This paper examines some of the impacts of Biosphere Reserve planning on the socio-economic conditions of rural communities in the United States. Through a review of the literature, it is argued that three broad types of problems can develop when Biosphere Reserve plans are put into effect. These include unexpected development shifts, shifts in the distribution of benefits and costs of economic development, and a loss of local governments' ability to provide public services. Though Biosphere Reserve planning has been cast as a strategy for experimentation in community and ecological sustainability, the planning and management process itself causes paradoxical local impacts.

Across the Danish–German border in the Wadden Sea, a new dike was completed in 1981, enclosing formerly productive tidal flats and marsh areas which were most important as feeding grounds to breeding and migrant waterbirds. The bird populations responded immediately by a 50% or more reduction in numbers of resting birds and breeding pairs of most species. This paper reviews the management of the enclosed areas, comparing the differences in approach in the Danish and German areas involved.

Most importantly, a saline environment was re-established (a Saltwater Lagoon) in parts of the Danish area by actively pumping in water from the Wadden Sea. Despite sometimes drastic fluctuations in environmental conditions in the Lagoon, an infauna of species important in the birds' diet was maintained, and the Lagoon to some extent counteracted the negative effects of the dike construction.

The former marsh areas on the Danish side are drained and partly cultivated. In addition, the land areas are separated from the Lagoon by a dike, preventing a saline environment from being maintained outside the designated Saltwater Lagoon. Overall, the land areas in the Danish part are too dry and intensively used to be optimal to the breeding birds.

After construction of the dike, the breeding bird populations shifted more towards the German areas. Here, the land-use is much more beneficial to the breeding birds, because no cultivation has taken place, and a generally high water-level in the marsh areas is preserved. Furthermore, in Germany the new dike was placed closer to the original coastline than in Denmark, but a small area of the original foreland remained outside the dike, providing good breeding sites for colonial waterbirds.

It is concluded that, due to the creation of the Saltwater Lagoon, the Danish part of the area again sustains waterbirds in numbers of international importance. But an integrated approach to the Nature management of the enclosed areas — combining the solutions adopted for land management in the German part with the technical solution of re-establishing a saline environment behind the dike as in the Danish part — would have rendered a better compensation for the damage caused by the dike construction and related activities.

Hunter ‘crippling losses’, or unretrieved kill, probably range from 20% to 40% of all ducks hit by gunfire. However, this major mortality factor in duck populations has been largely ignored by waterfowl policymakers and managers. An economic analysis of ‘crippling losses’ for prairie Canada and the USA was conducted, based on 1992 harvest statistics. The analysis is based on current levels of spending on habitat programmes designed to bolster declining North American duck populations, with reference to the North American Waterfowl Management Plan.

Jordan faces a wide variety of environmental problems, most of which are attributable to the inherent water supply–demand imbalance. This paper has examined the broad range of environmental problems experienced by Jordan, including local, regional, and global, environmental threats. Economic costs of ignoring environmental problems are presented, with examples showing how expensive and how complicated decontamination may be. The paper then discusses current policymaking to counter the existing problems and recommended that future decision-making mechanisms be flexible, robust, and timely enough to be able to cope effectively and rapidly with the evergrowing environmental problems.

In conclusion, the paper offers some suggestions for how the process of environmental policymaking may be improved and accelerated in order to cope with the wide range of environmental problems facing Jordan. The paper recommends that scientists and researchers become more involved in governmental decision-making, to be able to establish more technically-informed policies than hitherto. In addition, some type of concessional financing may be necessary from multilateral and bilateral lending organizations to assist in overcoming some of the more threatening environmental problems, such as water quality, and to provide economic impetus to a depressed economy.

Few environmental education programmes established in parks in Brazil have been formally evaluated. This paper describes the study of a school programme that was established to use formative evaluation to select and improve programme strategies, and employs summative evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the programme as a whole. The programme consisted of pre-visit strategies, such as a slide show and information given to teachers; on-site activities, which comprised Nature trails and a visitor centre; and post-visit materials furnished to the students at their schools. For the evaluation procedure, child students (N=144) from fifth to eighth grades were randomly assigned to treatment or control groups and answered a written questionnaire on three different occasions — pre-test, post-test, and memory-retention test. The results were statistically analysed and significant differences were assessed between the two groups (F=98.29, p≤0.05). A Scheffé Test demonstrated correlations and located significant differences among the variables. A reliability test was done on the written questionnaire (r=.77). Informally, the programme contributed to the conservation of the Park as it encouraged community involvement in helping to solve specific problems.

The results of the Black Lion-tamarin environmental education programme suggest that such programmes in Nature parks and reserves can be effective and should be established far more widely. Awareness education programmes should be encouraged, especially in underdeveloped countries which still hold great portions of the planet's biodiversity. This education programme was beneficial to both students and members of the local community, who learned about the Park and became proud of it as their natural legacy, as well as to the Park itself of which the protection became enhanced through awareness and community involvement. The Black Liontamarin programme serves as an effective example to other sites with similar contexts and constraints.

The idea of ecotourism is being promoted and supported, by growing numbers of people and groups in different parts of the world, as a major means of dealing with the damaging effects of tourism. Yet the meaning of the term varies among different people, projects, and places. Evidence from national parks, where this type of tourism has been promoted for many years, shows that such tourism can cause substantial long-term cumulative changes in environment. Concepts such as ecotourism, green tourism, and sustainable tourism development, are general in their nature and have to be described, planned, and assessed, in detail on the ground in terms of the socioeconomic and environmental conditions applying in different places. In this respect, careful planning and management procedures are needed not only for ecotourism but indeed for all forms of tourism.

Acacia trees form a principal element of desert plant communities in Egypt's Southeastern Desert. They are widespread in remote desert areas but sparse near settlements and urban areas as a result of human impact. However, sustainable use of Acacia trees remains an important component in the livelihood of nomadic people living in remote desert areas.

The present paper discusses the economic and ecological value of Acacia trees in the Wadi Allaqi basin. The total population of Acacia trees in this area is estimated at approximately 13,000 trees. What will be the fate of this population, from which the annual production of charcoal amounts to 10–15 tons? The present work attempts to answer this question by analysing the economic system of the local nomadic population and the ecological characteristics of Acacia trees, coming to reasonably optimistic conclusions.

The impacts of logging on Amazonian ecosystems has been the focus of considerable attention both within and outside of Amazonia. However, the impacts of logging on individual timber species has not been at all adequately investigated. Logging affects timber species by: (1) removing mature individuals that are important sources of seeds; (2) damaging seedlings and saplings (i.e future generations of canopy adults); and (3) creating conditions that favour fire by opening the canopy and leaving slash as fuel on the forest floor.

In this study we summarize information on the ecological characteristics of 305 timber species in Brazilian Amazonia. We identify seven ecological parameters that are useful in evaluating a species' ability to resist the negative impacts of logging. These characteristics are: (1) effective long-distance dispersal ability; (2) abundance of saplings in forest regeneration; (3) rapid growth; (4) ability to resprout; (5) capacity to withstand fire; (6) broad geographic distribution; and (7) high density of adults. We hypothesize thai species with characteristics opposed to these parameters and subjected to intense logging pressure will have difficulty in maintaining their populations in logging regions.

We use a simple scoring system to rank species with regard to their hypothesized ability to withstand logging impacts. Among the species that are potentially susceptible to logging impacts are Euxylophora paraensis (‘Pau Amarelo’) and Swietenia macrophylla (American Mahogany). The sawn lumber from these two species goes principally to European and North American buyers, revealing a direct link between First World consumption and possible biodiversity impoverishment in the Brazilian rain-forest. These two species, and others that might experience population reductions as a result of logging, merit special study.

As in other former British colonies, the earliest protected areas in Peninsular Malaysia were game reserves. There were twenty protected areas at the end of the colonial period (1957), and twenty-five in 1992. The outstanding achievement of the colonial period was the creation of King George V National Park (now Taman Negara), but unfortunately too much reliance was subsequently placed upon it. Protected areas were established in economically undesirable or (formerly) remote areas, largely on an ad hoc basis and mainly as a kind of ‘residual’ land-use. The protected areas have long suffered from rescissions, excisions, and encroachments, primarily for three reasons: because commercial interests have always prevailed; because of insecurity of land tenure; and because ordinary people have been denied a stake in such areas.

I estimate that the ‘effective’ protected-area coverage in 1992 was probably no greater than that of about AD 1940 (when, unlike the situation today, most of the Peninsula still remained forested). The Malaysian states have been reluctant to create new protected areas, and the federal government has been unwilling to invoke certain of its constitutional powers in order to acquire state lands for national parks. Consequently, proposals for additional protected areas have produced few results. Yet owing to the rapid pace of anthropogenic forest change, the Peninsula is running out of potential sites for new protected ares.

Reserved forests comprise virtually all of the Peninsula's remaining forest cover (see Fig. 1). Set aside mainly for productive and protective purposes, it is these forests, not the protected areas, that harbour most of the region's wildlife. This being the case, and keeping in mind that almost all of the wild species are forest-dwelling, it follows that wildlife conservation must come to rely more and more heavily on the reserved forests. Studies conducted by Johns (e.g. 1983, 1986, 1987) at Sungai Tekam, Pahang, on the impact of logging on wildlife, reveal that most species can adapt to the altered conditions of logged forests; or, more precisely, that this appears to be the case following a single logging operation. But this topic, interesting and important as it is, takes us beyond the scope of this paper.

The matter of species adaptability, however, brings to mind a more general theme, which is the need to implement the principles of conservation everywhere, not just in specially protected areas. There is, in short, no effective alternative to rational land-use planning and to making conservation an integral part of all production processes.

A study of the status of Common Property Resources (CPRs) in the coastal areas of Orissa, India, was made during 1989–90 to investigate privatization of land and its socio-economic implications for the rural poor.

The proportion of CPR land to the total area of the villages was 20%, and the persons per hectare of CPR land numbered 70. High density of population in these areas imparts tremendous pressure on the natural resources. The area of the CPR lands in the villages has declined by 40% since ad 1950.

The main cause of decline of CPRs is privatization. Transfer of CPR land to poor people through various social welfare programmes for their private use, and illegal occupation of the CPR land leading to subsequent legalization, were two important factors which resulted in large-scale privatization. The rural poor depend on CPRs for food, fodder, and fuel, in a variety of ways. Due to privatization, they have collectively lost a significant part of their source of livelihood in recent years.

A field experiment was conducted to define minimum values of irradiance (i.e. light reaching the forest floor) and exposed mineral soil required for non-forest species to become established in deciduous forest in Southern Canada. Three logging intensities (0%, 33%, and 66%, of tree basal-area removed) were combined with three plot sizes (0.01, 0.05, and 0.20 ha) to create a range of values of irradiance and exposed mineral soil. The total number of non-forest species that became established during the first three years after logging was recorded.

Non-forest species invaded experimental plots only when irradiance was at least 8% of incident light. There was no single minimum area of exposed mineral soil required for invasion. A few non-forest species became established even in the absence of exposed mineral soil where penetrating irradiance was 8% or greater. More non-forest species became established as irradiance and the amount of exposed mineral soil increased.

Logging increased both irradiance and the amount of exposed mineral soil. Only a small amount of logging (e.g. 33% removal of tree basal-area from a 0.01 ha plot) would be compatible with the conservation objective of preventing invasion by undesirable non-forest species.