Naturalness and Conservation in France

This article discusses the ecological and cultural criteria underlying the management practices for protected areas in France. It examines the evolution of French conservation from its roots in the 19th century, when it focused on the protection of scenic landscapes, to current times when the focus is on the protection of biodiversity. However, biodiversity is often socially defined and may not represent an ecologically sound objective for conservation. In particular, we question the current approach to protecting a specific type of biodiversity that is at the basis of traditional landscape but does not value systems that are left to develop naturally (i.e., without significant human intervention). We present several examples of current attempts in France and Europe to managing traditional ecosystems and then discuss the values that exist in systems that develop naturally. We feel the latter systems often have much to offer in terms of biodiversity as well as providing important sites for the study of dynamic ecological communities in an ever-changing world.     

Natural Resource Dependency and Decentralized Conservation Within Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Project,Nepal

Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Project (KCAP) in Nepal is among the first protected areas in the world to institute a completely decentralized system of conservation and development. Proponents of decentralized conservation claim that it increases management efficiency, enhances the responsiveness to local needs, and promotes greater equity among local residents. This study assessed local equity by evaluating the levels of dependencies on natural resources among households and the factors affecting that dependency. Data were collected via detailed surveys among 205 randomly selected households within the KCAP. Natural resource dependency was evaluated by comparing the ratio of total household income to income derived from access to natural resources. Economic, social, and access-related variables were employed to determine potential significant predictors of dependency. Overall, households were heavily dependent on natural resources for their income, especially households at higher elevations and those with more adult members. The households that received remittances were most able to supplement their income and, therefore, drastically reduced their reliance on the access to natural resources. Socio-economic variables, such as land holdings, education, caste, and ethnicity, failed to predict dependency. Household participation in KCAP-sponsored training programs also failed to affect household dependency; however, fewer than 20% of the households had any form of direct contact with KCAP personnel within the past year. The success of the KCAP as a decentralized conservation program is contingent on project capacity-building via social mobilization, training programs, and participatory inclusion in decision making to help alleviate the dependency on natural resources.     

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.     

Local Responses to Participatory Conservation in Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal

Biodiversity conservation has undergone a profound change in philosophy, policies and management approaches over the last forty years. The traditional top–down approach to nature protection has been widely criticized for failing to include critical social elements in management practices, and is being gradually replaced by a slew of participatory strategies under the rubric of bottom-up conservation. The new approach recognizes local communities as key partners in wildlife management and seeks their participation in social development and biodiversity conservation. However, every social context is different in its structure and functions, and in the way social groups respond to calls for participation. In order to gain a better understanding of the approach and the barriers encountered in its implementation, a questionnaire survey of 188 households was employed in the communities of the Upper Mustang extension of Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA) in Nepal. The study provides a comparative analysis of community participation and its barriers between Non-Tourist (NT) and Tourist (TV) villages. The results revealed important differences between the two groups in terms of their participation in community programs, barriers to participation, and perception of benefits from participation. Owing to their distinct spatial, demographic and attitudinal differences, the two village groups have their own sets of needs, values and motivation factors which cannot be generalized and treated as such. The research clearly identifies the need for the conservation agency to be creative in devising strategies and initiatives appropriate to specific social groups so as to optimize their input in participatory conservation.     

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     

Measuring and Incorporating Vulnerability into Conservation Planning

Conservation planning is the process of locating and designing conservation areas to promote the persistence of biodiversity in situ. To do this, conservation areas must be able to mitigate at least some of the proximate threats to biodiversity. Information on threatening processes and the relative vulnerability of areas and natural features to these processes is therefore crucial for effective conservation planning. However, measuring and incorporating vulnerability into conservation planning have been problematic. We develop a conceptual framework of the role of vulnerability assessments in conservation planning and propose a definition of vulnerability that incorporates three dimensions: exposure, intensity, and impact. We review and categorize methods for assessing the vulnerability of areas and the features they contain and identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of each broad approach. Our review highlights the need for further development and evaluation of approaches to assess vulnerability and for comparisons of their relative effectiveness.     

Conservation policies and copper in the UK

In recent years, there have been several calls for a UK government policy towards materials. This paper takes some proposals regarding conservation, and applies them to the UK copper-using industries. The main conclusions are that consumption is likely to decline anyway over the next ten years, but government attempts to influence the trend are likely to have little real effect — or else will be very costly, in money and other terms.     

黄山市两栖动物资源及其保护

自1997-2007年对黄山市境内两栖动物进行了调查,共采集标本600余号,经鉴定属2目8科13属26种。分析了重点保护的和具有重要研究价值的物种分布和生存现状,提出了保护对策：加强对两栖动物保护的宣传,保护好两栖动物的栖息地;加强自然保护区的管理,科学地开展人工养殖。     

Conservation and management of the American crocodile

The American crocodile is a rare and endangered species, the range of which has contracted to disjunct locations such as Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba, Panama, and southern Florida. In an attempt to determine what factors might be limiting population growth, an extensive collaborative research program was conducted in 1978–82 in southern Florida. Limiting factors explicitly studied included climate, hurricanes, population dispersion, nesting habitat, fertility, predation, nest chamber environment, juvenile survivorship, artificial mortality, disturbance, and environmental contamination. No single natural factor limits the population, although in concert various factors result in low adult recruitment rates. Such natural limitations explain the natural rarity of this tropical species at the temperate limits of its range. Two artificial sources of mortality are death of adults on roads and the flooding of nests by high groundwater tables. These sources of mortality are potentially controllable by the appropriate management agencies. Active management, by such means as protection of individuals, habitat preservation and enhancement, nest site protection, and captive breeding, is also appropriate for assuring the survival of a rare species. The American crocodile has survived in southern Florida in face of extensive human occupancy of parts of its former nesting habitat, demonstrating the resilience of a threatened species. This case history illustrates the efficacy of conducting research aimed at testing specific management hypotheses, the importance of considering biographical constraints limiting population status in peripheral populations, the need for active management of rare species, and the role of multiple reserves in a conservation and management strategy.     

Naturalness In Biological Conservation

Conservation scientists are arguing whether naturalness provides a reasonable imperative for conservation. To clarify this debate and the interpretation of the term natural, I analyze three management strategies – ecosystem preservation, ecosystem restoration, and ecosystem engineering – with respect to the naturalness of their outcomes. This analysis consists in two parts. First, the ambiguous term natural is defined in a variety of ways, including (1) naturalness as that which is part of nature, (2) naturalness as a contrast to artifactuality, (3) naturalness as an historical independence from human actions, and (4) naturalness as possession of certain properties. After that, I analyze the different conceptions with respect to their implications for the three management strategies. The main conclusion is that there exists no single conception of naturalness that could distinguish between the outcomes of the three management methods. Therefore, as long as the outcomes of the different methods are regarded as being of a different value in conservation, we should either abandon the idea of naturalness as the guiding concept in conservation or use the term natural only in the ways that take both its historical and feature dependent meanings into consideration.     

Evaluating Conservation Program Success with Landsat and SWAT

In the United States, many state and federally funded conservation programs are required to quantify the water quality benefits resulting from their efforts. The objective of this research was to evaluate the impact of conservation practices subsidized by the Oklahoma Conservation Commission on phosphorus and sediment loads to Lake Wister. Conservation practices designed to increase vegetative cover in grazed pastures were evaluated using Landsat imagery and the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). Several vegetative indices were derived from Landsat imagery captured before and after the implementation of conservation practices. Collectively, these indicators provided an estimate of the change in vegetative soil cover attributable to conservation practices in treated fields. Field characteristics, management, and changes in vegetative cover were used in the SWAT model to simulate sediment and phosphorus losses before and after practice implementation. Overall, these conservation practices yielded a 1.9% improvement in vegetative cover and a predicted sediment load reduction of 3.5%. Changes in phosphorus load ranged from a 1.0% improvement to a 3.5% increase, depending upon initial vegetative conditions. The use of fertilizers containing phosphorus as a conservation practice in low-productivity pastures was predicted by SWAT to increase net phosphorus losses despite any improvement in vegetative cover. This combination of vegetative cover analysis and hydrologic simulation was a useful tool for evaluating the effects of conservation practices at the basin scale and may provide guidance for the selection of conservation measures subsidized in future conservation programs.     

Spatial Pattern of Ecosystem Function and Ecosystem Conservation

The spatial pattern of ecosystem function can affect ecosystem conservation. Ecosystem functions are often heterogeneous spatially due to physical and biological factors. We can influence ecosystem functions by changing the spatial patterns of the physical and biological elements of an ecosystem and regulating their combinations. The variation–position effect highlights a phenomenon resulting from the spatial pattern of ecosystem function. The effect shows that the identical variation of a factor may produce different effects on the overall situation when this variation occurs in a different spatial position. In a watershed of the Yangtze River, water retention is a primary ecosystem function. The variation–position effect for water retention capacity occurs in the watershed because of the spatial heterogeneity in vegetation, soil, and slope. The change of vegetation that occurs in a complex can affect the overall situation of water retention, and the effect can be different due to the change occurring in the position holding different vegetation-soil-slope complex. To improve the ecosystem in the watershed and to meet the social needs for the ecosystem function of water retention, a strategy called ecosystem function and spatial pattern-based forest extension was proposed to conserve forests. The implementation of the strategy enables the watershed to attain the maximum effective increase in water retention capacity.     

老山森林生物多样性及其保护对策

在对南京老山森林生物进行广泛调查的基础上,计算了生物的多样性和均匀度,研究了其生物多样性现状,提出了多项对策以实现生物多样性的有效保护和持续发展,如对生物栖息地的保护,包括正确处理旅游开发与栖息地保护之间的关系、禁伐天然次生林和加强对缓冲区的保护、种群的优先保护模式、廊道的建立、全面整体的保护利用、深入开展科研、扩大宣传教育,以及建立健全管理制度和法规条例,完善政策保障体系等.     

中国森林公园资源保护和旅游开发

到1992年底,我国已建立森林公园255处,其中国家森林公园155处。森林公园资源十分丰富,具有众多的动植物资源、山水资源和人文资源。森林旅游具有其它类型旅游不可比拟的独特作用,已成为现代旅游的新潮流。森林公园的建立,客观上保护了自然和自然资源,但急功近利的经营思想和掠夺式开发导致了自然资源的破坏。本文最后对森林公园资源保护和旅游开发如何协调统一提出了几点建议。