Beyond the lens of conservation Keller, Eva
Studies in environmental anthropology and ethnobiology ; v. 20,
2015, 2015., 20150115, 2015-03-03, Volume:
20
eBook, Book
The global agenda of Nature conservation has led to the creation of the Masoala National Park in Madagascar and to an exhibit in its support at a Swiss zoo, the centerpiece of which is a ...mini-rainforest replica. Does such a cooperation also trigger a connection between ordinary people in these two far-flung places? The study investigates how the Malagasy farmers living at the edge of the park perceive the conservation enterprise and what people in Switzerland see when looking towards Madagascar through the lens of the zoo exhibit. It crystallizes that the stories told in either place have almost nothing in common: one focuses on power and history, the other on morality and progress. Thus, instead of building a bridge, Nature conservation widens the gap between people in the North and the South.
Protecting endangered species of animals and plants is a goal that almost everyone supports in principle—but in practice private landowners have often opposed the regulations of the Endangered ...Species Act, which, they argue, unfairly limits their right to profit from their property. To encourage private landowners to cooperate voluntarily in species conservation and to mitigate the economic burden of doing so, the government and nonprofit land trusts have created a number of incentive programs, including conservation easements, leases, habitat banking, habitat conservation planning, safe harbors, candidate conservation agreements, and the “no surprise” policy. In this book, lawyers, economists, political scientists, historians, and zoologists come together to assess the challenges and opportunities for using economic incentives as compensation for protecting species at risk on private property. They examine current programs to see how well they are working and also offer ideas for how these programs could be more successful. Their ultimate goal is to better understand how economic incentive schemes can be made both more cost-effective and more socially acceptable, while respecting a wide range of views regarding opportunity costs, legal standing, biological effectiveness, moral appropriateness, and social context.
The Oak Ridges Moraine battles Sandberg, L. Anders; Wekerle, Gerda R; Gilbert, Liette
The Oak Ridges Moraine battles,
c2013, 2013, 2013-06-17
eBook
"The Oak Ridges Moraine is a unique landform that generated heated battles over the future of nature conservation, sprawl, and development in the Toronto region at the turn of the twenty-first ...century. This book provides a careful, multi-faceted history and policy analysis of planning issues and citizen activism on the Moraine's future in the face of rapid urban expansion. The Oak Ridges Moraine Battles captures the hidden aspects of a story that received a great deal of attention in the local and national news, and that ultimately led to provincial legislation aimed at protecting the Moraine and Ontario's Greenbelt. By giving voice to a range of actors - residents, activists, civil servants, scientists, developers and aggregate and other resource users, the book demonstrates how space on the urban periphery was reshaped in the Toronto region. The authors ask hard questions about who is included and excluded when the preservation of nature challenges the relentless process of urbanization." --pub. desc.
Nature crime Duffy, Rosaleen
2010, 20100831, 2010-08-31
eBook, Book
In this impressively researched, alarming book, Rosaleen Duffy investigates the world of nature conservation, arguing that the West's attitude to endangered wildlife is shallow, self-contradictory, ...and ultimately very damaging. Analyzing the workings of the black-market wildlife industry, Duffy points out that illegal trading is often the direct result of Western consumer desires, from coltan for cellular phones to exotic meats sold in London street markets. She looks at the role of ecotourism, showing how Western travelers contribute-often unwittingly-to the destruction of natural environments. Most strikingly, she argues that the imperatives of Western-style conservation often result in serious injustice to local people, who are branded as "problems" and subject to severe restrictions on their way of life and even extrajudicial killings.
For most, conservation conjures the notion of minimizing human presence on wildlands to avoid harmful impacts. But too often, this defensive approach has pitted local communities against ...conservationists, wasting opportunities for collaboration and setting the stage for ongoing conflict. One conservation approach turns that paradigm on its head, and instead connects conservation with the well-being of human communities, setting both up for success. Called Full Nature, this approach-pioneered by conservationist Ignacio Jimenez-seeks to promote fully functional natural landscapes that are tied to the basic needs of the communities in their midst. They become a self-sustaining cycle, where nature and people are integrated ecologically, socially, and politically.Effective Conservation is based on Jimnez's experience managing conservation projects on three continents over thirty years. Jimnez offers a pragmatic approach to conservation that puts the focus on working with people-neighbors, governments, politicians, businesses, media-to ensure they have a long-term stake in protecting and restoring parks and wildlife. Jimnez guides readers through the practical considerations of designing, analyzing, and managing effective conservation programs. Chapters explore intelligence gathering, communication, planning, conflict management, and evaluation techniques, and include numerous text boxes showcasing examples of successful conservation projects from all continents. A companion website (islandpress.org/effective-conservation) includes additional case studies, expanded texts, and links to additional resources.This highly readable manual, newly translated into English after successful Spanish and Portuguese editions, provides a groundbreaking and time-proven formula for successful conservation projects around the world that bring together parks, people, and nature.
Nearly 90 percent of the earth's land surface is directly affected by human infrastructure and activities, yet less than 5 percent is legally "protected" for biodiversity conservation--and even most ...large protected areas have people living inside their boundaries. In all but a small fraction of the earth's land area, then, conservation and people must coexist. Conservation is a resource for all those who aim to reconcile biodiversity with human livelihoods. It traces the historical roots of modern conservation thought and practice, and explores current perspectives from evolutionary and community ecology, conservation biology, anthropology, political ecology, economics, and policy. The authors examine a suite of conservation strategies and perspectives from around the world, highlighting the most innovative and promising avenues for future efforts. Exploring, highlighting, and bridging gaps between the social and natural sciences as applied in the practice of conservation, this book provides a broad, practically oriented view. It is essential reading for anyone involved in the conservation process--from academic conservation biology to the management of protected areas, rural livelihood development to poverty alleviation, and from community-based natural resource management to national and global policymaking.
The search for a root economics spectrum (RES) has been sparked by recent interest in trait-based plant ecology. By analogy with the one-dimensional leaf economics spectrum (LES), fine-root traits ...are hypothesised to match leaf traits which are coordinated along one axis from resource acquisitive to conservative traits. However, our literature review and meta-level analysis reveal no consistent evidence of an RES mirroring an LES. Instead the RES appears to be multidimensional. We discuss three fundamental differences contributing to the discrepancy between these spectra. First, root traits are simultaneously constrained by various environmental drivers not necessarily related to resource uptake. Second, above- and belowground traits cannot be considered analogues, because they function differently and might not be related to resource uptake in a similar manner. Third, mycorrhizal interactions may offset selection for an RES. Understanding and explaining the belowground mechanisms and trade-offs that drive variation in root traits, resource acquisition and plant performance across species, thus requires a fundamentally different approach than applied aboveground. We therefore call for studies that can functionally incorporate the root traits involved in resource uptake, the complex soil environment and the various soil resource uptake mechanisms – particularly the mycorrhizal pathway – in a multidimensional root trait framework.
Naturschutzprojekte der Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung in Korea? Wer an Südkorea denkt, denkt wohl hauptsächlich an moderne Handys und Autos. Und bei Nordkorea? An Armut und Atombomben. Kaum einer würde bei ...Korea zuerst an Naturschutz denken. Und dennoch haben sich hier Möglichkeiten ergeben, die auch helfen können, das geteilte Land einmal wieder auszusöhnen.
Plant diversity has been shown to determine the composition and functioning of soil biota. Although root-derived organic inputs are discussed as the main drivers of soil communities, experimental ...evidence is scarce. While there is some evidence that higher root biomass at high plant diversity increases substrate availability for soil biota, several studies have speculated that the quantity and diversity of root inputs into the soil, i.e. though root exudates, drive plant diversity effects on soil biota. Here we used a microcosm experiment to study the role of plant species richness on the biomass of soil bacteria and fungi as well as fungal-to-bacterial ratio via root biomass and root exudates. Plant diversity significantly increased shoot biomass, root biomass, the amount of root exudates, bacterial biomass, and fungal biomass. Fungal biomass increased most with increasing plant diversity resulting in a significant shift in the fungal-to-bacterial biomass ratio at high plant diversity. Fungal biomass increased significantly with plant diversity-induced increases in root biomass and the amount of root exudates. These results suggest that plant diversity enhances soil microbial biomass, particularly soil fungi, by increasing root-derived organic inputs.
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