Chapter 5 Protected Areas: A Cornerstone of Conservation

Discussion Questions

1. In what ways might protected areas conflict with human well-being and economic activity? In what ways might protected areas benefit human well-being and economic activity?
2. Devise a scheme of incentives (other than the debt-for-nature swaps described in this chapter) that could induce poorer nations to support the creation and management of protected areas.
3. What do you think would be an ethically acceptable bill of rights for people living inside protected areas? If such a bill of rights existed, who would enforce it?
4. What are the pros and cons of what has been called “fortress conservation,” meaning the creation of protected areas that completely exclude human habitants and extractive activities?
5. What do you think of the proposal to sell off protected areas with low cost-effectiveness and reinvest the money more strategically for conservation? What are the potential positives and negatives of such a proposition?

Group Projects

• Identify three protected areas that represent different levels of protection as defined by the IUCN. Compare the conservation goals and the management strategies used in each. Are there measures of the effectiveness of the three areas? If so, discuss how the effectiveness of conservation in the areas relates to the goals and management activities.

• Use the database on the MPA Global website to examine the growth of MPAs for five nations of your choosing. Plot the number of MPAs and the cumulative area of MPAs as a function of time (omit any MPAs that have no date of designation). Discuss any differences among the nations and why they might exist.

• For each of five nations of your choosing, use the advanced search features of the MPA Global database to examine the proportions of MPAs (both by number of MPAs and by area) that fall under the various IUCN protection categories. Discuss the potential implications of these data for the effectiveness of each nation’s MPA network.

• Using the World Bank national indicator database, identify the countries with the very highest percentage of their land area protected for conservation as well as the countries with the lowest percentage of their land area protected for conservation. Develop a hypothesis to explain what might be driving these stark differences. Are there any other indicators in the World Bank national-level data that can help you test your hypothesis?

Useful Websites

• The Australian Government provides information on conservation covenants in Australia http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/incentives/covenants.html


• IUCN Global Protected Areas Program provides definitions of protected area categories and a wealth of information regarding protected area planning, management, and assessment. http://www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/gpap_home/


• Land Trust Alliance (LTA) provides information on how U.S. land trusts are formed and what they do. Also available are data from the LTA National Land Trust Census, which is performed every five years. http://www.landtrustalliance.org/


• Millennium Development Goals Indicators is the official United Nations site providing national level data relevant to the eight Millennium Development Goals. http://mdgs.un.org


• MPA Global is a database of the world's marine protected areas. http://www.mpaglobal.org


• PADDDtracker is a searchable database and visualization tool documenting the patterns, trends, causes, and consequences of protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD). http://www.padddtracker.org/


• ProtectedPlanet is the online interface for the World Database on Protected Areas, which is the most comprehensive global dataset on marine and terrestrial protected areas. The site includes a searchable visualization tool and links for downloading the entire protected areas database. http://www.protectedplanet.net/


• U.S. National Park Service website provides information on the organization as well as on individual National Parks. http://www.nps.gov


• U.S. National Park Service also has a searchable database where you can get information on the size and visitorship for individual U.S. National Parks. https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/


• World Resource Institute's Earthtrends supports a searchable interface that provides easy access to WDPA data on the number and extent of protected areas. Data are also available as a percent of total land area. http://www.earthtrends.wri.org


• The World Bank provides a wide range of data related to national development. The full list of indicators is available at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator. The extent of terrestrial protected areas as a percentage of each nation's land area can be found at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.LND.PTLD.ZS.

Suggested Readings for In-class Discussion

• Aycrigg JL, Davidson A, Svancara LK, Gergely KJ, McKerrow A, Scott JM (2013) Representation of ecological systems within the protected areas network of the continental United States. PLoS ONE 8: e54689. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0054689#abstract0 (open access)
  
  
• Dudley N, Groves C, Redford KH, Stolton S (2014) Where now for protected areas? Setting the stage for the 2014 World Parks Congress. Oryx 48: 496-503.
  
  
• Geldmann J, Barnes M, Coad L, Craigie ID, Hockings M, Burgess ND (2013) Effectiveness of terrestrial protected areas in reducing habitat loss and population declines. Biol Conserv 161: 230-238.
  
  
• Noss RF, Dobson AP, Baldwin R, Beier P, Davis CR, et al. (2012) Bolder thinking for conservation. Conserv Biol 26: 1-4.
  
  
• Palomo I, Montes C, Martín-López B, González JA, García-Llorente M, et al. (2014) Incorporating the social–ecological approach in protected areas in the Anthropocene. Bioscience 64: 181-191. http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/64/3/181 (open access)
  
  
• Sarkar S, Montoya M (2011) Beyond parks and reserves: The ethics and politics of conservation with a case study from Perú. Biol Conserv 144: 979-988.