Biodiversity Conservation in the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve

Abstract

The AMISCONDE Initiative was created and promoted by Conservation International (CI). This paper analyzes the approach to biodiversity conservation of the Costa Rican portion of the Initiative in the context of CI's mission statement. Global, national and local challenges to biodiversity conservation are briefly reviewed. Then, the implementation of the AMISCONDE Initiative is examined. To provide a basis for comparison, two other well-known Costa Rican conservation programs are summarized. The Initiative differs from these other programs in its central emphasis. AMISCONDE focuses on community development, apparently prioritizing development above biodiversity protection. The paper concludes with several recommendations: that the Initiative place far greater emphasis on biodiversity through education, employment opportunities and collaboration with other organizations interested in the biota of the region; and that the program evaluate its impact on the protected area's biota. This would enable CI to determine the degree to which the impacts of the Initiative are consistent with its mission.     

SECTION 4:INTEGRATED ASSESSMENTS

Abstract

Reforestation of degraded lands is occurring on a limited basis in portions of the Panama Canal Watershed (PCW). In theory, markets for ecosystem services could encourage more extensive reforestation and ensure that reforestation efforts provide more than just timber. The most relevant ecosystem markets for the PCW are carbon sequestration, watershed services, and four biodiversity markets-bioprospecting, certification of biodiversity friendly products, ecotourism, and existence value. This paper examines the possibility for a land owner or land manager to participate in two or more of these markets. Two land use scenarios-native forest plantation and small-holder agroforestry-emerge as likely candidates for participation in multiple ecosystem service markets. These scenarios are examined to determine whether the strength of incentives to provide a bundle of timber and ecosystem services is sufficient to encourage expansion of these land uses with the Panama Canal Watershed.     

Sustainable Tourism

Abstract

New markets for ecosystem services have emerged in response to the failure of traditional biodiversity conservation mechanisms to effectively protect and conserve the processes that support ecosystem function and process (Landell-Mills and Porras, 2002; Pagiola et al., 2002). Sustainable tourism-one market tool that potentially supports biodiversity servicesaims to balance the environmental, economic, and socio-cultural features of tourism development by maintaining environmental resources, the socio-cultural livelihoods of host communities, and providing stakeholder benefits (WTO, 2004). Proponents claim that sustainable tourism contributes toward maintaining biodiversity, while critics fear that marketing various components of biodiversity as distinct services (e.g., only protecting unique places for sustainable tourism, and only protecting extremely biodiverse places for bioprospecting), fails to protect the integrity of the functioning, and dynamic ecosystem (Landell-Mills and Porras, 2002). This chapter serves as one section of a four-part analysis of existing and emerging markets for biodiversity services using Panama as a case study. Based on projections of future sustainable tourism markets, this analysis presents policy options that could positively augment future sustainable tourism ventures.     

集合种群理论及其在野生植物保育中的应用

[目的]探索集合种群理论研究现状及其在生物多样性保育中的应用。[方法]通过查阅国内外相关资料,对集合种群理论的形成与发展、国内外研究现状、存在的问题及其在生物多样性保育中的应用进行归纳总结。[结果]集合种群概念产生于1970年,主要指占据非连续生境斑块、局域种群间存在个体或繁殖体交流的复合体。集合种群主要包含5种结构类型,不同的结构类型具有不同的动态特征及保护主体。目前,国外集合种群理论已在生态学研究方面形成较完善的体系,但在遗传学与适应性进化研究方面尚处于起步阶段;中国的集合种群研究以文献研究为主,基于数学模型的集合种群动态、生态位、Allee效应等纯理论的研究较多,经验性、实证性研究案例较少。植物集合种群的研究还存在植物种子散播、定居等移殖过程分析难题,制约着植物集合种群研究的发展。将数学方法、相关软件与传统生态学手段结合是解决以上难题的主要途径和方法。集合种群理论能够很好的分析濒危物种的空间分布、局域种群间的基因流强度、散布、定居等种群动态,从而为濒危物种保护策略制订和保护技术开发提供理论依据和数据支持。[结论]今后的研究中,应加强集合种群理论在遗传学方面的研究和濒危物种保育中的应用。     

国内外保护区生物多样性保护价值评价方法研究进展

通过自然保护区的建立可以有效保护区域生物多样性, 并促进其生态系统平衡。截至2012年底, 我国已建立自然保护区2 669个, 总面积达149.79万km2, 约占国土陆地总面积的14.94%。由于自然保护区数量众多, 难以对其采用统一的保护投资水平, 所以对已建自然保护区进行保护价值评价尤为重要。文中从定性、定量以及定性与定量相结合3个方面综述了国内外保护区生物多样性保护价值评价方法, 并分析了三者的优缺点, 以期为保护区生物多样性保护价值评价提供新的思路。     

Multiple Period Combined Optimization Approach to Forest Production Planning

Recent efforts on the development of production planning systems for sawmills have focused on combined optimization type solutions in a steady-state market environment. This paper describes a linear programming-based multiple period production planning system which responds to expected changes in product value or market demand by changing policies with regard to sawing patterns and log consumption. Log and lumber inventories tie production periods together. The model was tested on a large log mill in British Columbia producing export products. It is shown that the model responds to market changes using sawing pattern selection and altered log consumption.     

Strategic studies on the biodiversity sustainability in Yunnan Province, Southwest China

With an area of 394,000 km2 (4.1% of China's total area) and specific diversified geographical environments, Yunnan houses over 18,000 species of higher plants (51.6% of China's total), 1,836 vertebrate species (54.8% of China's total) and multitu-dinous species of rare, endemic and epibiotic wildlife, ranking first in species richness value and endemicity rate of China's biodiver-sity, thus becoming a rare gene bank of wildlife species with the most concentrated distribution of important wildlife taxa and a key terrestrial biodiversity region of global significance. Despite its evident abundance and endemism, however, the biodiversity is faced with threats of ecological fragility and human disturbances in socioeconomic development resulting in attenuation of biodiversity, degradation of ecosystems and serious loss of species, thus, it needs to be carefully studied for its sustainability. Based on the analy-ses of the geographical diversity, the macro material bases of Yunnan's biodiversity were reviewed and six characteristics of the pro-vincial biodiversity were described in the ecosystems, forest types, species compositions, endemic species, genetic resources, etc. By appraising the present status of the provincial biodiversity conservation, the facts that the biodiversity coexisted with fragility were revealed so that eight key disadvantageous factors in the provincial ecological fragility causing serious biodiversity loss were sum-marized and described in this paper. In order to satisfy the two-fold needs of biodiversity sustainability and socioeconomic develop-ment, eight strategies for the sustainable development were intensively elaborated by borrowing certain theories in modern conserva-tion biology, recycling economics and some successful innovations, and by giving comprehensive consideration to the ecological fragility mechanism, nature reserve construction, environmental protection and the exploitability of resources for biodiversity sus-tainability and socioeconomic development. Accordingly, relevant targets, principles, tactics and measures for effective biodiversity conservation and sustainability were suggested to lay a solid theoretical foundation and reliable scientific basis for the biodiversity and socioeconomic sustainable development.     

Attitudes Towards Biodiversity Conservation of Forests Dwellers and Encroachers: A Case Study of Assam in Northeast India

By enacting the Forest Rights Act 2006, the Government of India aimed to protect the rights of the forest dwellers; at the same time, it sought to involve the forest dwellers in protecting the forests. But the forest dwellers are critical of this Act, on the ground that it does not consider tribal customary laws, which are essential to protect both the forests and the rights of the forest dwellers. This paper examines the perceptions and attitudes of the dwellers of village forest and encroachers towards biodiversity conservation under the rights enshrined in the Forest Rights Act 2006. A survey was conducted in190 households in four village forests and two encroached villages under reserved forests of Sonitpur and Golaghat districts of Assam in Northeast India. The majority of the respondents were found to have positive attitudes towards environmental issues in general and protection of biodiversity loss in particular. Village-type, residents’ occupation, caste, source of fuel for cooking, educational qualifications and size of land holding were found to be significantly associated with attitudes towards biodiversity conservation. It is concluded that conducting an environmental education program and rights-holders’ monitoring system on the impact of their use of forest resources will support conservation of biodiversity.     

Concepts and perceptions of biodiversity in community forestry,Nepal

International and national development programs in Nepal place high priority on management of forests for biodiversity. Communities are expected to embrace and cooperate in this endeavour for biodiversity conservation, yet little research has been carried out to understand community viewpoints on biodiversity conservation, or even to ascertain people’s understanding of the concept of biodiversity. This paper explores perceptions and concepts related to biodiversity and its conservation held by people involved in community forestry in Nepal. Data were obtained from in-depth individual interviews and focus group discussions carried out in two contrasting geographical districts. The results show that the Western term ‘biodiversity’, translated into Nepalese as jaiwik bibidhata, is new and confusing to most forest people, who interpret the term in a variety of ways. People’s perceptions of biodiversity vary widely and a considerable gap exists between policy-makers and forest users in the understanding and interpretation of this Nepalese term and its related concepts. These findings have important implications for the design and implementation of development programs and in formulation of forest policy in Nepal.     

中国地方层面生物多样性参与式保护机制和方法构想

随着生态环境的日益恶化,生物多样性保护越来越受到国家的重视,但在地方层面,由于地方政府过度关注经济发展,生物多样性保护还没有受到足够的重视.文章以四川省盐边县、云南省金平县作为研究构想地,分析了两地生物多样性现状及保护存在的问题,提出了地方层面生物多样性保护的机制和方法构想,其主要内容包括生物多样性保护工具包、培训体系、跨部门多利益合作机制以及信息交流平台.     

Biodiversity Values and Measures Applied to Forest Management

Abstract

With the new emphasis in land management agencies (particularly the USDA Forest Service) on ecosystem management, new attention is being paid to measurements of biological diversity (biodiversity). Forest managers faced with incorporating the maintenance of biodiversity into their analyses, plans, and decisions need reliable, quantitative biodiversity measures. Deciding which measures to use requires land managers to understand why biodiversity is valued, which components of diversity are of most value, and how to measure these components feasibly. In this paper, the values associated with biodiversity and the principal indices available to forest managers are reviewed. Attention is drawn to the differing emphases of biodiversity indices-species richness, heterogeneity, and evenness-and to how diese differences address different values. Potential applications for these indices in forest management plans-including ways to use habitat models to approximate biodiversity-are also discussed.     

Sumatra’s Rubber Agroforests: Advent, Rise and Fall of a Sustainable Cropping System

Until the end of the nineteenth century primary forests covered nearly all the island of Sumatra. The first valorisation of this natural resource was hunting and gathering activities, followed by and later associated with swidden cultivation of upland rice. The industrial revolution in Europe and North America in the 1950s created increasing demand for rubber. Answering this new market opportunity, farmers introduced rubber seedlings in their swiddens amidst the upland rice. By doing so, they invented a new cropping system, i.e. rubber agroforests. Thanks to the continuously increasing demand for rubber by the developing industry, rubber agroforests spread over Sumatra’s eastern peneplains until the 1990s. Forest conversion to rubber agroforests conserves a high level of forest biodiversity and the agroforests act as a buffer zone around national parks. But with growing demographic pressure, market integration and household monetary needs, agroforests are increasingly endangered. New cropping systems have appeared and challenge agroforests’ dominance in the landscape. Since the mid-twentieth century, rubber monospecific plantations have been competing for land, with an undoubtedly higher profitability than agroforests. More recently, oil palm plantations have spread over the island, quickly becoming the new challenger to rubber agroforestry. Nevertheless, the international community shows more and more interest in forest and biodiversity conservation. Forest cover in Jambi province has nearly disappeared over the past 30 years. The only way to save the remnants of forests and agroforests seems to be the creation of market incentives through conservation programs such as reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation.     

Conflicts in conservation: Woodland key habitats,authorities and private forest owners in Sweden

Abstract

The process of protection (e.g. reserves, agreements) on the lands of non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners sometimes leads to conflicts (conflict: a perceived threat to needs, interests or concerns; in this study, “threat” was important). To investigate predictive factors for such conflicts in southern Sweden, a questionnaire was sent to 132 NIPF owners with woodland key habitat (WKH; identified biodiversity values). The response rate was 77% and conflict was reported by 22.5% of respondents, while 14% reported good relations with authorities. The respondents reported conflict due to rules for cutting, protection and compensation. Compared with other owners, those reporting conflict were younger (mean 54 versus 62 years old), had more negative opinion about the personal contact with the authority, had twice as large an area of WKH and had more negative opinion about the WKH. Logistic regression revealed four variables that predicted conflict: area of WKH on property, opinion about WKH, opinion about personal contact and, especially, age of respondent. Younger forest owners may be more dependent upon income from harvesting than older owners. Conflicts were frequent and the factors identified here should be taken into account in forest conservation work.     

Introduction: Working Forests in the Tropics: Policy and Market Impacts on Conservation and Management

Abstract

Tropical forests are very rich in biological diversity and form an important economic and ecological resource. This biodiversity is of great value for communities living in or near these forests as a ready source of subsistence and cash income, and for the world at large as a source of tropical timber and non-timber products and a repository of genetic and chemical information. However, this biological complexity is diminishing rapidly. We analyze the main human (anthropogenic) actions causing loss of tropical forest biodiversity along with the strategies of management for forest biodiversity. Not only is the biophysical component important in management for biodiversity, but the active participation and support of local people, national governments, and the international community as a whole are essential to effective and sustainable development of tropical forests. This development strategy ensures that socioeconomic and environmental benefits are provided for present and future generations.     

Regional Conservation in the Virunga-Bwindi Region

SUMMARY

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and the Virunga Volcano region are the last remaining habitats of the highly endangered mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei). This conservation area, shared by Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, also acts as a refuge for biodiversity and high endemism in the Albertine Rift of Central East Africa. This particular region has suffered from a number of years of civil strife, which have severely affected the management of these forests. This paper will explore the experiences of the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP) obtained throughout the development of regional processes that are working towards establishing a transboundary-protected area. The establishment of a regional framework and tools utilized are described. The costs and constraints incurred by the IGCP and the resulting positive impacts on conservation are also highlighted.     

Sustaining Tropical Forest Biodiversity

Abstract

Tropical forests are very rich in biological diversity and form an important economic and ecological resource. This biodiversity is of great value for communities living in or near these forests as a ready source of subsistence and cash income, and for the world at large as a source of tropical timber and non-timber products and a repository of genetic and chemical information. However, this biological complexity is diminishing rapidly. We analyze the main human (anthropogenic) actions causing loss of tropical forest biodiversity along with the strategies of management for forest biodiversity. Not only is the biophysical component important in management for biodiversity, but the action participation and support of local people, the national government and international cooperation as a whole, arc essential for an effective and sustainable development of tropical forests. This integrated development strategy ensures that socio-economic and environmental benefits are provided for present and future generations.     

龙岩市森林生态系统服务价值评价

采用龙岩市2011年森林资源与城乡绿化统计数据,从调节气候、净化大气环境、固碳释氧、涵养水源、保护生物多样性5方面对龙岩市森林生态系统进行价值评估。结果表明,龙岩市林业用地、城区人居林和乡村人居林3个不同地域的森林生态系统产生的生态服务价值分别为2 204.5亿元、1.92亿元和0.72亿元,各项生态服务价值由大到小依次为调节气候、涵养水源、固碳释氧、净化大气环境、保护生物多样性。     

Wintertime Patterns of Chlorophyll Fluorescence in Red Spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) Foliage

SUMMARY

For twenty years, Lesotho and South Africa have engaged in a co-operative program for the conservation and development of the shared Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains, also known as Ukhahlamba or “barrier of spears.” A history of conflict has left its mark on the landscape and the communities which live there. The area has been marginalized by inappropriate land settlement and agricultural practices and there has been ongoing illegal traffic in cattle and drugs. Impacts include the degradation of biodiversity, unsustainable land use practices and, most importantly, a lack of development and economic alternatives.

The area is internationally significant not only because of its unique biodiversity and cultural resources but also as the primary source of water for the southern African sub-region. A process of transboundary engagement between the two countries has intervened in the cycle of degradation, and seeks to build a vibrant transfrontier economy, which overcomes barriers and engenders cooperation and development. The future agenda encompasses key actions relating to biodiversity, community and economics, including institutional development, capacity-building processes and the legal means for creating and sustaining transboundary cooperation. This transboundary regional landscape strategy both informs and is informed by global best practice.     

双柏恐龙河州级自然保护区保护价值评价

双柏恐龙河州级自然保护区内保存有较为完整的自然生态系统,生物多样性独特而丰富。文章在阐述保护区自然资源现状的基础上,结合其特点,从自然性、典型性、多样性、稀有性、脆弱性、科研价值等方面对保护区的保护价值进行了系统、全面的分析评价,认为该保护区重要生态系统和重要物种丰富,以热带季雨林和绿孔雀、滇南苏铁等为代表的生态系统及国家重点保护野生动植物,科学研究及保护价值巨大。     

保康县“ 十三五” 和“ 十四五” 规划生物多样性主流化评估

为促进保康县各部门生物多样性主流化建设,构建评估体系,对保康县“十三五”和“十四五” 规划中生物多样性主流化程度进行评估。结果认为,保康县“十四五”规划较“十三五”规划生物多 样性主流化程度显著提升,评估分数由58 分上升到84 分;提升之处包括明确生物多样性保护优先区 域、生物多样性保护跨区域跨部门协调合作与交流、生物多样性立法或执法、生物多样性保护科技支 撑、有害生物防治、外来物种和转基因生物安全管理以及绩效考核和责任追究制度;“十四五”规划中 部分生物多样性保护指标仍需加强,包括生物多样性迁地保护、生物多样性保护宣传教育与公众参 与机制、生物多样性保护与社区共管、生态补偿或生态环境损害赔偿机制和生物多样性资金保障。