When most people hear the word Madagascar, images of animated dancing lemurs and quirky stranded penguins come to their minds. Although there is some truth in the movie's description of that far-away, mysterious place, it fails to paint a complete picture of Madagascar as being rich in biodiversity and culture. Few places on earth rival the variety of endemic plants and animals that are found there. It is estimated that Madagascar has more genetic diversity per unit area than anywhere else on earth (Karsten, et al., 2009). This makes it "one of the world's hottest hotspots for biodiversity conservation" (Consiglio, et al., 2006). Even though Madagascar is a biologically invaluable nation, it trails behind other ecologically notable countries, like Ecuador, in the conservation effort. Madagascar continues to suffer devastating loss to its precious habitats. The Madagascar government has the difficult task of preserving as much ecologically unique territory as it can, without depriving the already economically disadvantaged local people. Much international help is needed in providing support to the people and protection to the plants, animals, and natural resources of Madagascar.
It is now acknowledgement that private landholders should play a central role in defending Australia's natural resources. Facilitating mechanisms for private landholders to effectively conserve their land is necessary to allow for connectivity between "islands" of publicly owned and managed conservation areas and to achieve a comprehensive, adequate and representative (CAR) system of protected areas. Covenants on the title of the land, which can be held in perpetuity by a covenant body, are the most secure form of private land conservation and the only private initiatives that has the potential to be included in the National Reserve System (NRS). Across Australia, all states have legislated for covenanting schemes. These schemes vary in approach and all raise issues as to how covenants may best be used to ensure their viability and durability as long term conservation tools. Balancing Private and Public Conservation This report concludes that there is scope for partnerships between government, individual landholders and Private Conservation Organisations in conserving the land. However legislated protected areas remain should remain as the core of biodiversity protection. Thus private land conservation initiatives should be 'fillers' in the CAR system and covenants which have security of tenure should complement publicly managed conservation areas in the NRS. There is evidence that Commonwealth funding is focused on more generalised private conservation initiatives under the National Heritage Trust (NHT) and concerns are raised that the NRS Program, which supports acquisition of land of high conservation value, has become a low budget priority. This report recommends that the NRS be re-instated as a core funding priority of the NHT. Two days before submission of this report the National Reserve Program - 2006 Evaluation was released. That report concluded that within the Program, more money is being designated to non-government conservation initiatives at the expense of contributions to the public reserve system. This finding will need further reviewing to ensure that a partnership approach is maintained between private and public conservation bodies in the NRS program. The Covenant Process There are over 2600 covenanted properties across Australia. Employing locally engaged staff and targeting specific landholders help covenant bodies to increase covenant numbers. Some financial incentives such as tax rebates or payments for specific management projects are also useful tools for encouraging landholders to enter into covenants. Impediments to covenant bodies increasing covenant numbers include limited financial resources and staff, lack of time and negative landholder perceptions. Within short government programs such as the Private Forest Reserve Program in Tasmania, limited time to develop covenants was cited as a concern because it takes time to develop a relationship of trust with landholders who are considering covenanting their land. Negative landholder perceptions were also cited as an issue. Some landholders believe that covenants are a means for government agencies to take their land away whilst others see the covenanting process as too time consuming. This report proposes that locally engaged staff be employed, where possible, to facilitate the covenanting process and to encourage and improve perceptions of the covenanting process. On-going Management Encouraging landholders to enter into covenants is important; however, increasing covenant numbers will have no net benefits for conservation unless the covenanting body and the landholder effectively manage the protected land. Although covenants may be secure conservation tools in theory, it is how they are managed which will establish whether they are secure in practice. Management plans are used to provide technical advice to landholders. All plans are created in consultation with the landholder to provide flexibility and ensure greater compliance. It is noted that giving too much weight to the requests of landholders could lead to easily attainable but ineffective management goals. Thus it is recommended that the conservation values of properties be appropriately balanced with the interests of landholders. Regular contact between the covenanting body and landholders is central to the effectiveness of management plans and covenants. Some covenant bodies organise field days or regular gatherings of landholders. These meetings provide a means for landholders to raise issues and share information. It is also a mechanism for the covenant body to engage in on-going monitoring. However, this report raises concerns over the frequency of visits by covenant bodies to covenanted properties. Visits are commonly carried out every three years, however some covenant bodies do not engage in regular visits. Given that some covenant bodies may not find out for several years whether breaches have occurred, major questions are raised as to the long-term security of covenants. It is recommended that visits occur annually to land of high conservation value in conjunction with individual monitoring and periodic meetings with landholders. Furthermore systems should be put in place to alert the covenanting body when there is a change of ownership of the land. This report found only one case in which the conditions of a covenant were enforced through the courts. It is noted that covenant bodies prefer to deal with minor breaches out of court; however, most are at least willing to enforce major breaches of the conditions of covenants. Where a breach is taken to the courts, the Histollo Pty Ltd v Director-General of National Parks and Wildlife Service (1998) 45 NSWLR 661 suggests that only covenants and management plans which specify the precise nature and location of what is to be protected ensure that covenant conditions can be enforced. Conclusion This report concludes that conservation covenants have the potential to be secure conservation tools and are an important part of the NRS. However, there is room for improvement in the administration and on-going management of covenants. Given the varying contexts in which each of the State covenant bodies operate no one covenant program could serve as a model for covenanting bodies to follow. Instead greater communication, co ordination and co-operation between the States and the Commonwealth is needed to share information on the strengths and weaknesses of covenanting programs across Australia and to explore opportunities for implementing initiatives which build on those strengths and address weaknesses.
Species threatened with extinction are the focus of mounting conservation concerns throughout the world. Thirty-seven years after passage of the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1973, we conclude that the Act's underlying assumption—that once the recovery goals for a species are met it will no longer require continuing management—is false. Even when management actions succeed in achieving biological recovery goals, maintenance of viable populations of many species will require continuing, species-specific intervention. Such species are "conservation reliant." To assess the scope of this problem, we reviewed all recovery plans for species listed as endangered or threatened under the Act. Our analysis indicates that 84% of the species listed under the Act are conservation reliant. These species will require continuing, long-term management investments. If these listed species are representative of the larger number of species thought to be imperiled in the United States and elsewhere, the challenge facing conservation managers will be logistically, economically, and politically overwhelming. Conservation policies will need to be adapted to include ways of prioritizing actions, implementing innovative management approaches, and involving a broader spectrum of society.
Found throughout the tree of life and in every ecosystem, parasites are some of the most diverse, ecologically important animals on Earth-but in almost all cases, the least protected by wildlife or ecosystem conservation efforts. For decades, ecologists have been calling for research to understand parasites' important ecological role, and increasingly, to protect as many species from extinction as possible. However, most conservationists still work within priority systems for funding and effort that exclude or ignore parasites, or treat parasites as an obstacle to be overcome. Our working group identified 12 goals for the next decade that could advance parasite biodiversity conservation through an ambitious mix of research, advocacy, and management. ; Ecological Society of America; Georgetown Environment Initiative; Smithsonian National Museum of Natural HistorySmithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian National Museum of Natural History; Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History; National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation (NSF) [OCE-1829509]; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Sloan Research FellowshipAlfred P. Sloan Foundation; University of Washington Innovation Award; University of Washington Royalty Research Fund awardUniversity of Washington ; The authors kindly thank the Ecological Society of America for supporting our workshop, as well as additional participants Kevin Burgio, Tad Dallas, and Roger Jovani; Laura Whitehouse, for her graphic design work on Fig. 1; Jonathan Wojcik for allowing the inclusion of his copyright Diplozoon illustration in Fig. 3; and dozens of collaborators and friends who have been part of the foundational work on parasite conservation, including Anna Phillips, Veronica Bueno, Carrie Cizauskas, Christopher Clements, Graeme Cumming, Eric Dougherty, Kevin Johnson, Wayne Getz, Nyeema Harris, Elizabeth Nichols, Sergey Mironov, Robert Poulin, and Heather Proctor. CJC gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Georgetown Environment Initiative, and research support from Anna Phillips and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. KCB was supported by a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. CLW was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (OCE-1829509), an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Sloan Research Fellowship, a University of Washington Innovation Award, and a University of Washington Royalty Research Fund award. Any use of trade, product, or firm names in this publication is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. ; Public domain authored by a U.S. government employee
Since the 1800s, America has been known for its massive conservation projects–setting aside huge swaths of land in public parks and passing legislation like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Now, new technologies are making a different type of conservation project possible, and conservationists are capturing massive amounts of data to inform conservation efforts through community involvement. These crowdsourced projects harness knowledge and skills of large groups of people who can contribute to conservation goals. For example, the internet platform Sciestarter connects 100,000 registered citizen scientists plus millions of onsite visitors with over 3,000 individual conservation projects. The global networks facilitated by this technology can connect small scale projects with huge pools of volunteers. The eBird app is another example of crowdsourced science. Birdwatchers upload bird type, location, and time of sighting into the app, contributing to a massive database of bird observations from around the world. The crowdsourced data allows scientists to map the distributions and movements of birds, and has been used in over 100 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals. Sciestarter and eBird are two of many conservation projects relying on crowdsourced science. In this research we examine whether technology-enhanced crowdsourcing has positive impacts on conservation outcomes. To do so, we examined existing literature on citizen science and crowdsourced conservation in addition to exploring key case studies of projects underway. Our initial research suggests crowdsourced science has the potential to foster bottom-up conservation that relies on community engagement for quality data collection. We also find leveraging technology could make citizen science even more potent and more research is needed in this area to realize these outcomes. ; https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2020/1027/thumbnail.jpg
"How to restore and maintain the productivity of the soil is the most important phase of the conservation problem. We are no longer a new nation. We have deluded ourselves with the idea that we have unbounded resources in land, in forests, in mineral wealth. We have been prodigal in the utilization of these resources. We must pay the penalty of this prodigality. In many of our older communities soil fertility has been reduced below the point of profitable production. Nation-wide effort at the present time, through federal and state agency, is directed toward the restoration of fertility in these localities. On the prairies of the West fertility is beginning to wane. In order that our heritage in the prairie country may not follow the descent of the East and the South, it is necessary that intelligent and vigorous effort be made to farm correctly. We must cease abusing the soil. The renting of land on short leases for the purpose of growing grain for market is one of the surest means of reducing the productive power of the soil. The domestic animal, with well-managed pastures and rational systems of crop rotation, is preeminently adapted to the development of permanent systems of profitable farming. Landowners must realize this and must take steps to improve renting methods by stocking farms with a full complement of domestic animals, where the renter is not able to do this for himself, and by giving longer leases, whereby the renter may reap the reward of intelligent management."--Introduction (p.5). ; Cover title. ; Disposal of land by the government -- Importance of cheap and abundant food -- Steps in agricultural development -- Difficulties in changing types of farming -- Exploitive farming too long continued -- Decrease in population and abandonment of land in the older states -- The present situation -- Conditions in older countries -- The solution of the problem -- Effect of live stock on soil fertility -- Effect of legumes -- Dependence on our own resources -- Examples of successful farming. ; "How to restore and maintain the productivity of the soil is the most important phase of the conservation problem. We are no longer a new nation. We have deluded ourselves with the idea that we have unbounded resources in land, in forests, in mineral wealth. We have been prodigal in the utilization of these resources. We must pay the penalty of this prodigality. In many of our older communities soil fertility has been reduced below the point of profitable production. Nation-wide effort at the present time, through federal and state agency, is directed toward the restoration of fertility in these localities. On the prairies of the West fertility is beginning to wane. In order that our heritage in the prairie country may not follow the descent of the East and the South, it is necessary that intelligent and vigorous effort be made to farm correctly. We must cease abusing the soil. The renting of land on short leases for the purpose of growing grain for market is one of the surest means of reducing the productive power of the soil. The domestic animal, with well-managed pastures and rational systems of crop rotation, is preeminently adapted to the development of permanent systems of profitable farming. Landowners must realize this and must take steps to improve renting methods by stocking farms with a full complement of domestic animals, where the renter is not able to do this for himself, and by giving longer leases, whereby the renter may reap the reward of intelligent management."--Introduction (p.5). ; Mode of access: Internet.
In this paper I argue that there has been a critical shift towards war by conservation in which conservation, security and counter insurgency (COIN) are becoming more closely integrated. In this new phase concerns about global security constitute important underlying drivers, while biodiversity conservation is of secondary importance. This is a significant break from earlier phases of fortress conservation and war for biodiversity. In order to develop a better understanding of these shifts, this paper analyzes the existing conceptual approaches, notably environmental security analyses which seek to understand how resources cause or shape conflict, and political ecology approaches that focus on the struggles over access to and control over resources. However, this paper indicates the limitations of these existing debates for understanding recent shifts, which require a fresh approach. I chart the rise of the narrative I call poachers-as-terrorists, which relies on the invocation of the idea that ivory is the white gold of Jihad, a phrase which is closely associated with an Elephant Action League (EAL) report in 2012 which claimed Al Shabaab used ivory to fund its operations. This narrative is being extended and deepened by a powerful alliance of states, conservation NGOs, Private Military Companies and international organizations, such that it is shaping policies, especially in areas of US geo-strategic interest in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result conservation is becoming a core element of a global security project, with significant implications for conceptual debates and for conservation practice on the ground.
This paper reviews recent work concerning the impact of geopolitics on wildlife conservation (and vice versa), and identifies future priorities in conservation geopolitics research. Geopolitics is understood as both: (i) an analytical focus on geopolitical practices, especially concerning the behaviour of countries with respect to territory and national security, and (ii) a set of theories that have been developed to explain and predict those behaviours. We develop a typology of core geopolitical practices of relevance to conservation, including territorial practices of colonisation and the management of migrations and borders, and security practices relating to military, economic, and environmental security. We proceed by identifying research that considers how these practices affect conservation situations and outcomes, noting the recent emergence of conceptual developments such as 'environmental geopolitics' and 'geopolitical ecology' that draw on multiple fields within the social sciences to theorise the links between geopolitics and environmental management. A 'geopolitical perspective' is defined as a focus on geopolitical practices combined with an explicit engagement with geopolitical theory, and we identify areas where this perspective has been, and could be more effectively brought to bear. In conclusion, we suggest four pressing priorities in conservation research to which the geopolitical perspective might contribute: how political and economic differences between countries affect biodiversity outcomes, how geopolitical practices to address those differences might facilitate or frustrate conservation efforts, how national borders and human and wildlife movements might be better managed for the benefit of both, and how conservation strategies might be best selected to suit existing (and future) geopolitical realities.
The opposition between nature and boundaries is well known : whereas nature knows no boundaries, public law is spatially structured by boundaries. However, such an opposition is currently being overcome under the influence of several factors. First, environmental law creates new boundaries that are no longer modelled on human boundaries but on nature ones. The notions of ecological zoning and above all ecological network illustrate this trend. Then, environmental law uses transboundary cooperation to mitigate the effects of boundaries on nature. Eventually, a complementarity is asserted between environmental law and infra-State transboundary cooperation law. The right to cooperate has been recognized to regional and local authorities and to public establishments responsible for nature conservation. Besides, relatively appropriate tools have been made available for cooperation in nature conservation. Nevertheless, this complementarity is being tested by the significant differences that may exist between national laws of neighbouring countries and, above all, by the lack of accountability of infra-State cooperation actors with respect to international environmental obligations. Thus, within transboundary environmental law, the emerging sector of transboundary nature is not as mature as the older one related to transboundary pollutions. ; Les relations entre la nature et les frontières sont traditionnellement conçues comme antagonistes : tandis que la nature ne connaîtrait pas de frontières, le droit public est, d'un point de vue spatial, structuré par les frontières. Le dépassement d'une telle opposition est cependant engagé, sous l'influence de plusieurs facteurs. D'abord, le droit de l'environnement crée ses propres frontières, indépendantes des frontières humaines et calquées sur celles de la nature. Les notions de zonage écologique et, surtout, de réseau écologique participent de ce mouvement. Ensuite, le droit de l'environnement recourt à la coopération transfrontalière, comme technique d'effacement fonctionnel de la frontière politique. Enfin, une complémentarité s'affirme entre le droit de l'environnement et le droit de la coopération transfrontalière infra-étatique. Le droit de coopérer a été reconnu aux collectivités territoriales et aux établissements publics compétents en matière de conservation de la nature, et des outils de coopération relativement adaptés à ce domaine ont été mis à leur disposition. Toutefois, une telle complémentarité est mise à l'épreuve par les différences importantes qui peuvent subsister entre les droits nationaux d'Etats frontaliers et, surtout, par la responsabilisation insuffisante des acteurs de la coopération infra-étatique face aux obligations internationales environnementales. Ainsi, au sein du droit de l'environnement transfrontalier, le secteur émergent de la nature transfrontalière n'est pas encore aussi mature que celui, plus ancien, des pollutions transfrontières.
