Suchergebnisse

Biodiversity monitoring is criticized for being insufficiently relevant to the needs of managers and ineffective in integrating information into decision-making. We examined conservation management interventions resulting from 21/2 years of monitoring by 97 rangers and 350 community volunteers over 1 million hectares of Philippine protected areas. Before this monitoring scheme was established, there was little collaboration between local people and park authorities, and park monitoring was restricted to assessments of the quantity of extracted timber. As a result of the scheme, 156 interventions were undertaken in terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems. In total 98% of these interventions were meaningful and justified, 47% targeted the three most serious threats to biodiversity at the site, and 90% were implemented without external support, suggesting that the interventions were relevant and could be sustained over time at the local level. The mean time from sampling to decision-making was only 97 days, probably because 82% of the interventions were initiated by the same people and institutions that had compiled the underlying data, bypassing potential government bureaucracy. Many of the interventions were jointly undertaken by community members and the management authorities or consisted of local bylaws in support of park management. As a result of the monitoring, indigenous resource use regulation schemes were re-established with government recognition in several parks. The monitoring led to more diversified and realistic management responses on the part of the authorities, including a more socially acceptable and effective approach to enforcement. Of the four field monitoring techniques used, the most participatory one generated more interventions aimed at ensuring a continued resource supply for local communities (χ23 = 69.1, p <0.01). Although this suggests that the interest of community members is associated with their possibilities to influence the flow of ecosystem goods and services, the 156 interventions targeted, directly or indirectly, all known globally threatened species of mammals, birds and butterflies in the parks. © Springer 2005.

There is a need for a better understanding of the status of the environment. At the same time, concerns have been raised regarding alienation of the local populace from environmental decisions. One proposed solution is participatory environmental monitoring. When evaluating the usefulness of environmental monitoring, the focus may be on accuracy, as is usually done by scientists, or on efficiency in terms of conservation impact. To test whether investment in participatory biodiversity monitoring makes economic sense for obtaining data for management decisions, we compared the cost efficiency of participatory and conventional biodiversity monitoring methods in Philippine parks. We found that, from a government perspective, investment in monitoring that combines scientific with participatory methods is strikingly more effective than a similar level of investment in conventional scientific methods alone in generating conservation management interventions. Moreover, the local populace seemed to benefit from more secure de facto user rights over land and other resources. Participatory biodiversity monitoring not only represents a cost-effective alternative when conventional monitoring is impossible, but it is also an unexpectedly powerful complementary approach, capable of generating a much higher level of conservation management intervention, where conventional monitoring already takes place. © Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2007.