in March 2008 exempting EU States. There are other marine conflicts between Croatia and the EU, particularly the contested maritime border with Slovenia, and the development of the Croatian fishing fleet in opposition to the Common Fisheries Policy. Conversely, attempts to harmonise Croatian Nature Protection with the EU Habitats Directive, facilitated by pre-accession funding, has galvanised conservation policy. Since 2005 two marine protected areas have been declared, significantly increasing the marine ecosystem under protection. Finally, the development of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive is the latest EU attempt to integrate environmental policy in the maritime realm. This will have an effect not only on member States but neighbouring countries. For marine nature protection to be effective in the region the Adriatic Sea needs to be viewed as a mutually important shared and limited resource not a bargaining chip. Negotiations of the EU and Croatia have been watched closely by the other Balkan States and precedents set in this case have the potential to affect EU expansion to the East.     

Besides navigation accuracy: Gender differences in strategy selection and level of spatial confidence

A virtual version of the reorientation task was employed to test new behavioral measures of navigation strategies and spatial confidence within a gender-fair assessment approach. The results demonstrated that, from a behavioral point of view, women had lower level of spatial confidence than men regardless of level of accuracy. Moreover, the way men and women selected spatial strategies depended on the arrangement of spatial cues within the environment. In other terms women relied on landmarks under specific conditions compatible with an adaptive combination/associative model of spatial orientation. Finally, the present study emphasized the importance to assess gender differences taking into account specific affective variables and information selection processing, beyond accuracy.     

Prioritizing Wildlife Taxa for Biological Diversity Conservation at the Local Scale

/ We identified and ranked 108 resident and migratory wildlife taxa on John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) that were vulnerable to local, regional, or global extinction. We ranked taxa based on their vulnerability to extinction, their potential role for maintaining faunal integrity, and the relevance of KSC for maintaining their populations in the United States and Florida. Several taxa, not listed by agencies, were vulnerable to regional or global extinction. Many taxa not vulnerable to global extinction were vulnerable to local and regional extinction. Top predators were vulnerable to extinction because of small population size, isolation from other populations, and road mortality. Many taxa were dependent on habitat conditions at different geographic locations so that conservation required greater collaboration among land owners, managers, and researchers at local, regional, and global scales.KEY WORDS: Biological diversity; Endangered species; Conservation