我国湿地状况存在问题及保护对策

本文对我国湿地现状进行了概述,探讨了湿地开发中存在的问题,并针对我国湿地现状提出了保护对策。     

Private land management for biodiversity conservation

As human influences fragment native communities and ecosystems, remaining land must be better managed to conserve many elements of biodiversity. Much of this land is privately held, yet traditional private land-use management practices often further diminish biodiversity by promoting favored or edge-adapted species. Today, private land stewards are increasingly aware of and concerned about biodiversity, but little guidance exists for them to make land-use decisions incorporating principles and knowledge from conservation biology. Consequently, most management strategies are highly subjective. This article addresses that problem by introducing current conservation wisdom to management and use of private lands. The result is a model program for developing land management plans, with the goal of maintaining viable populations and natural distributions of native species and communities from a landscape perspective. The program establishes a protocol for classifying sites according to the importance of their species, communities, and other elements to global and regional biodiversity. These site classifications are based on the management objectives necessary to maintain important elements. Once managers classify a site, the program provides management standards, general stewardship principles, examples of land management strategies, and basic monitoring and evaluation procedures.     

Biological inventories and computer data bases: Their role in environmental assessments

An important goal of biological inventories is to provide information for environmental assessments of development projects and biodiversity conservation. Likewise, computer data bases have been proposed for efficient compilation and management of biological information. However, the attributes of biological inventories and computer data bases have not been examined with respect to environmental assessments. This article presents a case study in Mexico to analyze the current limitations of biological inventories for successful environmental assessments and biodiversity conservation in developing countries. Results demonstrate that, considering the objectives of environmental assessments and information constraints, computerized biological inventories should be assembled with a minimum of record fields: taxonomic data and georeferenced collection localities. Furthermore, it is proposed that environmental assessments should become a feedback to biological inventories and an important financial support to universities and research institutions in developing countries.     

Private Property Rights and Selective Private Forest Conservation: Could a Nordic Hybrid Policy Address a United States Problem?

Political and legal conflicts between the need for targeted private forest conservation and the continued assurance of private property rights in the U.S. presents a seemingly intractable resource management problem. Scandinavian use of habitat protection areas on private forests offers an additional tool that may be suitable for solving the historical and on-going tension found within U.S. efforts to reconcile desires to maintain lands in a forested condition while also respecting private property rights. This article presents a comparative cross-sectional policy analysis of Sweden, Finland, and the U.S., supported with a supplemental case example from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Similarities in all three countries among forest ownership patterns, use of public subsidies, and changing attitudes towards conservation are generally encouraging. Additionally, Virginia’s current consideration and development of state-wide forest policies focused on forestland and open space conservation suggests both a need and an opportunity to systematically assess the applicability of the Nordic forest reserve approach to local private forest conservation. Future research at a high-resolution, and specifically at the state level, should focus on the social and political factors that would ultimately determine the viability of a forest reserve program.     

Creating biodiversity partnerships: The Nature Conservancy's perspective

The Nature Conservancy is an international organization dedicated to the mission of conserving biodiversity throughout the world. By working in a nonconfrontational manner, an approach that has promoted both government and corporate sponsorship of its activities, The Nature Conservancy has developed symbiotic relationships with many electric utility companies. Drawing on the organization's experiences, and the experiences of the author as the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Nature Conservancy, five broad areas of cooperation between conservation organizations and the utility industry are explored: landmanagement agreements, mitigation projects, conflictavoidance programs, program support, and volunteer activities. The paper is concluded with comments on the future trends of biodiversity conservation, challenging the electric utility industry to become involved with conservation efforts by forming cooperative partnerships.     

Managing for biodiversity: Emerging ideas for the electric utility industry—summary statement

The conference entitled Managing for Biodiversity: Emerging Ideas for the Electric Utility Industry was held in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA, during 19–20 March 1996. This paper provides an overview of the key points, conclusions, and recommendations from both the presentations/papers and the discussions throughout the conference.     

Even Conservation Rules Are Made to Be Broken: Implications for Biodiversity

Despite efforts to enclose and control conservation zones around the world, direct human impacts in conservation areas continue, often resulting from clandestine violations of conservation rules through outright poaching, strategic agricultural encroachment, or noncompliance. Nevertheless, next to nothing is actually known about the spatially and temporally explicit patterns of anthropogenic disturbance resulting from such noncompliance. This article reviews current understandings of ecological disturbance and conservation noncompliance, concluding that differing forms of noncompliance hold differing implications for diversity. The authors suggest that forms of anthropogenic patchy disturbance resulting from violation may maintain, if not enhance, floral diversity. They therefore argue for extended empirical investigation of such activities and call for conservation biologists to work with social scientists to assess this conservation reality by analyzing how and when incomplete enforcement and rule-breaking drive ecological change.     

Biodiversity laws: State experiences

The Western Governors' Association (WGA) includes both the public lands states with their issues and the plains states, which are 98% privately owned. WGA deals with most legislation affecting biodiversity, whether the effect is direct or tangential. It will probably not be possible, or desirable, for one entity to be in charge of biodiversity conservation. The Endangered Species Act, public lands laws, agricultural laws, water law, environmental laws, and funding legislation all affect biodiversity conservation and the responsibility for it. None of them on their own are enough, and most can cause harmful unintended consequences for biodiversity. The experience of western states in developing consensus principles for reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act provides an example of common-sense ways to improve management of biodiversity, notwithstanding the complexity and large stakes involved. The WGA's proposed changes call for increasing the role of states, streamlining the act, and increasing certainty for landowners and water users. To achieve sustainable conservation for biodiversity, the better question is not “Who is/should be in charge?”, it is “How do we get this done?” To answer this, we need goals, guidance, and bottom lines from federal laws, and management and oversight at the state level, but they all need to support local on-the-ground partnerships. Sustainable conservation requires the active participation of those who live there. WGA's experience in coordinating the Great Plains Partnership as well as its work with watershed efforts shed light on what to expect. Multilevel partnerships are not easy and require a different way of doing business. The ad hoc, sitespecific processes that result do not lend themselves to being legislated, fit into organizational boxes, or scored on a budget sheet. They do require common sense and a longterm perspective.     

Marine Protected Areas and Dugong Conservation Along Australia's Indian Ocean Coast

/ The coastal zone of the Indian Ocean is coming under increasing pressure from human activities. Australia may be one of the few countries in this region that can afford to take adequate conservation measures in the near future. As it also has one of the longest Indian Ocean coastlines, Australia has the opportunity, and responsibility, to make a meaningful contribution to the conservation of Indian Ocean biodiversity. Threatened species, including marine turtles, inshore dolphins, and dugongs are an important component of that biodiversity. The dugong has been exterminated from several areas in the Indian Ocean, and it appears to be particularly threatened by mesh netting andhunting. Its long-term survival may depend on adequate protection in Australia, which contains the largest known Indian Ocean populations. This protection will require, in part, an appropriate system of marine protected areas (MPAs). This paper examines the adequacy of MPAs along Australia's Indian Ocean coast. Dugongs occur in two MPAs in Western Australia. The proposed expansion of the system of marine reserves is based primarily on representative samples of ecosystems from each biogeographic region. It is inadequate because it does not take into account the distribution and relative abundance of threatened species. If the conservation of biodiversity is to be maximized, the system of MPAs should incorporate both representativeness and the needs of threatened species. The level of protection provided by MPAs in Western Australia is low. Under current government policy potentially damaging activities, including commercial fishing, seismic surveys, and oil and gas drilling are permitted in protected areas.KEY WORDS: Marine protected areas; Dugongs; Western Australia; Indian Ocean; Conservation; Biodiversity     

Estimating the opportunity costs of biodiversity protection in the Brigalow Belt, New South Wales

The New South Wales Government recently introduced the Native Vegetation Conservation Act to protect the native grassland and woodland of the state. The Act protects biodiversity by preventing farmers from clearing such vegetation on their properties but, as a consequence, reduces farm incomes and land values. An economic model of the relationship between land value and percentage of farm in native vegetation is integrated with an ecological model of the relationship between species lost and percentage of the farms in native vegetation. The integrated framework is applied to estimate the opportunity costs of the Act for one important agricultural area of the state, the northern part of the Brigalow Belt South Bio-Region. If all the vegetation were protected, the reduction in land value would be at least 14.3%, which is an opportunity cost of at least 148.5 dollars m for the area. Both the benefits and costs of biodiversity protection must be accounted for, so risk simulations are then combined with benefit-cost analysis to compare the benefits of biodiversity protection to these costs.     

Continuity and change: understanding livelihood shifts and adaptation in coastal Belize 1830–2012

This paper situates livelihood adaptations in two coastal villages within the broader context of Belize's colonial and post-colonial history and environmental processes of change. Through observations, qualitative interviews, and archival reviews, we explore the dynamics of livelihood change and analyse the diverse factors that have been influencing options and adaptation over time. The results reveal that both villages have undergone profound changes in livelihoods and productive activities on several occasions. While the villages' histories, geographies, and cultures are different, similarities in long-term trends include the transition from land-based to marine resources and the decline of small-scale agriculture. Our analysis illuminates the deep connections between local livelihoods and national as well as global political–economic processes, which favour extraction and export of natural resources throughout the period investigated, whereby resource access and market mechanisms create and constrict adaptation options for the villagers. Gradual environmental changes, such as erosion, and episodic events, such as hurricanes, have also influenced livelihood shifts and adaptations in combination with a wide range of political–economic factors. Despite the demonstrated importance of the influence of history and dimensions of political economy on contemporary adaptation options in the communities studied, the literature on climate change adaptation inadequately accounts for these factors. This paper adds new perspectives to current debates in climate change research by emphasising that longer temporal dimensions of livelihood change are important for understanding the current context for adaptation.     

What Makes Them Pay? Values of Volunteer Tourists Working for Sea Turtle Conservation

As charismatic mega-fauna, sea turtles attract many volunteers to conservation programs. This article examines the ways in which volunteers value sea turtles, in the specific context of volunteers working with the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, at Tortuguero, Costa Rica. The complexity of volunteer values is explored using a qualitative approach. In-depth interviews with 31 volunteers were conducted in July of 1999 and 2000. Interviews probed, among other things, interest in sea turtles and their conservation, motives for participating, and the most gratifying parts of their volunteer experience. Results show that volunteers hold multiple and complex values for sea turtles, but particular values dominate. Results have implications for understanding human–environment relations and the emerging study of volunteer tourism. There are also management implications for volunteer programs hoping to attract participants.     

Tropical montane cloud forests: current threats and opportunities for their conservation and sustainable management in Mexico

Tropical montane cloud forests (TMCF) are among the most threatened ecosystems globally in spite of their high strategic value for sustainable development due to the key role played by these forests in hydrological cycle maintenance and as reservoirs of endemic biodiversity. Resources for effective conservation and management programs are rarely sufficient, and criteria must be applied to prioritize TMCF for conservation action. This paper reports a priority analysis of the 13 main regions of TMCF distribution in Mexico, based on four criteria: (1) forest quality, (2) threats to forest permanence, (3) threats to forest integrity, and (4) opportunities for conservation. Due to the diverse socio-environmental conditions of the local communities living in Mexican TMCF regions, their associated social characteristics were also evaluated to provide a background for the planning of conservation actions. A set of indicators was defined for the measurement of each criterion. To assign priority values for subregions within each main region, an international team of 40 participants evaluated all the indicators using multicriteria decision-making analysis. This procedure enabled the identification of 15 subregions of critical priority, 17 of high priority, and 10 of medium priority; three more were not analysed due to lack of information. The evaluation revealed a number of subjects that had hitherto been undetected and that may prove useful for prioritization efforts in other regions where TMCF is similarly documented and faces equally severe threats. Based on this analysis, key recommendations are outlined to advance conservation objectives in those TMCF areas that are subjected to high pressure on forest resources.     

Managing an Endangered Asian Bovid in an Australian National Park: The Role and Limitations of Ecological-Economic Models in Decision-Making

Should north Australia’s extensive populations of feral animals be eradicated for conservation, or exploited as a rare opportunity for Indigenous enterprise in remote regions? We examine options for a herd of banteng, a cattle species endangered in its native Asian range but abundant in Garig Gunak Barlu National Park, an Aboriginal land managed jointly by traditional owners and a conservation agency in the Northern Territory of Australia. We reflect on the paradoxes that arise when trying to deal effectively with such complex and contested issues in natural resource management using decision-support tools (ecological-economic models), by identifying the trade-offs inherent in protecting values whilst also providing incomes for Indigenous landowners.     

Influence of Targets and Assessment Region Size on Perceived Conservation Priorities

We used an existing conservation opportunity area (OA) data layer for four contiguous ecological subsections within the Ozark Highlands to quantitatively evaluate the influence of conservation targets and assessment region size on conservation priorities. OAs are natural and seminatural land-cover patches that are away from roads and away from patch edges. To evaluate the influence of targets, we assigned a priority score to each OA polygon for each of five different conservation targets, including land-cover patch size, landform representation, target vertebrate richness, target breeding bird richness, and target land cover. The top-scoring OAs for each target were added to an OA selection set for that target until 50% of the study area was chosen. These five OA selection sets were overlain to quantify overlap in priorities. Only 1.6% of the study area, or 2.1% of all OA polygons, was selected by all five targets. To evaluate the influence of assessment region size, we compared results of priority ranking of OAs relative to the entire study area against a merged set of priority rankings established separately relative to each of the four subsections within the study area. When high-priority OAs were added until 25% of the region was within the selection set for each of the five targets, the sets based on the whole study area versus each subsection evaluated separately overlapped from 45.4% to 81.9%. Thus, perceived priorities of conservation assessments are strongly influenced both by the targets that are evaluated and by the size of the assessment region.     

Tree Structure and Diversity in Human-Impacted Littoral Forests, Madagascar

This research surveyed human-impacted littoral forests in southeastern Madagascar to determine (i) how forest structural features, indicative of human impact, are related to total, utilitarian, and endemic tree diversity; (ii) the distribution, abundance, and demographics of tree species groups (i.e., total, useful, endemic) across the landscape; and (iii) the amount of basal area available per human use category. We also use these data to consider issues of sustainable use and how human impact may influence littoral forest tree community composition across the landscape. Within 22 transects of 400 m² each, we recorded a total of 135 tree species and 2155 individuals. Seventy-nine species (58%) were utilitarian and 56 (42%) were nonutilitarian species. Of the 2155 individuals, 1827 (84%) trees were utilitarian species. We recorded 23 endemic species (17% of the total species) and 17 (74%) of these were utilitarian species. Basal area was significantly correlated with Shannon Weiner Index values for total (r = 0.64, P < 0.01), utilitarian (r = 0.58, P < 0.01), and endemic tree diversity (r = 0.85, P < 0.01). Basal area was significantly correlated with the Simpson’s index values for the endemic species (r = 0.74, P < 0.01). These correlations suggest that endemic tree species, of high global conservation value, may be the species group most influenced by changes in forest structure. Utilitarian species constituted 84% of the total basal area. The use category contributing the highest amount of basal area to the landscape was firewood. The results presented herein demonstrate that the landscape of southeastern Madagascar, commonly perceived as degraded, retains high value for both global conservation purposes and for local livelihoods. Thus, valuable opportunities may exist for developing conservation incentives that leverage both global and local conservation needs.     

Hydrological and Oceanographic Considerations for Integrated Coastal Zone Management in Southern Belize

9 m³, a volume equal to the basin. During the rainy season, June–September, 84% of the annual discharge occurs, which causes the bay to become brackish. Port Honduras serves as an important nursery ground for many species of commercially important fish and shellfish. The removal of forest cover in the uplands, as a result of agriculture, aquaculture, and village development, is likely to significantly accelerate erosion. Increased erosion would reduce soil fertility in the uplands and negatively affect mangrove, seagrass, and coral reef productivity in the receiving coastal embayment. Alternatively, the conservation of an existing protected areas corridor, linking the Maya Mountains to the Caribbean Sea, is likely to enhance regional sustainable economic development. This study aims to support environmental management at the scale of the “ecoscape”—a sensible ecological unit of linked watersheds and coastal and marine environments.     

VALUING IRRIGATION WATER IN PUNJAB PROVINCE,PAKISTAN: A LINEAR PROGRAMMING APPROACH1

ABSTRACT: Linear programming models of a representative farm in a district of Pakistan's Punjab Province are formulated for the purpose of estimating the value of irrigation water. The models provide for choices among several irrigation levels for each potential crop. Solutions of the model for several water supply situations provide the basis for approximating the total, average, and marginal values of irrigation water. Prices for important crops in Pakistan are controlled at levels below their levels elsewhere in the world, so models are specified for both financial (domestic price) and economic (world price) scenarios. The value of water to society (its economic value) is high relative to the costs of some generally available water-augmenting investments, while financial values, which measure water management and allocation incentives faced by farmers, are less than the corresponding economic values. At current water supply levels, incremental returns to added water estimated from the economic model would justify investments in water-saving or water-augmenting technologies, while such a decision would be barely attractive assuming financial prices. While present government commodity price policies may serve to protect low-income and non-farm members of the population, they also inhibit farmer investments to increase the productivity of scarce irrigation water.     

Respective influence of habitat conditions and management regimes on prealpine calcareous grasslands

The calcareous grasslands of the south-western French Alps have been poorly studied, although they provide suitable habitat for rare plant species and communities. The separate and combined effects on calcareous grassland communities of habitat conditions (lithology, soil moisture) and management regimes (grazing intensity, cutting regime) were studied using constrained ordination techniques (canonical correspondence analysis with variance partitioning). Among the explanatory variables considered, the most important factor determining floristic composition was lithology, which explained 11.9% of floristic variability, followed by grazing intensity (6.0%). Additive effects of management and lithology explained 23.9% of floristic variability. Species niche amplitude was measured by conditional variances of samples along main ordination axes, in order to define adequate conservation management for the rarest short-lived species with narrow niche breadth on both habitat and management gradients.