Management of urban recreational woodlands: The case of Norway

A questionnaire was mailed to 351 forest supervisors in Norway about the condition and management of urban woodlands important for recreation. The overall respondense rate was 56% and included 29 large urban settlements (10,000 inhabitants) and 168 small urban settlements (200–9999 inhabitants), encompassing about 37% of the Norwegian population. The areas included in the survey cover 194,100 ha, i.e. 1.6% of the forested area. Urban woodlands were defined as the annually most frequently visited forest areas larger than 50 ha. The average size of urban woodlands was about 1000 ha, equal in large and small urban settlements. About 73% of the urban woodlands were closer than 500 m from settlements. The mean proportion of forest in the urban fringe was 40%. Like most forested land in Norway, urban woodlands were mainly privately owned. In large urban settlements the proportion of municipal forest was slightly higher than in small urban settlements. The distributions of forest stand age and tree species composition in urban woodlands did not deviate from the overall forest situation in the region. Silviculture and forest plans were prominent in urban woodlands around both large and small urban settlements, but special plans for recreation and conservation were equally rare. Recreational facilities and conflicts were most common in urban woodlands around large urban settlements. The effect of the recommendations on management of urban woodlands developed during the 1970s is questioned regarding the small differences between urban woodlands and the general forest situation, as well as between woodlands of large and small urban settlements. However, recreational efforts may have been more intensive in smaller neighbourhood woodlands of less than 50 ha, which were beyond the scope of this survey.     

亚洲象迁移过程中与人类冲突现状调查及对策建议——以西双版纳傣族自治州为例

我国的亚洲象仅分布于云南省西双版纳、普洱和临沧3个州(市).随着社会经济的发展,亚洲象与人类的冲突时有发生,互相伤害,形成了亚洲象分布区最大的安全隐患.通过实地考察、走访村寨、查看现场、录像拍照并与当地村民进行交流、查找相关资料、咨询专家等方式对产生问题的原因进行了深入分析.针对目前存在的这一突出问题提出了建设亚洲象迁...     

清代嘉兴府争田述论

浙江嘉兴府属嘉善县与嘉兴、秀水二县之间的田地争端,起自明代万历年间,延续至清代。清代三县的争田,经过四次结案,处置结果仍是照旧额征课,不过,中央承认了三县都有丈缺田地。于是,嘉善县转而请求豁除丈缺田地的虚粮,并最终在同治年间得到批准。通过三县争田事件,可以看出清代中央政府与地方政府的矛盾冲突,更显现出明清两代的时代差异。     

Water buffalo and cattle ranching in the Lower Amazon Basin: Comparisons and conflicts

From 1975 to 2000, the water buffalo population in the Brazilian Amazon increased at nearly 13% per year, making it one of the fastest growing herds in the world. On the floodplains of the Amazon River buffalo are managed in a similar manner to cattle, but often earn superior production figures. This production advantage, however, is tempered by the role buffalo play in conflicts between landowners; buffalo are prone to altering the floodplain environment and interfering with production activities such as fishing and farming. In this research, we show that buffalo are kept on the floodplains 24% longer than cattle throughout the year, and 37% longer than cattle during periods when landowner conflicts are most likely to occur. We also show that buffalo productivity is greater than cattle in this system, which gives an opportunity to design management regimes for buffalo that may increase production costs, but that will lower the environmental and social problems that involve buffalo. Specifically, when the waters begin to rise, buffalo should be removed from the floodplains at the same time as cattle. Although this will not lessen the damage done while the buffalo is on the floodplain, it will place buffalo on the floodplain during the dry season when the erosion potential is at its lowest, and reduce the time that buffalo may interfere with other production activities such as fishing. The additional production costs incurred by early removal will not dissipate the production advantage over cattle. Without specific management that addresses the socio-economic and environmental problems caused by buffalo, the continued high growth rate for the buffalo population on the Amazon floodplains may not be sustainable and conflicts will become commonplace.     

The use of camera traps for estimating tiger and leopard populations in the high altitude mountains of Bhutan

We used camera traps in combination with capture-recapture data analysis to provide the first reliable density estimates for tigers and leopards from the high altitude and rugged terrain in Bhutan’s Jigme Singye Wangchuck National Park. Fifty days of camera trapping in each of five study zones collapsed into two trapping blocks, resulted in a sampling effort of 4050 trap days. Camera trapping yielded 17 tiger photos (14 left flanked and 3 right flanked) and 48 leopard photos (25 left flanked and 23 right flanked). Using photos of these left flank, the closed heterogeneous Jackknife Model M_h was the best fit for the capture history data. A capture probability () of 0.04 was obtained for both tigers and leopards, thus generating population size (N) of 8 tigers (SE = 2.12) and 16 leopards (SE = 2.91) with densities of 0.52 tiger 100 km⁻² and 1.04 leopard 100 km⁻². Photographic evidence indicated that tigers and leopards did not overlap in their spatial use of space. Tigers preferred less disturbed areas located further away from settlements, while leopards appeared to be more resilient to disturbances in so far as they were found nearer to human settlements. Camera trapping using a capture-recapture framework was an effective tool for assessing population sizes for tiger and leopard in low density areas such as Bhutan.     

Conflicts management,social capital and adoption of agroforestry technologies: empirical findings from the highlands of southwestern Uganda

In the highland ecosystems where actions by some individuals or groups often generate off-site effects among a wide range of social actors and stakeholders, the use and management of natural resources are susceptible to multiple forms of conflicts. This paper examines the hypothesis that conflicts constrain the adoption of agroforestry technologies. Using empirical data from 243 households in Kabale-Uganda, the study identified over 780 different cases of conflicts, and found positive relationships between certain types of conflicts and adoption of agroforestry technologies. The results of this paper challenge the conventional wisdom that conflicts are pervasive, and that the prevalence of conflicts is a major barrier to the adoption of NRM technologies. On the contrary, they seem to suggest that conflicts may have some positive outcomes; they provide incentives for the adoption of NRM technologies, and can be a potential force for positive social change. Conflicts are an essential feature of NRM in the highland systems and cannot therefore be ignored. What matters is the ways such conflicts are managed and resolved, and transformed into a force for positive change. We found that three dimensions of social capital (collective action, byelaws implementation and linking with local government structures) have increased the ability of communities to manage and transform conflicts into opportunities for collective action. These findings suggest new areas for further investigation to improve understanding of adoption decisions and building local capacity for scaling up the impacts of agroforestry innovations.     

Assessment of Conflicts between Forestry and Agricultural Land Uses in Nigeria and Ghana

The study was conducted in four states of the Southwest geo-political zone in Nigeria and four regions in Ghana.. The results showed that the existing forest, agricultural and land use decree/policies in Nigeria and Ghana indicated lack of integration between Forestry and Agricultural land uses. The main conflicting areas were obsolete land use decree in Nigeria and lack of national land use policy in Ghana. The causes and effects of the conflicts had policy enunciation, stakeholders, and institutional and managerial dimensions. Some of the causes of the conflicts were lack of national land use policies for coherent and integrated forest and agricultural sectors; high population growth, de-reservation of forest reserves, unsustainable agricultural practices and technologies, land hunger, encroachment of forest reserves with cash crops and stakeholders＇ litany of demands and other diverse interests. Consequences of conflicts in the study locations included disharmony between forestry officials and farmers, antagonism between timber concenssionnaires and communities, wanton destruction of economic trees and seedlings, extinction of tree species, expansion of illegal farm lands and an attendant poverty. The logistic regression model for conflicts between forestry and agricultural land uses in Nigeria and Ghana indicated significant fit to the data judging from chi square value （df, 9） = 3174.1 that is significant at P 〈 0.05. The final loss of the model indicated a value of 92.47.     

The factualization of uncertainty: Risk,politics, and genetically modified crops – a case of rape

Mandatory risk assessment is intended to reassure concerned citizens and introduce reason into the heated European controversies on genetically modified crops and food. The authors, examining a case of risk assessment of genetically modified oilseed rape, claim that the new European legislation on risk assessment does nothing of the sort and is not likely to present an escape from the international deadlock on the use of genetic modification in agriculture and food production. The new legislation is likely to stimulate the kind of emotive reactions it was intended to prevent. In risk assessment exercises, scientific uncertainty is turned into risk, expressed in facts and figures. Paradoxically, this conveys an impression of certainty, while value-disagreement and conflicts of interest remain hidden below the surface of factuality. Public dialogue and negotiation along these lines are rendered impossible. The only option left to critics is to resort to claims of fear and to call for new risk assessments to be performed, on and on again. Science is allowing itself to be abused by accepting the burden of proof in matters more suited to reflection and negotiation. The specific challenge to science would be to take care of itself – rethinking the role and the limitations of science in a social context, and, thereby gaining the strength to fulfill this role and to enter into dialogue with the rest of society. Scientific communities appear to be obvious candidates for prompting reflection and dialogue on this issue.