Mangroves are severely threatened ecosystems, with loss rates exceeding those of rainforests and coral reefs, stressing the need for large-scale rehabilitation programmes. Not only are ecological evaluations of such planting efforts scarce, but studies of local stakeholders' perceptions and valuation of planted areas are also virtually non-existent. This paper assesses how resource users value natural versus planted mangroves and how they perceive plantation initiatives. Semi-structured interviews with 48 resource users from two Kenyan villages show marked mangrove dependence. Respondents identified 24 ecosystem goods, and ranked a variety of food items, traditional medicine, fuel and construction materials as very important resources. Natural mangroves (11.1 ± 2.5) were rated more highly than plantations (4.8 ± 2.7) in terms of the number and quality of products, except for mangrove poles. Nine ecosystem services were acknowledged, with significant differences between natural (5.2 ± 1.1) and planted (4.1 ± 1.6) mangroves. Most respondents (71%) were positive towards the plantations, and negative attitudes were entirely based on the perception of limited information given to the community prior to planting. Multivariate analyses show distinct patterns among user groups (based on gender, occupation and locality) with respect to recognized goods and services, knowledge of mangrove species and plantations, and attitudes towards threats, community management and existing plantations. Homogeneity of responses within defined user groups accounts for these patterns. Perspectives of local users were analysed in relation to information from interviews with six managers and researchers responsible for existing plantations, as well as scientific studies on the return of ecosystem functions in planted mangroves of the area. Findings are discussed in the context of ecological knowledge, learning within social groups, village setting and history, and primary economic activity. Communication of plantation goals may be fundamental to project success and sustainability, and community participation should take into account the heterogeneous nature of stakeholder groups, in terms of perceptions and valuations of ecosystem goods and services, to avoid conflicts in future plantation use.

Unofficial roads form dense networks in landscapes, generating a litany of negative ecological outcomes, but in frontier areas they are also instrumental in local livelihoods and community development. This trade-off poses dilemmas for the governance of unofficial roads. Unofficial road building in frontier areas of the Brazilian Amazon illustrates the challenges of ‘road governance.’ Both state-based and community-based governance models exhibit important liabilities for governing unofficial roads. Whereas state-based governance has experienced difficulties in adapting to specific local contexts and interacting effectively with local peoples, community-based governance has a mixed record owing to social inequalities and conflicts among local interest groups. A state-community hybrid model may offer more effective governance of unofficial road building by combining the oversight capacity of the state with locally-grounded community management via participatory decision-making.

In conservation efforts where genuine community involvement is aimed at, communication should be a two-way affair in which the local voice can be truly heard. In developing countries especially, however, this voice tends to be smothered by the power and prestige that usually lies with the supra-local conservation agencies. This paper explores how fictional storytelling, a communication medium as old as mankind, may enable local people to respond in freedom to the issue of conservation. Stories that end by posing a dilemma to the audience are generally used in Cameroon to initiate discussion. First trials in Cameroon used this format to tell a story of animals that found themselves at risk of extinction and sent out a delegation to the human world to plea for a ‘last home’. Although enjoyed by researchers and audience alike, this story appeared to suffer from several technical and structural shortcomings. In order to overcome these, empirical research (for example the gathering of some 600 stories in the field) and theoretical considerations led to the design of a second-generation story that retained the dilemma format but carried fewer implicit messages and introduced a third, adjudicating party. This story was tried out in 13 villages in Central and North Cameroon with full success, both in terms of process (the elicitation of focused and rich debate) and in terms of content (the clarity of arguments and underlying assumptions). If led by the principles developed in this paper, fictional storytelling is a worthy addition to the methodological repertoire of all conservation professionals who wish to communicate conservation to local communities in a manner that is structurally balanced and substantively open.

Economic valuation of ecosystem services by stated preferences techniques is usually used by policy-makers to develop environmental management practices. Critics of the contingent valuation (CV) method have argued that respondents are influenced by several factors, which mean that people do not apply economic motives in responding to CV questions. This study examines the influence of individuals’ environmental behaviour and knowledge about the good concerned on the CV results and the CV problem of benefit aggregation in order to determine the extent of the hypothetical market. Here a CV study in the Doñana National and Natural Park (Spain) found that both individual environmental behaviour and knowledge influenced willingness to pay for sustaining specific ecosystem services provided by the biodiversity of Doñana. A distance-decay function was found, which determined the social benefits of the ecosystem services of Doñana. The study illustrates the importance of understanding non-economic motives behind values in order to obtain further information which can support decision-making in environmental management.

In 1995, a study found that the socioeconomic benefits from a legalized commercial harvest of sea turtle eggs in Ostional (Costa Rica) were substantial and widely recognized by Ostional residents. Legal and administrative structures ensured community participation in and control of resource use, and evidence indicated support for community-based conservation (CBC) was high. In 2004, the study was repeated to assess how perceptions of the egg harvest might have changed over time. There were continued high levels of support for conservation and positive perceptions of the project's impacts on the economy, environment and community. Some explanations for impact rankings have changed, with greater emphasis on the importance of conservation and awareness of how this is achieved, greater animosity towards one government agency and greater concern about the impacts of tourism on the egg harvesting project. Between surveys, a variety of social, political and economic changes have occurred. The CBC concept has been further refined and critiqued; by examining a CBC project over time, this paper considers the durability and flexibility of the incentive, legal and administrative structures associated with a successful example of CBC.

Tropical deforestation is a key contributor to species extinction and climate change, yet the extent of tropical forests and their rate of destruction and degradation through fragmentation remain poorly known. Madagascar's forests are among the most biologically rich and unique in the world but, in spite of longstanding concern about their destruction, past estimates of forest cover and deforestation have varied widely. Analysis of aerial photographs (c. 1953) and Landsat images (c. 1973, c. 1990 and c. 2000) indicates that forest cover decreased by almost 40% from the 1950s to c. 2000, with a reduction in ‘core forest’ > 1 km from a non-forest edge of almost 80%. This forest destruction and degradation threaten thousands of species with extinction. Country-wide coverage of high-resolution validated forest cover and deforestation data enables the precise monitoring of trends in habitat extent and fragmentation critical for assessment of species' conservation status.

Law enforcement is crucial to curb unsustainable and illegal exploitation of plant and animal populations. This paper investigates the temporal pattern of illegal hunting activity and factors that influence the probability of Village Game Scouts (VGSs) arresting illegal hunters outside the Serengeti National Park (Tanzania). A total of 201 patrols were conducted during nine months between December 1998 and August 1999, and 96 illegal hunters were arrested. All illegal hunters originated from local villages within 41 km from the closest protected area border. During the dry season more illegal hunters were observed and more snares found during patrols, the increase coinciding with the annual arrival of the migratory herbivores. Logistic regression models indicated that the probability of being arrested varied seasonally and large groups of illegal hunters had a lower probability of being arrested by VGSs. This study shows that routine data collection by VGSs may provide useful baseline values from which illegal hunting activities in partially protected areas can be evaluated. Moreover, VGSs should be integrated into the existing law enforcement structure and given more resources, to ensure optimal efficiency.

Fire has become a frequent tool in nature conservation and hazard reduction, but there is still dispute about the responses of many taxa, especially concerning invertebrate populations. While the effects of fire on plants and animals have been examined intensively in prairies, savannahs and coniferous forests, wetlands have rarely been considered in this context, yet wetland ecosystems do experience periodic fires. This study examines the effects of prescribed burning and wildfires on Orthoptera in four Central European peat bogs. All species persisted on the burned plots and none experienced a massive decline in abundance compared to unburned treatments. Generally, differences in species composition and abundance were more distinct between the bogs than between the fire treatments or fire season. One threatened species, Omocestus rufipes, occurred more often in burned than in unburned samples. The abundances of Orthoptera species in the transition zone between burned and unburned plots were either uniform or step-like rather than gradual in nature, conflicting with a hypothesis of post-fire recolonization from unburned plots. This pattern supported by non-metric multidimensional scaling suggests that the vegetation structure plays a substantial role in habitat choice of these insects. Small-scale fires between February and May do not seem to represent a threat to Orthoptera species. However, in the longer term, peat bog restoration may be affected by negative vegetation responses.

Various conservation models have been implemented in Nepal since 1973, however their impacts on resources use and conservation attitudes are scarcely known. To address the hypothesis that conservation attitudes should improve around protected areas (PAs) with more social and economic interventions, stratified random questionnaire surveys of 234 households were conducted in two PAs in the Western Terai of Nepal: Bardia National Park (BNP), in which interventions have been more widespread for longer time periods, and Sukla Phanta Wildlife Reserve (SWR), in which interventions are relatively recent. Both are part of a major landscape-level conservation programme under implementation in Nepal, and both are under threat of political turmoil, uncontrolled immigration, inefficient land reform policies and unsustainable resource use. There was spatio-temporal variability in resource use patterns and dependence. People collected eight and seven types of resources in BNP and SWR, respectively, and people in BNP were more dependent on resources overall. About 72% of respondents mentioned the problem of inadequate firewood, and suggested the promotion of alternative energy and permission to collect from PAs as mitigating strategies. Of 11 attitude statements, five significantly differed between the two areas. Respondents from the BNP had more favourable attitudes about conservation than those from SWR, supporting the main hypothesis. Training received by respondents, damage by wildlife, dependence on resources and satisfaction towards user groups contributed significantly to the variation in conservation attitudes. The results suggest that the liberalization of PA management has enabled the use of resources, improved livelihoods to some extent and solicited more favourable conservation attitudes in Nepal.

The attitudes of neighbouring communities towards protected areas are increasingly being considered in the establishment and management of national parks. In South Africa, more inclusive policies have been introduced which seek to involve neighbouring communities in policy formulation and management of Kruger National Park (KNP). This paper examines the attitudes of 38 communities towards KNP along its western border. A random survey of 240 households was conducted to assess attitudes towards the Park, and what factors might influence them. Attitudes were measured by responses to 12 related questions, which were transformed to construct an attitude index. Attitudes are more varied than previously reported. Notwithstanding KNP outreach programmes, many respondents had had no interaction with KNP, 72.9% had never been in the Park, and only 32.1% claimed they knew of KNP's activities. Having a household member employed by KNP, age and de jure Traditional Authority affiliation influenced more positive attitudes toward KNP. Negative attitudes were primarily linked with problems associated with damage-causing animals, including inadequate maintenance of the KNP border fence, poor animal control outside KNP and lack of compensation for affected farmers. These findings on relationships between KNP and its neighbours are relevant for many protected areas in similar contexts elsewhere.

The steppes of the Mediterranean Basin, traditionally managed since ancient times, have been drastically degraded by recent human activities, and are a valuable model to study the impact of present and past anthropogenic disturbances. Climate and edaphic constraints and free sheep grazing have contributed for over 6000 years to the development of a steppe unique to France, but similar to many others in the Mediterranean Basin. This steppe is increasingly threatened by both industrialization and cultivation, and formerly-cultivated plots developed less species-rich vegetation than the steppe. Here, sampling with pitfall traps showed that formerly-cultivated plots hosted more diverse beetle assemblages owing to the presence of ruderal plants, which had greater nutritional value and hosted more phytophagous insects, beetles or other groups, enhancing prey diversity. The steppe had a less species-rich assemblage, but included many species typical of arid areas, some of which are threatened. Former disturbances led to the settlement of ubiquitous species, which increased the overall species richness, but decreased the biological value for conservation. Conservationists have to decide whether they would rather maintain beetle species diversity or biological value.

Local knowledge is increasingly seen as a critical information source for environmental management and habitat restoration, particularly in Australia. To assess the reliability of this information source, community perceptions of the salinity history of Lake Ainsworth (New South Wales, Australia) were investigated. Lake Ainsworth is a coastal dune lake classified as ‘permanently’ freshwater, although diatom evidence indicates a saline phase that ended in the 1930s. Local accounts of the Lake's history rarely reached consensus and local perceptions frequently contrasted with alternate evidence, including that derived from historical maps and aerial photographs. Given there was an inconsistent and unreliable local perspective about a relatively simple environmental issue, calls for environmental management and restoration to be based on local priorities should be viewed with scepticism.

Illegal logging is a threat to tropical forests in protected areas, yet the factors motivating it need to be better understood. Here, rural household participation in timber felling in the Barisan I Nature Reserve (West Sumatra) was described, the household contextual factors relating to this participation analysed and the importance of these activities to the household income assessed. Nearly 19% of the sampled households cut or hauled timber in the Reserve, and the demand for cash encouraged participation. Alternative livelihoods such as livestock raising and agroforestry intensification outside the Reserve could reduce the need for timber felling. Knowledge about legal status of the Reserve did not affect the odds of a household engaging in timber harvesting, but greater awareness of the Reserve resulted in lower levels of income from timber. Development policy that seeks to provide livelihood alternatives to timber felling households could reduce dependence on timber and contribute to forest conservation in the Reserve. Moreover, conservation outcomes should improve if control over the protection and enforcement of the Reserve is co-managed between the government and the local communities.

Environmental policy increasingly emphasizes involvement of local users and land owners in ecosystem management, but conservation planning is still largely a bureaucratic-scientific endeavour of identifying biological values for protection. Neither biological inventories nor stakeholder analyses, that tend to focus on conflicting interests, capture human resources in the landscape or the social structures and processes underlying biological conservation values. Social-ecological inventories are therefore proposed during the preparation phase of conservation projects as a means to identify people with ecosystem knowledge that practise ecosystem management. The method presented here focuses on local steward groups acting outside official management plans. In a social-ecological inventory of a river basin of southern Sweden, local steward groups, their ecosystem management activities, motives and links to other actors involved in ecosystem management were identified through interviews, participatory observations and a review of documents and other written material. Several hundred active local stewards were organized in 10 local steward groups that managed and monitored a range of ecosystem services at different spatial scales. Contributions of local stewards included on-site ecosystem management, long-term and detailed monitoring of species and ecosystem dynamics, local ecological knowledge, public support for ecosystem management and specialized networks. Two conservation projects are used to illustrate how local steward groups came together in multi-level networks and collaborated around specific conservation issues. The projects have been linked to ecosystem management at the landscape level through a flexible municipality organization, the Ecomuseum Kristianstads Vattenrike (EKV). EKV has acted as a ‘bridging organization’, coordinating and connecting many of the local steward groups to organizations and institutions at other levels. The process has been guided by social capital and shared visions for the whole landscape. The study shows that ecosystem management likely relies on multi-level collaboration and social-ecological inventories may help identify actors that are fundamental in such management systems. Social-ecological inventories should be employed in any attempt to develop and implement ecosystem management.

Grasslands are the most extensive terrestrial landscapes and ecosystems in China and face growing degradation. A policy to protect the grasslands established in 2001 (the Grassland Ban Policy [GBP]), involves four management practices including grazing bans, keeping grasslands fallow, grazing rotations and rearing livestock in sheds. A questionnaire was developed and used to establish attitudes towards and beliefs about the GBP in different sectors (farming households, local officials and extension workers), assess problems with GBP implementation and identify possible solutions. Acceptance of the GBP by farmers varied from 64% in the north to 95% in the north-west region. The responses of both local officials and extension workers indicated that GBP implementation was greater in the central region than in the north-west region. Most farmers changed their livestock production system from grazing to stall feeding after implementation of the GBP, while both farmers and extension workers reported that high input costs were the most serious problem in stall feeding. Incentives need to be provided for sustainable implementation of the GBP by different stakeholders. Improved collaboration among farmers, local officials and extension workers is needed for technology transfer and policy implementation. Furthermore, the role of non-governmental organizations needs to be strengthened in implementation of the GBP.

This is the first attempt to analyse the performance of US 12.6 million invested by Save The Tiger Fund (STF) in more than 250 tiger conservation grants in 13 tiger-range countries. We devised a simple implementation evaluation method to assess performance on an ordinal scale using archival documents from project grant files. Performance was scored based on whether the grantee managed to achieve what they set out to do as articulated in their project proposal. On average, STF grantee project outputs exceeded their original objectives, but many confounding variables made it difficult to determine the ecological outcomes of grantees’ conservation actions. Successful projects were usually collaborative in nature with high community visibility and support, their results were disseminated effectively, and they informed policy, measured outputs, were grounded by strong sound science, supported by government agencies, attracted new donors and delivered results even when political factors created difficult working environments. The poorly performing projects were associated with one or more of the following factors: poor tracking of results, deviation from the proposal, poorly defined goals, lack of capacity, poor evaluation practices, lack of political support, weak transparency, work at inappropriate scales or purchase of high-tech equipment that was never used.

Indigenous people have widely been blamed for degrading South Asia's montane forest resources through the practice of shifting cultivation, yet some studies have revealed that indigenous people used forests in a sustainable way for centuries until external intervention. The history of external intervention in the forests of South Asia is more than two centuries old. The process of degradation of forest resources requires understanding of the political and social processes that condition access, control and management of the land and resources involved. The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh, a part of the Himalayan region, underwent essentially the same socio-political and historical processes as many other countries in the region and had very similar experiences in forest management. By examination of policies and associated effects on CHT forest over the past two centuries, this paper reveals that the process of forest degradation in the CHT started during the British colonial period with the nationalization of forests, establishment of reserve forests (RFs), management of forests by government agencies and weakening of traditional institutions. The process of degradation was accelerated by: privatization of forest land for the promotion of sedentary agriculture, horticulture and rubber plantation; the construction of a hydraulic dam on the Karnafuli River; the settlement of lowland people; and the constant conflict between indigenous people and the Forest Department. The degradation of CHT forests is not only the result of traditional agricultural practices, but also of many other factors including inappropriate policies and programmes.