Protected Areas

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Protected Areas

• The increasing pressure from anthropogenic
  stressors makes preservation of natural areas
  crucial for the preservation of biodiversity
• Because of the governmental support (in most
  cases) protected areas are a very effective
  conservation tool
• Marine protected areas (MPAs) often restrict
  fishing or limit access

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Protected Areas

• Protecting areas can help with some of the key
  threats habitat degradation, overexploitation,
  and to a lesser degree pollution and invasive
  species
• Protected areas serve other benefits than just
  directly benefiting plants and wildlife can you
  think of some?

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Protected Areas

• However, not all protected areas are necessarily
  well suited for biodiversity

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Protected Areas
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Protected Areas
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Protected Areas
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Protected Areas

• Protected areas have been a long tradition in
  many societies
• In the US, Yellowstone and Yosemite NPs were
  established in 1864 and 1872

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Protected Areas

• In 1879 Royal NP in Australia

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Protected Areas

• In 1892 in S Af, Kruger NP

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Protected Areas

• NPs were largely created in response to the loss
  of wild places to hunt (and populations)
• Even though hunting was off-limits, the role of
  protected areas was well understood and allowed
  for populations to be sustained and feed other
  areas
• Later, many protected areas were specifically for
  spawning or breeding grounds

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Protected Areas

• Protected area establishment is a requirement for
  many international environmental agreements and
  conventions such as CBD, Convention
  Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild
  Animals, CITES, Convention for the Protection of
  Wetlands of International Importance

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Current State of Protected Areas

• The number of protected areas began increasing
  rapidly worldwide in the 1960s

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Current State of Protected Areas
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Types of Protected Areas

• Protected areas fall under several different
  categories and each is accorded different level
  of protection
• The management goals of each of these can vary
  widely from strict protection to sustainable
  extraction of nat. resources
• The IUCN has defined 6 protected area management
  categories, based upon primary management goal
  (Box 14.1)

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Types of Protected Areas

• Category I strict nature reserves and wilderness
  areas
• Primary purpose to protect biodiversity and
  maintain evolutionary and ecosystem processes
• Typically managed for scientific purposes
• Selected for character and size
• Typically limit mechanized access

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Types of Protected Areas

• Category II national parks
• NPs are generally managed for ecosystem
  protection and human enjoyment or recreation
• Scientific, education, and rec important
• Dual mandate can be problematic
• Snowmobiles in Yellowstone
• E.g. Tubbataha Reef in Philippines

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Types of Protected Areas

• Category III national monuments
• Managed for conservation of specific resource or
  cultural feature (e.g. waterfalls, caves,
  geologic features)

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Types of Protected Areas

• Category IV habitat/sp man. area
• Established for conservation purposes
• Scientific research and monitoring are of prime
  importance
• Established in US, 1903 at Pelican Island,
  FL
• WMA (96M acres, 548 ref)

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Types of Protected Areas

• Category V protected land- seascape
• Protect the historical interaction of people and
  the environment
• Usually has both natural and cultural resources
  deemed important (e.g. Leshan Giant Buddha)

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Types of Protected Areas

• Category VI

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Types of Protected Areas

• Category VI managed resource protection area
• Established to ensure long-term protection of
  biological diversity as well as allow sustainable
  resource use (e.g. Ngorogoro crater, cattle, and
  the Maasai)

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Types of Protected Areas

• Protected areas of any kind can also be
  classified as Biosphere Reserves, World Heritage
  Sites or Ramsar Wetlands (e.g. Yellowstone and
  Ngorogoro crater)
• There are currently 411 biosphere reserves in 94
  countries
• Ideally, biospheres create 1 or 2 areas of
  low-intensity areas and 1 restricted

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Types of Protected Areas

• Idealized protected area

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Types of Protected Areas

• The Convention on Wetlands of International
  Importance was signed in 1971 in Ramsar (Iran)
  and provides framework for protecting wetlands of
  international importance
• Contracting parties commit to designating
  eligible areas as Ramsar wetlands and are
  rewarded with management tools and aid in
  implementation (96M ha)

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Types of Protected Areas

• Strict Protection vs. Multiple Use
• The role of strictly protected (Cat I-IV) vs.
  Multiple use (V VI) is debated
• While restricted areas provide very good
  protection, they may alienate locals
• Given this, 23.3 of worlds protected areas are
  Cat. VI (vs. Cat I, lt11)

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Types of Protected Areas

• Total area (km2) by IUCN category

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Management Effectiveness

• Threats to effectiveness must be eliminated if
  the protected areas area to meet their objectives
• IUCN has a framework to measure this
• 1) issues related to design (e.g. shape, size,
  buffer zones)
• 2) appropriateness of management
• 3) whether the objectives of protected areas are
  delivered (e.g. evaluation of biological and
  social outcomes)

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Management Effectiveness

• Concern about the natural areas in Brazil, the
  WWF and IBAMA evaluated the 86 protected areas in
  Brazil
• 47/86 unimplemented
• 32/86 minimally implemented
• 7/86 were reasonably implemented
• As a result, lobbied government to increase
  spending

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Management Effectiveness

• Despite many of these shortcoming, protected
  areas do achieve their goals
• S higher in PA, even w/out protection
• There is large evidence of the effectiveness in
  marine systems
• In a study analyzing older protected areas (x23
  yrs), majority of sites have increased natural
  vegetative cover

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Management Effectiveness
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Management Effectiveness

• A key attribute to the success of a PA was the
  density of guards (8x higher in the best 15 PA
  vs. 15 least effective PA)
• Another recent report from WWF showed that
  management effectiveness is correlated with IUCN
  categories and that UNESCO Man and Biosphere
  Reserves, World Heritage, or Ramsar sites, are
  all as effective as other types

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Need for Reserve Systems

• Single protected areas will rarely be of adequate
  size or scope to conserve a representative sample
  of the biodiversity of a region, therefore entire
  reserve systems are critical for the conservation
  of biodiversity
• It does NOT need to be all Cat. I or II

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Need for Reserve Systems

• GAP analysis identifies areas of
  under-representation in the existing reserve
  system, by comparing the distribution of
  protected areas with the distribution of species,
  vegetation types, or other types of biodiversity
  (Essay 14.2)

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Need for Reserve Systems

• The Global Gap Analysis project combined data
  from the World Database on Protected Areas with
  distributional data for 11,633 sp in a GIS to
  identify how well species were protected
• 1424 sp are not protected in any part of their
  range, 804 of which are threatened with
  extinction (almost 2x)

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Need for Reserve Systems
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Need for Reserve Systems

• Study also points out the skew in distribution of
  PAs
• E.g. in New World, strictly protected sites only
  averaged is only 4.86km2 and 57 are less than
  10km2
• Furthermore, 35 of total protected area is in
  Alaska!!
• Worldwide, 46 of PA in tropics (76 S)

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Need for Reserve Systems

• Using areas of high endemism as well as high
  threat, we can identify priority areas for the
  expansion of the protected areas network

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Need for Reserve Systems
Distribution of the areas deemed urgent through
the Global Gap Analysis
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Need for Reserve Systems

• Currently, 12.65 of Earths surface is under PA
  designation, although marine PA are only 0.5 of
  the PA (1/3 of great barrier reef is protected)

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Need for Reserve Systems
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Planning Reserve Systems

• Although reserves are generally designed to
  protect and sustain representative samples of the
  full range of biodiversity in the area, it is
  frequently aimed at protecting a single flagship
  species

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Planning Reserve Systems

• When biodiversity conservation is the primary
  goal, usually 1 of 3 purposes
• 1) protect single sp (umbrella, flagship,
  endangered)
• 2) preserve high biodiversity/endemism
• 3) preserve large and functioning ecosystems and
  their associated ecosystem services (watersheds)

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Planning Reserve Systems

• Recent research efforts have focused on the
  development of principles and tools to design
  efficient reserve systems for as little as
  possible, AKA systematic conservation planning
• SCP recognize that due to constraints on the
  amount of land that can be set aside for
  biodiversity conservation, there is need to
  conserve biodiversity in the most efficient
  manner possible

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Planning Reserve Systems

• There are frequently quantitative objectives in
  SCP efforts
• There are a number of principles associated with
  finding the best set of potential protected areas
  that satisfies a number of principles
  comprehensiveness, representativeness, adequacy,
  efficiency, flexibility, risk spreading, and
  irreplaceability

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Planning Reserve Systems

• A comprehensive reserve system is one that
  contains examples of biodiversity features
  including species, habitats, or ecological
  processes
• A good PA system will only protect a small amount
  of land consequently, one a fraction of the
  feature will be protected. Ideally, we should
  protect a representative sample of each

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Planning Reserve Systems

• A good PA system would be adequate enough to
  ensure the persistence of organisms in the system
• Need to be as efficient as possible to achieve as
  many of these goals as possible
• A flexible conservation plan is one that enables
  us to achieve our objectives efficiently, but
  taking advantage of opps

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Planning Reserve Systems

• There is a natural tension between connectivity
  and risk spreading, which will be situational
• The irreplaceability of an area reflects how
  important its inclusion is in the reserve system
  (uniqueness)

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Planning Reserve Systems

• Maintaining connections is often essential to
  long-term persistence of sp
• 1) fragmentation and dispersal linked
• 2) widespread sp need v large areas
• 3) climate change likely to alter ranges
• 4) planning outside PA can increase conservation
  potential with landscape planning

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Planning Reserve Systems

• Protected area shape is important due to both
  ecological and economic factors
• Corridors can enhance and facilitate movement
  between and among PAs
• There are negatives to corridorswhat?
• Minimizing fragmentation
• Can compare or quantify

Boundary Length / 2 vp x Area
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Planning Reserve Systems

• The use of surrogates can lower the total
  information required (e.g. indicator sp)

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Tools for SCP

• The goals of SCP techniques have been developed
  that are goal-directed, transparent, defensible,
  flexible, amenable to being solved with
  math/stats (Box 14.2)

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Planning Reserve Systems
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Planning Reserve Systems
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Planning Reserve Systems
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Planning Reserve Systems