Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Advocates for local control of conservation argue that national parks
alone will be of insufficient size to protect natural areas in perpetuity
(Schwartzman et al. 2000). Moreover, local people protect larger areas of
land than are now protected in most parks. In many cases, humans have lived
in these regions for centuries and have not wrought mass destruction dur-
ing that time. Finally, the practical reality is that local people are potent po-
litical actors and an important environmental constituency that can
determine the success or failure of national parks.
Graded Protection
One compromise strategy may be to design a reserve system on landscapes
that allows different degrees of use. For example, one might completely pro-
tect a core region that is surrounded by concentric rings (buffer zones) that
allow graduated degrees of resource use and land development. Such a strat-
egy also balances the conflict between protection and development, but it
achieves this balance on the same parcel of the land base.Allowing conser-
vation strategies that produce economic benefits from goods and func-
tions—ecosystem services—provided by biodiversity within reserve regions
represents a new shift in conservation paradigm. Pure protection strategies
are giving way to those fostering sustainability through economic incen-
tives to protect nature.
Dynamic Landscapes
Parks and protected areas are typically created to protect areas that are
unique or representative of a particular ecosystem type (Box 9.1). As such,
this conservation tool only conserves a static entity: diversity within a spe-
cific local area or alpha (α) diversity. However, the make-up of a particular
local community of species may be shaped by sorting processes that oper-
ate on a larger, landscape scale—called a metacommunity process.
Metacommunity Dynamics
The metacommunity concept is sim-
ilar to the metapopulation concept
discussed in chapter 6 except extinc-
tions are assumed to be determined
by species interactions in local habi-
tats. It represents a way to understand
The make-up of a particular local
community of species may be
shaped by sorting processes
that operate on a larger,
landscape scale—called a
metacommunity process.
