Increasing residential development around protected areas is a major threat for protected areas worldwide, and
human population growth is often the most important cause. However, population is decreasing in many regions
as a result of socio-economic changes, and it is unclear how residential development around protected areas is
affected in these situations. We investigated whether decreasing human population alleviates pressures from
residential development around protected areas, using Puerto Rico—an island with declining population—as a
case study. We calculated population and housing changes from the 2000 to 2010 census around 124 protected
areas, using buffers of different sizes.We found that the number of houses around protected areas continued to
increase while population declined both around protected areas and island-wide. A total of 32,300 new houses
were constructed within only 1 km from protected areas, while population declined by 28,868 within the
same area. At the same time, 90% of protected areas showed increases in housing in the surrounding lands,
47% showed population declines, and 40% showed population increases, revealing strong spatial variations.
Our results highlight that residential development remains an important component of lands surrounding
protected areas in Puerto Rico, but the spatial variations in population and housing changes indicate that management
actions in response to housing effects may need to be individually targeted. More broadly, our findings
reinforce the awareness that residential development effects on protected areas are most likely widespread and
common in many socioeconomic and demographic settings.
File: ja_iitf_2017_Castro001.pdf
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Globally, deforestation continues, and although protected areas effectively protect forests, the
majority of forests are not in protected areas. Thus, how effective are different management regimes to
avoid deforestation in non-protected forests? We sought to assess the effectiveness of different national forestmanagement
regimes to safeguard forests outside protected areas. We compared 2000–2014 deforestation
rates across the temperate forests of 5 countries in the Himalaya (Bhutan, Nepal, China, India, and Myanmar)
of which 13% are protected. We reviewed the literature to characterize forest management regimes in each
country and conducted a quasi-experimental analysis to measure differences in deforestation of unprotected
forests among countries and states in India. Countries varied in both overarching forest-management goals
and specific tenure arrangements and policies for unprotected forests, from policies emphasizing economic
development to those focused on forest conservation. Deforestation rates differed up to 1.4% between countries,
even after accounting for local determinants of deforestation, such as human population density, market access,
and topography. The highest deforestation rates were associated with forest policies aimed at maximizing
profits and unstable tenure regimes. Deforestation in national forest-management regimes that emphasized
conservation and community management were relatively low. In India results were consistent with the
national-level results. We interpreted our results in the context of the broader literature on decentralized,
community-based natural resource management, and our findings emphasize that the type and quality of
community-based forestry programs and the degree to which they are oriented toward sustainable use rather
than economic development are important for forest protection. Our cross-national results are consistent with
results from site- and regional-scale studies that show forest-management regimes that ensure stable land
tenure and integrate local-livelihood benefits with forest conservation result in the best forest outcomes.
File: Brandt2017_forestHimalaya_ConsBio.pdf
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Protected areas are a cornerstone for forest protection, but they are not always effective during
times of socioeconomic and institutional crises. The Carpathian Mountains in Eastern Europe are an ecologically
outstanding region, with widespread seminatural and old-growth forest. Since 1990, Carpathian
countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine) have experienced economic
hardship and institutional changes, including the breakdown of socialism, European Union accession, and a
rapid expansion of protected areas. The question is how protected-area effectiveness has varied during these
times across the Carpathians given these changes. We analyzed a satellite-based data set of forest disturbance
(i.e., forest loss due to harvesting or natural disturbances) from 1985 to 2010 and used matching statistics
and a fixed-effects estimator to quantify the effect of protection on forest disturbance. Protected areas in the
Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the Ukraine had significantly less deforestation inside protected areas than
outside in some periods; the likelihood of disturbance was reduced by 1–5%. The effectiveness of protection
increased over time in these countries, whereas the opposite was true in Romania. Older protected areas were
most effective in Romania and Hungary, but newer protected areas were more effective in Czech Republic,
and Poland. Strict protection (International Union for Conservation of Nature [IUCN] protection category
Ia-II) was not more effective than landscape-level protection (IUCN III-VI). We suggest that the strength of
institutions, the differences in forest privatization, forest management, prior distribution of protected areas,
and when countries joined the European Union may provide explanations for the strikingly heterogeneous
effectiveness patterns among countries. Our results highlight how different the effects of protected areas can
be at broad scales, indicating that the effectiveness of protected areas is transitory over time and space and
suggesting that generalizations about the effectiveness of protected areas can be misleading.
File: Butsic2017_Carpathians_ConsBio.pdf
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Satellite telemetry is a powerful tool for monitoring animal movements, and Argos transmitters have been widely used. Unfortunately, only few studies have systematically evaluated the performance of Argos satellite collars for wildlife monitoring. We tested Argos satellite telemetry transmitters at two power levels in Southern Russia (five transmitters at 0.5 W and three at 1 W). Performance metrics were derived from the number and accuracy of location estimates and the number of days on which collars transmitted or failed to transmit data. Our results suggest that the performance of Argos collars in our study region was poor. At the power level of 0.5 W, 55% of the sessions resulted in at least one transmission, but only 21% provided a location estimate. The percentage of successful sessions did not increase much after setting the power level to 1.0 W (63%), but the increase in the number of location estimates was considerable (54%). At either power level, the majority of the location estimates were in the low quality classes though (80% nonstandard locations with 0.5 Wand 45% with 1 W). Positional accuracies were 0.5, 0.7, 1.5, and 4.6 km for location classes 3, 2, 1, and 0, respectively. For nonstandard location classes A and B, positional accuracies were 2.1 and 18.3 km. Careful testing of transmitters is recommended before deployment, as the location of the study area can seriously affect performance.
File: Dubinin2010_Article_PerformanceAndAccuracyOfArgosT.pdf
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Land use change alters species’ abundance and distributions by affecting habitat
availability and quality. The decline of bird populations worldwide is of major concern,
and habitat protection and restoration are primary conservation actions. However, conservation
decisions largely consider only short-term habitat changes and species’ population
dynamics in a given area. Disregarding long term modifications in species’ available habitat,
and the role of a given population for a species’ global population may lead to misdirected
conservation action. Our goal here was to combine the assessment of conservation
responsibility, with that of century-long available habitat dynamics, in order to inform
better conservation practice. We compiled available habitat data for 170 bird species in
the Carpathian Region from 1860 to 2010 from historic maps and satellite data. We analyzed
these species’ range distributions, IUCN extinction risk and population trends, and
we identified 29 species of high conservation responsibility, and all of them were forest or
and grassland specialists. Furthermore, we found major land use trends including cropland
abandonment and increase in forests and grasslands that resulted in increases in potential
habitat for the species for which the Carpathians have high conservation responsibility. The
loss of row-crop agriculture, on the other hand, reduced habitat for species for which the
Carpathians do not have high responsibility, and thus subsidizing agriculture may not be
warranted from a conservation perspective. More broadly, many regions worldwide are
undergoing rapid land use changes, and we suggest that these should be analyzed relative to a given regions’ conservation responsibility to see if there are opportunities for conservation,
i.e., cases similar to the Carpathians, where conservation efforts ‘only’ have to foster
current land use trends, and make them permanent, rather than to try to revert the loss
of habitat.
File: Munteanu2018_Article_BirdConservationInTheCarpathia.pdf
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Public lands are typically established in recognition of their unique ecological value, yet both ecological
and social values of public lands change over time, along with human distribution and land use. These
transformations are evident even in developed countries with long histories of public land management,
such as the United States. The 20th Century saw dramatic changes in the American population, in distribution
and in racial and ethnic diversity, leading to new challenges and new roles for public lands. Our
goal with this paper is to review changing demographics and implications for terrestrial protected areas
in the U.S. We overview the fundamentals of population change and data, review past trends in population
change and housing growth and their impacts on public lands, and then analyze the most recent
decade of demographic change (2000-2010) relative to public lands. Discussions of demographic change
and public lands commonly focus on the rural West, but we show that the South is also experiencing
substantial change in rural areas with public lands, including Hispanic population growth. We identify
those places, rural and urban, where demographic change (2000-2010), including diversification and
housing growth, coincide with public lands. Understanding the current trends and long-term demographic
context for recent changes in populations can help land managers and conservation scientists
mitigate the effects of residential development near public lands, serve a more diverse population, and
anticipate future population changes.
File: nrs_2018_mockrin_002.pdf
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Natural resource managers are often expected to achieve both environmental protection and
economic development even when there are fundamental trade-offs between these goals. Adaptive management
provides a theoretical structure for program administrators to balance social priorities in the presence
of trade-offs and to improve conservation targeting. We used the case of Mexico’s federal Payments for
Hydrological Services program (PSAH) to illustrate the importance of adaptive management for improving
program targeting. We documented adaptive elements of PSAH and corresponding changes in program eligibility
and selection criteria. To evaluate whether these changes resulted in enrollment of lands of high
environmental and social priority, we compared the environmental and social characteristics of the areas
enrolled in the program with the characteristics of all forested areas in Mexico, all areas eligible for the
program, and all areas submitted for application to the program. The program successfully enrolled areas of
both high ecological and social priority, and over time, adaptive changes in the program’s criteria for eligibility
and selection led to increased enrollment of land scoring high on both dimensions. Three factors facilitated
adaptive management in Mexico and are likely to be generally important for conservation managers: a
supportive political environment, including financial backing and encouragement to experiment from the
federal government; availability of relatively good social and environmental data; and active participation
in the review process by stakeholders and outside evaluators.
File: Sims2014_Mexico_ConsBio.pdf
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Context Housing growth can alter suitability o matrix habitats around protected areas, strongl affecting movements of organisms and, consequently threatening connectivity of protected area networks Objectives Our goal was to quantify distribution an growth of housing around the U.S. Fish and Wildlif Service National Wildlife Refuge System. This i important information for conservation planning particularly given promotion of habitat connectivit as a climate change adaptation measure Methods We quantified housing growth from 194 to 2000 and projected future growth to 2030 withi three distances from refuges, identifying very lo housing density open space, ‘‘opportunity areas’ (contiguous areas with 6.17 houses/km ), bot nationally and by USFWS administrative region Additionally, we quantified number and area of habita corridors within these opportunity areas in 2000 Results Our results indicated that the number an area of open space opportunity areas generall decreased with increasing distance from refuges an with the passage of time. Furthermore, total area i habitat corridors was much lower than in opportunit areas. In addition, the number of corridors sometime exceeded number of opportunity areas as a result o habitat fragmentation, indicating corridors are likel vulnerable to land use change. Finally, regional differences were strong and indicated some refuge may have experienced so much housing growt already that they are effectively too isolated to adap to climate change, while others may require extensiv habitat restoration work Conclusions Wildlife refuges are increasingly isolate by residential housing development, potentiall constraining the movement of wildlife and, therefore their ability to adapt to a changing climate.
File: Hamilton_etal_2016_LandscapeEcology.pdf
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Climate change is a major challenge for managers of protected areas world-wide, and managers need informatio about future climate conditions within protected areas. Prior studies of climate change effects in protected area have largely focused on average climatic conditions. However, extreme weather may have stronger effects o wildlife populations and habitats than changes in averages. Our goal was to quantify future changes in the frequenc of extreme heat, drought, and false springs, during the avian breeding season, in 415 National Wildlif Refuges in the conterminous United States. We analyzed spatially detailed data on extreme weather frequencie during the historical period (1950–2005) and under different scenarios of future climate change by mid- an late-21st century. We found that all wildlife refuges will likely experience substantial changes in the frequencie of extreme weather, but the types of projected changes differed among refuges. Extreme heat is projected to increas dramatically in all wildlife refuges, whereas changes in droughts and false springs are projected to increas or decrease on a regional basis. Half of all wildlife refuges are projected to see increases in frequency (N20% highe than the current rate) in at least two types of weather extremes by mid-century. Wildlife refuges in the Southwes and Pacific Southwest are projected to exhibit the fastest rates of change, and may deserve extra attention Climate change adaptation strategies in protected areas, such as the U.S. wildlife refuges, may need to seriousl consider future changes in extreme weather, including the considerable spatial variation of these changes
File: Martinuzzi_etal_2016_BiologicalConservation.pdf
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