Pastoral Politics: Gaddi Grazing, Degradation, and Biodiversity Conservation in Himachal Pradesh, India

Two assumptions underlie the current conservation focus worldwide. The first is that democratic governments can restrict human resource use within protected areas, and the second is that human land use for subsistence leads to degradation and is incompatible with the maintenance of high levels of biological diversity. An examination of official policy documents over the past century indicates that Gaddi herders of Himachal Pradesh, northwestern Indian Himalaya, have used political influence to circumvent bureaucratic policies of exclusion and that there is an absence of scientific evidence to support the notion that Gaddi grazing leads to land degradation. Although grazing intensity has profoundly shaped the structure and composition of the Siwalik forests (the Gaddi winter grazing grounds), as demonstrated by transect-based data presented here, deviations from a supposed "climax" community need not constitute degradation. A growing rather than declining cattle population attests to the regenerative capacities of these forests. Within the alpine meadows grazed by the Gaddi in summer, mean plant species richness increased along transects originating at herder camps and extending 250 m north of border camp sites. Intense grazing pressure or heavy manuring by livestock bedded at night are likely to be responsible for the observed low species diversity adjacent to the campsite, but the effect is insignificant at the level of the overall landscape. Interviews with borders also suggest the presence of a sizable, though hunted, mammalian fauna in these high altitude meadows. Recognition of the difficulties associated with implementing restrictive policies, and the fact that human land-use practices need not lead to degradation or to a decline in biological diversity, should lead to more inclusive conservation policies within protected areas as well as an expansion of the conservation focus beyond protected-area boundaries.     

Conservation Biology and Real-World Conservation

Abstract:  In the 20 years since Conservation Biology was launched with the aim of disseminating scientific knowledge to help conserve biodiversity and the natural world, our discipline has hugely influenced the practice of conservation. But we have had less impact outside the profession itself, and we have not transformed that practice into an enterprise large enough to achieve our conservation goals. As we look to the next 20 years, we need to become more relevant and important to the societies in which we live. To do so, the discipline of conservation biology must generate answers even when full scientific knowledge is lacking, structure scientific research around polices and debates that influence what we value as conservationists, go beyond the certitude of the biological sciences into the more contextual debates of the social sciences, engage scientifically with human-dominated landscapes, and address the question of how conservation can contribute to the improvement of human livelihoods and the quality of human life.     

Mutation and Conservation

Mutation can critically affect the viability of small populations by causing inbreeding depression, by maintaining potentially adaptive genetic variation in quantitative characters, and through the erosion of fitness by accumulation of mildly detrimental mutations. I review and integrate recent empirical and theoretical work on spontaneous mutation and its role in population viability and conservation planning. I analyze both the maintenance of potentially adaptive genetic variation in quantitative characters and the role of detrimental mutations in increasing the extinction risk of small populations. Recent experiments indicate that the rate of production of quasineutral, potentially adaptive genetic variance in quantitative characters is an order of magnitude smaller than the total mutational variance because mutations with large phenotypic effects tend to be strongly detrimental. This implies that, to maintain normal adaptive potential in quantitative characters under a balance between mutation and random genetic drift (or among mutation, drift, and stabilizing natural selection), the effective population size should be about 5000 rather than 500 (the Franklin-Soulé number). Recent theoretical results suggest that the risk of extinction due to the fixation of mildly detrimental mutations may be comparable in importance to environmental stochasticity and could substantially decrease the long-term viability of populations with effective sizes as large as a few thousand. These findings suggest that current recovery goals for many threatened and endangered species are inadequate to ensure long-term population viability.     

Conservation Businesses and Conservation Planning in a Biological Diversity Hotspot

The allocation of land to biological diversity conservation competes with other land uses and the needs of society for development, food, and extraction of natural resources. Trade‐offs between biological diversity conservation and alternative land uses are unavoidable, given the realities of limited conservation resources and the competing demands of society. We developed a conservation‐planning assessment for the South African province of KwaZulu‐Natal, which forms the central component of the Maputaland–Pondoland–Albany biological diversity hotspot. Our objective was to enhance biological diversity protection while promoting sustainable development and providing spatial guidance in the resolution of potential policy conflicts over priority areas for conservation at risk of transformation. The conservation‐planning assessment combined spatial‐distribution models for 646 conservation features, spatial economic‐return models for 28 alternative land uses, and spatial maps for 4 threats. Nature‐based tourism businesses were competitive with other land uses and could provide revenues of >US$60 million/year to local stakeholders and simultaneously help meeting conservation goals for almost half the conservation features in the planning region. Accounting for opportunity costs substantially decreased conflicts between biological diversity, agricultural use, commercial forestry, and mining. Accounting for economic benefits arising from conservation and reducing potential policy conflicts with alternative plans for development can provide opportunities for successful strategies that combine conservation and sustainable development and facilitate conservation action. Negocios de Conservación y Planificación de la Conservación en un Sitio de Importancia para la Biodiversidad