Transforming Protected Area Management in China Xu, Weihua; Pimm, Stuart L.; Du, Ao ...
Trends in ecology & evolution (Amsterdam),
September 2019, 2019-09-00, 20190901, Letnik:
34, Številka:
9
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We discuss institutional reforms to China’s protected area management. Currently (as elsewhere), protected areas suffer fragmented management, lack of a comprehensive classification, inadequate ...coverage of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and divided, inconsistent legislation. We recommend establishing a new system of protected area management that can address past difficulties by using ongoing institutional reforms as unprecedented opportunities.
Improving the management of protected areas through the implementation of planned management measures is of key importance for the adequate protection and conservation of protected areas. One of the ...many opportunities that can be undertaken in this sense is volunteering, which is a basic and key means of active participation of citizens in solving the issues of wider community. Volunteering contributes to the creation of a stable and, for the individual, attractive social community that offers the possibility of action in the field of nature protection and management of protected areas. The aim of this paper is to analyze the results achieved through various volunteering activities within protected areas, as models of good practice, as well as to provide an overview of the possibilities for increasing the capacity of managers in human and material resources in the process of managing protected areas, which includes the process of involving volunteers. The results of various projects show that volunteers can contribute to the management's activities in different ways, and primarily by performing specific tasks for which the managers lack enough capacity. Moreover, volunteering within protected areas achieves a higher level of awareness among individuals, especially young people, about growing problems in the field of nature protection, challenges in managing protected areas, but also about the way each individual can contribute to the conservation of nature for future generations.
Protected Area Governance and Management presents a compendium of original text, case studies and examples from across the world, by drawing on the literature, and on the knowledge and experience of ...those involved in protected areas. The book synthesises current knowledge and cutting-edge thinking from the diverse branches of practice and learning relevant to protected area governance and management. It is intended as an investment in the skills and competencies of people and consequently, the effective governance and management of protected areas for which they are responsible, now and into the future. The global success of the protected area concept lies in its shared vision to protect natural and cultural heritage for the long term, and organisations such as International Union for the Conservation of Nature are a unifying force in this regard. Nonetheless, protected areas are a socio-political phenomenon and the ways that nations understand, govern and manage them is always open to contest and debate. The book aims to enlighten, educate and above all to challenge readers to think deeply about protected areas—their future and their past, as well as their present.
Traditional rural landscapes host a biocultural heritage acquired by rural societies, developed in a secular adaptation with nature. Hedgerows play a key role in preserving biocultural diversity and ...associated ecosystem services. Despite their benefits, in some European regions inappropriate hedge management has led to a drastic degradation of hedgerows, with significant effects on natural and biocultural diversity, landscape connectivity and sustainable flow of ecosystem services. In Central Spain, an ancient hedgerow landscape constitutes a valuable natural and cultural heritage recognized by the establishment of different protection categories. We quantify the main tendency of change of this landscape over time, detecting a process of rural social-ecological decoupling both inside and outside protected areas. The hedgerow network has progressively been degraded and destructured together with the decline and local extinction of woody species, all of them of traditional use and some recorded in red lists for species conservation. This reveals weaknesses in the design and management plans of protected areas that should be effective in conserving the heritage of cultural landscapes and their valuable biocultural diversity and provision of ecosystem services. There is a need to elaborate regulations for the protection of hedgerow landscapes in the Spanish legislation, based on social-ecological relationships.
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•We studied an ancient hedgerow network of medieval origin in Central Spain.•There is a process of rural social-ecological decoupling of the hedgerow landscape.•The hedgerow network has been degraded both inside and outside protected areas.•Multiple use hedge species decline affecting the provision of ecosystem services.•New regulations for the protection of hedgerow landscapes are needed.
Biological invasion poses a major threat to biodiversity and conservation efforts in protected areas. The Greater Shennongjia Area (GSA) is one of China's 16 key areas for biodiversity, as stated in ...the China National Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Action Plan. However, the local authorities lack appropriate data on the extent and impact of exotic species in protected areas, as well as lack the capacity and motivation to properly plan for exotic species strategy and action plan to support both prevention, control as well as management of exotic plants in their jurisdiction. In addition, while most previous studies have focused on exotic species in protected areas, little effort has been devoted to specifying which environmental factors contribute to the difference between protected and non-protected areas. Here, we explored the current distribution pattern of the richness and abundance of exotic species in relation to environmental variables within the GSA. In total, we found 84 exotic plant species, of which 41 exotic species within the protected areas, in 64 genera and 27 families, predominately from Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Poaceae. The generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) revealed that the protection status and the distance to human settlements were the most important predictors of exotic plant richness and abundance in the GSA. Our results showed that the average exotic plant richness and coverage in the protected areas were 22% and 31% lower than outside the protected areas, respectively. Such differences were probably the result of anthropogenic activities (e.g., proximity to human settlements and the proportion of cropland). Although protected areas provide an important barrier against plant invasions, invasion may be a tricky issue for protected area management in the future. The Alliance of Protected areas in Western Hubei and Eastern Chongqing will need to further consider stringent control and management strategies for the entry of exotic species into protected areas to effectively maintain the continuity and integrity of the GSA's biodiversity and ecosystems. Our results provided guidance and support to enhance the capacity of scientific and effective management and sustainable development of the Shennongjia World Natural Heritage Site and other protected areas.
•41 exotic plants, 68.3% of which are invasive inside the protected areas in the GSA.•Protected areas are lower on the richness and abundance of exotic plants.•The less anthropogenic pressures in protected areas, the less exotic plants invasion.•Exotic plants are threatening the OUV of Shennongjia World Natural Heritage Site.•The Alliance of Protected Areas should proactively defend against exotic species.
The many Gondwanic vegetation types found across the extensive latitudes and elevation gradients of South America's southern cone contribute to Chile's global biodiversity hotspot ranking. Species ...loss in global biodiversity hotspots is an ongoing climate change concern and land managers need spatially explicit climate risk maps to adapt conservation strategies to climate change in these areas. We modeled future climate risk for Chile's terrestrial vegetation using a high-resolution vegetation map and tested the relationship to climate risk for each type's latitudinal and elevation range. We found that 43.6% of all vegetation has high climate risk in Global Circulation Models (GCMs) under a high emissions scenario (RCP8.5). All forest types in the country, including Southern Beech (Nothofagus sp.), Alerce (Fitzroya cupressoides), Araucaria (Araucaria araucana), and Sclerophyllous, as well as the Valdivian rainforest, Altiplanic Steppes, and Salares, face high levels of climate risk. Tests for trends in risk across elevation and latitude showed that exposure for all types increased with elevation based on the MIROC5 GCM, and decreased with latitude based on the Had2GEM-ES GCM. Our results suggest that vegetation types with smaller latitudinal ranges typically have higher levels of climate risk, but a type's elevation range is not significantly correlated with risk of exposure. We identified climatically stable areas which could act as vegetation refugia in Patagonia, the central Andes mountains between latitudes 27.5°S and 32.5°S, and some coastal areas. Conservation strategies in Chile should include the protection of climatically stable areas to safeguard current Gondwanic biodiversity and active habitat restoration in climatically exposed areas to facilitate vegetation shifts.
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•We provide an in situ climate risk analysis of vegetation and protected areas (PAs).•Under RCP8.5, 27.8–43.6% of PAs and 32.2–43.6% of non-PAs face high climate risk.•Most vegetation types face high climate risk (e.g. Nothofagus and Araucaria forests).•Elevation and latitudinal patterns of climate risk changed with the GCM used.•Climate refugia were identified in the central Andes, in Patagonia, and for some coastal areas.
Conservation and development visions in and around protected areas generate confrontation and uncertainty that damage the biodiversity and ecosystem services which maintain human well-being. To ...address this issue, we applied the participatory scenario planning framework to the protected area of the Doñana social-ecological system in southwestern Spain. This work explores the social perceptions regarding the conditions, trends, trade-offs, and future of ecosystem services and human well-being, and seeks management strategies for the Doñana social-ecological system and its protected areas. We found that participatory scenario planning (1) can create different visions of the future of the system addressing its uncertainty and the main ecosystem services trade-offs, and (2) can propose consensual management strategies to determine a path toward a desirable future.
The global environmental conservation community recognizes that the participation of local communities is essential for the success of conservation initiatives; however, much work remains to be done ...on how to integrate conservation and human well-being. We propose that an assets-based approach to environmental conservation and human well-being, which is grounded in a biocultural framework, can support sustainable and adaptive management of natural resources by communities in regions adjacent to protected areas. We present evidence from conservation and quality of life initiatives led by the Field Museum of Natural History over the past 17 years in the Peruvian Amazon. Data were derived from asset mapping in 37 communities where rapid inventories were conducted and from 38 communities that participated in longer term quality of life planning. Our main findings are that Amazonian communities have many characteristics, or assets, that recent scholarship has linked to environmental sustainability and good natural resource stewardship, and that quality of life plans that are based on these assets tend to produce priorities that are more consistent with environmental conservation. Importantly, we found that validating social and ecological assets through our approach can contribute to the creation of protected areas and to their long-term management. As strategies to engage local communities in conservation expand, research on how particular methodologies, such as an assets-based approach, is needed to determine how these initiatives can best empower local communities, how they can be improved, and how they can most effectively be linked to broader conservation and development processes.
•Zone vulnerability was assessed by combining multicriteria decision analysis.•Doñana harbors an important Mediterranean temporary pond networks in Europe.•Integration of spatial approaches offers ...reliable indicators for monitoring.•MaxEnt model provided criteria’s weight, avoiding the expert bias.•This information is useful for establishing management and conservation priorities.
Characterizing zone fragility is a significant challenge when managing natural areas, but it must be prioritized in conservation efforts. The most commonly employed methodology is to rely on criteria established by experts, which can introduce subjectivity. However, more objective approaches should be used when developing conservation plans. This study follows one methodology focusing on classifying zone vulnerability within a protected natural area, taking as a study case a temporal pond network located in SW Spain; threatened aquatic plants were used as a bioindicators. Spatial data were analyzed using geographic information systems (GIS), and potentially vulnerable zones were identified using multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) and, more specifically, the weighted overlay method. Criteria weights were determined by variables contribution obtained through species distribution models (SDM), via the maximum entropy algorithm (MaxEnt). The purpose was to avoid artificial bias in decision-making. The analysis indicated that 42.04% of the study area was highly vulnerable. In contrast, only the 14.34% of the study area was at very low risk, meaning it can help maintain pond network biodiversity. These results indicate that potentially vulnerable and crucial zones can be identified using GIS, facilitating the establishment of conservation priorities in a complex system. This methodology could be useful for prioritizing and implementing management and conservation efforts focused on unique species and habitats in protected natural areas.
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