Spatial prioritization techniques are applied in conservation-planning initiatives to allocate conservation resources. Although typically they are based on ecological data (e.g., species, habitats, ...ecological processes), increasingly they also include nonecological data, mostly on the vulnerability of valued features and economic costs of implementation. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of conservation actions implemented through conservation-planning initiatives is a function of the human and social dimensions of social-ecological systems, such as stakeholders' willingness and capacity to participate. We assessed human and social factors hypothesized to define opportunities for implementing effective conservation action by individual land managers (those responsible for making day-to-day decisions on land use) and mapped these to schedule implementation of a private land conservation program. We surveyed 48 land managers who owned 301 land parcels in the Makana Municipality of the Eastern Cape province in South Africa. Psychometric statistical and cluster analyses were applied to the interview data so as to map human and social factors of conservation opportunity across a landscape of regional conservation importance. Four groups of landowners were identified, in rank order, for a phased implementation process. Furthermore, using psychometric statistical techniques, we reduced the number of interview questions from 165 to 45, which is a preliminary step toward developing surrogates for human and social factors that can be developed rapidly and complemented with measures of conservation value, vulnerability, and economic cost to more-effectively schedule conservation actions. This work provides conservation and land management professionals direction on where and how implementation of local-scale conservation should be undertaken to ensure it is feasible.
A vast number of prioritization schemes have been developed to help conservation navigate tough decisions about the allocation of finite resources. However, the application of quantitative approaches ...to setting priorities in conservation frequently includes mistakes that can undermine their authors' intention to be more rigorous and scientific in the way priorities are established and resources allocated. Drawing on well-established principles of decision science, we highlight 6 mistakes commonly associated with setting priorities for conservation: not acknowledging conservation plans are prioritizations; trying to solve an illdefined problem; not prioritizing actions; arbitrariness; hidden value judgments; and not acknowledging risk of failure. We explain these mistakes and offer a path to help conservation planners avoid making the same mistakes in future prioritizations. Se ha desarrollado un vasto número de esquemas de priorización para ayudar a que la conservación navegue entre decisiones difíciles en cuanto a la asignación de recursos finitos. Sin embargo, la aplicación de métodos cuantitativos para la definición de prioridades en la conservación frecuentemente incluye errores que pueden socavar la intención de sus autores de ser más rigurosos y científicos en la manera en que se establecen las prioridades y se asignan los recursos. Con base en los bien establecidos principios de la ciencia de la decisión, resaltamos seis errores comúnmente asociados con la definición de prioridades para la conservación: no reconocer que los planes de conservación son priorizaciones; tratar de resolver un problema mal definido; no priorizar acciones; arbitrariedad; juicios de valor ocultos y no reconocer el riesgo de fracasar. Explicamos estos errores y ofrecemos un camino para que planificadores de la conservación no cometan los mismos errores en priorizaciones futuras.
The use of cars and trucks over the past century has remade American geography-pushing big cities ever outward toward suburbanization, spurring the growth of some small towns while hastening the ...decline of others, and spawning a new kind of commercial landscape marked by gas stations, drive-in restaurants, motels, tourist attractions, and countless other retail entities that express our national love affair with the open road. By its very nature, this landscape is ever changing, indeed ephemeral. What is new quickly becomes old and is soon forgotten. In this absorbing book, John Jakle and Keith Sculle ponder how "Roadside America" might be remembered, especially since so little physical evidence of its earliest years survives. In straightforward and lively prose, supplemented by copious illustrations-historic and modern photographs, advertising postcards, cartoons, roadmaps-they survey the ways in which automobility has transformed life in the United States. Asking how we might best commemorate and preserve this part of our past-which has been so vital economically and politically, so significant to the cultural aspirations of ordinary Americans, yet so often ignored by scholars who dismiss it as kitsch-they propose the development of an actual outdoor museum that would treat seriously the themes of our roadside history. Certainly, museums have been created for frontier pioneering, the rise of commercial agriculture, and the coming of water- and steam-powered industrialization and transportation, especially the railroad. Is now not the time, the authors ask, for a museum forcefully exploring the automobile's emergence and the changes it has brought to place and landscape? Such a museum need not deny the nostalgic appeal of roadsides past, but if done properly, it could also tell us much about what the authors describe as "the most important kind of place yet devised in the American experience." John A. Jakle is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Keith A. Sculle is the former head of research and education at the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. They have coauthored such books as America's Main Street Hotels: Transiency and Community in the Early Automobile Age; Motoring: The Highway Experience in America; Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age; and The Gas Station in America.
Over half of the European landscape is under agricultural management and has been for millennia. Many species and ecosystems of conservation concern in Europe depend on agricultural management and ...are showing ongoing declines. Agri‐environment schemes (AES) are designed partly to address this. They are a major source of nature conservation funding within the European Union (EU) and the highest conservation expenditure in Europe. We reviewed the structure of current AES across Europe. Since a 2003 review questioned the overall effectiveness of AES for biodiversity, there has been a plethora of case studies and meta‐analyses examining their effectiveness. Most syntheses demonstrate general increases in farmland biodiversity in response to AES, with the size of the effect depending on the structure and management of the surrounding landscape. This is important in the light of successive EU enlargement and ongoing reforms of AES. We examined the change in effect size over time by merging the data sets of 3 recent meta‐analyses and found that schemes implemented after revision of the EU's agri‐environmental programs in 2007 were not more effective than schemes implemented before revision. Furthermore, schemes aimed at areas out of production (such as field margins and hedgerows) are more effective at enhancing species richness than those aimed at productive areas (such as arable crops or grasslands). Outstanding research questions include whether AES enhance ecosystem services, whether they are more effective in agriculturally marginal areas than in intensively farmed areas, whether they are more or less cost‐effective for farmland biodiversity than protected areas, and how much their effectiveness is influenced by farmer training and advice? The general lesson from the European experience is that AES can be effective for conserving wildlife on farmland, but they are expensive and need to be carefully designed and targeted.
Lion (Panthera leo) populations are in decline throughout most of Africa. The problem is particularly acute in southern Kenya, where Maasai pastoralists have been spearing and poisoning lions at a ...rate that will ensure near term local extinction. We investigated 2 approaches for improving local tolerance of lions: compensation payments for livestock lost to predators and Lion Guardians, which draws on local cultural values and knowledge to mitigate livestock‐carnivore conflict and monitor carnivores. To gauge the overall influence of conservation intervention, we combined both programs into a single conservation treatment variable. Using 8 years of lion killing data, we applied Manski's partial identification approach with bounded assumptions to investigate the effect of conservation treatment on lion killing in 4 contiguous areas. In 3 of the areas, conservation treatment was positively associated with a reduction in lion killing. We then applied a generalized linear model to assess the relative efficacy of the 2 interventions. The model estimated that compensation resulted in an 87–91% drop in the number of lions killed, whereas Lion Guardians (operating in combination with compensation and alone) resulted in a 99% drop in lion killing. Eficacia de Dos Programas de Conservación de Leones en Maasailand, Kenia
A big cat overthrows the Indian state and establishes a reign of terror over the residents of a Himalayan town. A welfare legislation aimed at providing employment and commanding a huge budget ...becomes 'unimplementable' in a region bedeviled by high levels of poverty and unemployment. Paper Tiger provides a lively ethnographic account of how such seemingly bizarre scenarios come to be in contemporary India. Based on eighteen months of intensive fieldwork, this book presents a unique explanation for why and how progressive laws can do what they do and not, ever-so-often, what they are supposed to do. It reveals the double-edged effects of the reforms that have been ushered in by the post-liberalization Indian state, particularly the effort to render itself more transparent and accountable. Through a meticulous detailing of everyday bureaucratic life on the Himalayan borderland, Paper Tiger makes an argument for shifting the very frames of thought through which we apprehend the workings of the developmental Indian state.
This groundbreaking book is a contemporary global synthesis of the rapidly developing and important field of insect conservation biology. Insects play important roles in terrestrial ecological ...processes and in maintaining the world as we know it. They present particular conservation challenges, especially as a quarter face extinction within the next few decades. This textbook addresses the ethical foundation of insect conservation, and asks why should we concern ourselves with conservation of a butterfly, beetle or bug? The success of insects and their diversity, which have survived glaciers, is now facing a more formidable obstacle: the meteoric impact of humans. After addressing threats, from invasive alien plants to climate change, the book explores ways insects and their habitats are prioritised, mapped, monitored and conserved. Landscape and species approaches are considered. This book is for undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers and managers in conservation biology or entomology, and the wider biological and environmental sciences.
The conservation of skin, leather and related materials is an area that, until now, has had little representation by the written word in book form. Marion Kite and Roy Thomson, of the Leather ...Conservation Centre, have prepared a text which is both authoritative and comprehensive, including contributions from the leading specialists in their fields, such as Betty Haines, Mary Lou Florian, Ester Cameron and Jim Spriggs.The book covers all aspects of Skin and Leather preservation, from Cuir Bouillie to Bookbindings. There is significant discussion of the technical and chemical elements necessary in conservation, meaning that professional conservators will find the book a vital part of their collection. As part of the Butterworth-Heinemann Black series, the book carries the stamp of approval of the leading figures in the world of Conservation and Museology, and as such it is the only publication available on the topic carrying this immediate mark of authority.
Protected areas (PAs) are key elements for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. Brazil has the largest PA system in the world, covering approximately 220 million ha. This system expanded ...rapidly in the mid‐1990s to the mid‐2000s. Recent events in Brazil, however, have led to an increase in PA downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD). Does this reflect a shift in the country's PA policy? We analyzed the occurrence, frequency, magnitude, type, spatial distribution, and causes of changes in PA boundaries and categories in Brazil. We identified 93 PADDD events from 1981 to 2012. Such events increased in frequency since 2008 and were ascribed primarily to generation and transmission of electricity in Amazonia. In Brazilian parks and reserves, 7.3 million ha were affected by PADDD events, and of these, 5.2 million ha were affected by downsizing or degazetting. Moreover, projects being considered by the Federal Congress may degazette 2.1 million ha of PA in Amazonia alone. Relaxing the protection status of existing PAs is proving to be politically easy in Brazil, and the recent increase in frequency and extension of PADDD reflects a change in governmental policy. By taking advantage of chronic deficiencies in financial and personnel resources and surveillance, disputes over land tenure, and the slowness of the Brazilian justice, government agencies have been implementing PADDD without consultation of civil society. If parks and reserves are to maintain their integrity, there will need to be investments in Brazilian PAs and a better understanding of the benefits PAs provide. Degradación, Reajuste, Eliminacióm de las Listas y Reclasificación de Áreas Protegidas en Brasil
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