Conservation investment, particularly for charismatic and wide-ranging large mammal species, needs to be evidence-based. Despite the prevalence of this theme within the literature, examples of robust ...data being generated to guide conservation policy and funding decisions are rare. We present the first published case-study of tiger conservation in Indochina, from a site where an evidence-based approach has been implemented for this iconic predator and its prey. Despite the persistence of extensive areas of habitat, Indochina's tiger and ungulate prey populations are widely supposed to have precipitously declined in recent decades. The Seima Protection Forest (SPF), and broader Eastern Plains Landscape, was identified in 2000 as representing Cambodia's best hope for tiger recovery; reflected in its designation as a Global Priority Tiger Conservation Landscape. Since 2005 distance sampling, camera-trapping and detection-dog surveys have been employed to assess the recovery potential of ungulate and tiger populations in SPF. Our results show that while conservation efforts have ensured that small but regionally significant populations of larger ungulates persist, and density trends in smaller ungulates are stable, overall ungulate populations remain well below theoretical carrying capacity. Extensive field surveys failed to yield any evidence of tiger, and we contend that there is no longer a resident population within the SPF. This local extirpation is believed to be primarily attributable to two decades of intensive hunting; but importantly, prey densities are also currently below the level necessary to support a viable tiger population. Based on these results and similar findings from neighbouring sites, Eastern Cambodia does not currently constitute a Tiger Source Site nor meet the criteria of a Global Priority Tiger Landscape. However, SPF retains global importance for many other elements of biodiversity. It retains high regional importance for ungulate populations and potentially in the future for Indochinese tigers, given adequate prey and protection.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Conservation practice has sometimes been criticized for relying on simplistic assumptions about social contexts in natural resource management. Despite recent advances conceptualizing the interface ...between human well-being and the environment, very few studies moving from theory to practice exist. We address this gap by providing one of the first careful examinations of local conceptualizations of well-being in a conservation context, using mixed methods to examine the multidimensionality and heterogeneity of well-being conceptualizations across three sites in northern Cambodia. Each site faced different levels of conservation activities and development pressures, the latter being mainly linked to the degree of impact from economic land concessions. Our results highlight village context as a key line of variation in individual well-being, rather than differences related to age, gender, or wealth. Our results suggest that conservation incentives that mirror people’s aspirations can balance out negative trade-offs linked to compliance and can contribute to well-being. We show that multifaceted values are attached to well-being components, highlighting the importance of subjective indicators and perceptions to capture fully the social changes and impacts of conservation in complex contexts. We conclude that enquiries into subjective well-being should become an integral part of participatory assessments and adaptive management of conservation interventions.
Impact evaluation methods (mixed effects models and matching) were used to investigate the effect of protected areas (PAs) on poverty and livelihoods in Cambodia, comparing households inside PAs with ...bordering villages and controls. There was no evidence that PAs exacerbated local poverty or reduce agricultural harvests in comparison with controls. Households bordering the PAs were significantly better off due to greater access to markets and services. Non-timber forest product (NTFP) collectors inside PAs were significantly better off than controls and had greater rice harvests, because they had more secure access to land and forest resources. The PAs in Cambodia therefore have some positive impacts on households that use forest and land resources for their livelihoods.
•Long-term and landscape-scale studies are necessary to capture social effects of conservation.•We present a multi-period evaluation involving 16 villages inside and outside PAs.•PAs have slightly ...limited the increase in socio-economic status.•Yet PAs have successfully protected tenure security for traditional livelihoods.•Participants in one of three PES recorded significantly higher status.
The success of conservation interventions often depends on the multifaceted and sometimes competing interests and motivations that lead local people to sustainably manage natural resources in the first place. Yet despite an extensive literature exploring the effects of conservation on human livelihoods, there is a lack of robust evidence about which type of conservation intervention works, for whom, and how. This is partly because the social impacts of conservation interventions often affect multiple aspects of human well-being, with changes taking place over long periods during which unintended feedbacks can occur. This paper assesses the medium-term impacts of Protected Areas (PAs) and of three Payment for Environmental Services (PES) projects on three socio-economic indicators across 16 villages in Northern Cambodia. We present a multi-period evaluation including three panel surveys over six years from villages inside and outside PAs to clarify the mechanisms through which social effects of conservation take place and how this translates into the development pathways adopted by households. While livelihood improvements were recorded across all villages, we found that PAs slightly reduce households’ socio-economic status, though does not impede their development. PAs also protect traditional livelihoods. Participants in one of the three PES projects recorded higher economic status and agricultural productivity than non-participants, suggesting that there can be important social co-benefits to conservation interventions when programs are well-designed to respond to local contexts.
Implementing any conservation intervention, including Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), in the context of weak institutions is challenging. The majority of PES programs have been implemented in ...situations where the institutional framework and property rights are strong and target the behaviours of private landowners. By contrast, this paper compares three PES programs from a forest landscape in Cambodia, where land and resource rights are poorly defined, governance is poor, species populations are low and threats are high. The programs vary in the extent to which payments are made directly to individuals or to villages and the degree of involvement of local management institutions. The programs were evaluated against three criteria: the institutional arrangements, distribution of costs and benefits, and the conservation results observed. The most direct individual contracts had the simplest institutional arrangements, the lowest administrative costs, disbursed significant payments to individual villagers making a substantial contribution to local livelihoods, and rapidly protected globally significant species. However, this program also failed to build local management organisations or understanding of conservation goals. By contrast the programs that were managed by local organisations were slower to become established but crucially were widely understood and supported by local people, and were more institutionally effective. PES programs may therefore be more sustainable when they act to empower local institutions and reinforce intrinsic motivations.
•Spatial correlates of Economic Land Concession (ELC) placement and deforestation in northern Cambodia are modelled.•ELC placement does not respond to implementation criteria stated in policy ...documents.•Deforestation is more likely to occur in ELCs, and less likely in managed protected areas.•Results point to discrepancies in the implementation of the Land Law.•Development impacts may compromise long-term environmental sustainability.
Trade-offs between different land use outcomes are inevitable to meet both development and conservation agendas, especially in developing countries where aspirations for development take place within the world's most biodiversity-rich areas. Reports at the national or subnational levels about how trade-offs between conservation and development outcomes materialise once implemented are limited and regionalized analyses are required to understand how they materialise spatially once policies are executed. We take the case study of northern Cambodia, where both protected areas (PAs), as a conservation policy, and Economic Land Concessions (ELCs), as a developmental agricultural intensification strategy, have been implemented. We explore the influences on placement of ELCs and the extent to which they overlap with protected areas, using mixed effect models. We then determine the predictors of deforestation in the study area between 2008 and 2013, including presence of ELCs and PAs. ELC placement does not respond to expected socio-environmental factors related to implementation criteria in policy documents, and is not influenced by the presence of PAs. ELCs represent the most significant driver of deforestation of the factors considered. PAs limit deforestation but only if well-managed. This failure to achieve the balanced trade-off between conservation and development outcomes which policies intend points to development impacts compromising environmental sustainability in the long-run.
With increasing coastal infrastructure and use of novel materials there is a need to investigate the colonisation of assemblages associated with new structures, how these differ to natural and other ...artificial habitats and their potential impact on regional biodiversity. The colonisation of Europe's first artificial surf reef (ASR) was investigated at Boscombe on the south coast of England (2009-2014) and compared with assemblages on existing natural and artificial habitats. The ASR consists of geotextile bags filled with sand located 220m offshore on a sandy sea bed at a depth of 0-5m. Successional changes in epibiota were recorded annually on differently orientated surfaces and depths using SCUBA diving and photography. Mobile faunal assemblages were sampled using Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUV). Distinct stages in colonisation were observed, commencing with bryozoans and green algae which were replaced by red algae, hydroids and ascidians, however there were significant differences in assemblage structure with depth and orientation. The reef is being utilised by migratory, spawning and juvenile life-history stages of fish and invertebrates. The number of non-native species was larger than on natural reefs and other artificial habitats and some occupied a significant proportion of the structure. The accumulation of 180 benthic and mobile taxa, recorded to date, appears to have arisen from a locally rich and mixed pool of native and non-native species. Provided no negative invasive impacts are detected on nearby protected reefs the creation of novel yet diverse habitats may be considered a beneficial outcome.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
1. Ecosystem services are the benefits humans obtain from ecosystems. The importance of research into ecosystem services has been widely recognized, and rapid progress is being made. However, the ...prevailing approach to quantifying ecosystem services is still based on static analyses and single services, ignoring system dynamics, uncertainty and feedbacks. This is not only partly due to a lack of mechanistic understanding of processes and a dearth of empirical data, but also due to a failure to engage fully with the interdisciplinarity of the problem. 2. We argue that there is a tendency to ignore the feedbacks between and within both social and ecological systems, and a lack of explicit consideration of uncertainty. Metrics need to be developed that can predict thresholds, which requires strong linkages to underlying processes, while the development of policy for management of ecosystem services needs to be based on a broader understanding of value and drivers of human well-being. 3. We highlight the complexities, gaps in current knowledge and research, and the potentially promising avenues for future investigation in four priority research areas: agendas, processes, metrics and uncertainty. 4. Synthesis and applications. The research interest in the field of ecosystem services is rapidly expanding, and can contribute significantly to the sustainable management of natural resources. However, a narrow disciplinary approach, or an approach which does not consider feedbacks within and between ecological and social systems, has the potential to produce dangerously misleading policy recommendations. In contrast, if we explicitly acknowledge and address uncertainties and complexities in the provision of ecosystem services, progress may appear slower but our models will be substantially more robust and informative about the effects of environmental change.
Overexploitation represents a significant threat to wildlife, with the severest impacts felt by slow growing, economically valuable species. Governments often seek to address this through regulating ...utilisation and trade of species, which is commonly catalysed by multi-lateral environmental agreements (MEAs) such as the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES). However, it is often unclear to what degree CITES and associated regulations lead to tangible conservation outcomes. Robust impact assessments are needed to understand whether regulations are effective for achieving biodiversity conservation goals, and to learn lessons for future policy interventions. Yet such assessments are hindered by data paucity, bias, complexity and uncertainty. Here we discuss key challenges for assessing the impact of regulations on the use and trade of wildlife, and offer a practical approach to overcome them. Our approach combines an integrated framework for collating and analysing disparate and methodologically inconsistent data with a robust process to establish causal inference (and hence assess impact). This framework and process can be applied to any regulation, species or country context. To demonstrate its utility we apply this approach to the case of manta ray utilisation and trade (Mobula alfredi and M. Birostris) in Indonesia. This case study is particularly important due to the recent increase in the number of commercially important elasmobranchs listed in CITES appendices, with Parties adopting various national-level regulations to implement their CITES commitments. However, it is unclear to what degree these listings lead to meaningful regulatory reform, and much-needed reductions in fishing mortality, utilisation and onward trade. Indonesia is also a priority country for effective regulatory reform, due to its role as a major source country for international elasmobranch trade. Overall, we highlight challenges and opportunities for assessing the impact of wildlife trade regulations, which are generalisable across species and contexts, and provide the first attempt to assess the impact of such regulatory change on manta ray mortality in a source country. We also offer recommendation for future implementation and evaluation, emphasising the importance of mixed-methods, multiple datasets, and explicit acknowledgement of bias and complexity.
•Understanding the impact of regulations on the use of trade of wildlife is challenging.•Data paucity, bias and uncertainty need to be explicitly addressed in impact assessments.•Integrated frameworks can help to compile and assess disparate data.•Techniques from process tracing can aid causal inference.•The impact of protected species regulations on manta rays in Indonesia is assessed.
Great ideas are not necessarily doomed to failure but they should avoid unduly simplifying the social, economic, political and institutional complexity of the problem. Since the Bali conference of ...the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2007 the principle of providing financial incentives to developing countries for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) has gained widespread acceptance in international policy.
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