Nigel Dudley

The Links between Protected Areas, Faiths, and Sacred Natural Sites

Most people follow and are influenced by some kind of spiritual faith. We examined two ways in which religious faiths can in turn influence biodiversity conservation in protected areas. First, biodiversity conservation is influenced through the direct and often effective protection afforded to wild species in sacred natural sites and in seminatural habitats around religious buildings. Sacred natural sites are almost certainly the worlds oldest form of habitat protection. Although some sacred natural sites exist inside official protected areas, many thousands more form a largely unrecognized shadow conservation network in many countries throughout the world, which can be more stringently protected than state-run reserves. Second, faiths have a profound impact on attitudes to protection of the natural world through their philosophy, teachings, investment choices, approaches to land they control, and religious-based management systems. We considered the interactions between faiths and protected areas with respect to all 11 mainstream faiths and to a number of local belief systems. The close links between faiths and habitat protection offer major conservation opportunities, but also pose challenges. Bringing a sacred natural site into a national protected-area system can increase protection for the site, but may compromise some of its spiritual values or even its conservation values. Most protected-area managers are not trained to manage natural sites for religious purposes, but many sacred natural sites are under threat from cultural changes and habitat degradation. Decisions about whether or not to make a sacred natural site an official protected area therefore need to be made on a case-by-case basis. Such sites can play an important role in conservation inside and outside official protected areas. More information about the conservation value of sacred lands is needed as is more informed experience in integrating these into wider conservation strategies. In addition, many protected-area staff need training in how to manage sensitive issues relating to faiths where important faith sites occur in protected areas.

Forest Restoration in Landscapes

WWF’s vision for the forests of the world, shared with its long-standing partner, the World Conservation Union (IUCN), is that“the world will have more extensive, more diverse and higher-quality forest landscapes which will meet human needs and aspi-rations fairly,while conserving biological diversity and fulfilling theecosystem functions necessary for all life on Earth.”WWF’s approach to forest conservation has evolved over timeinto a global programme of integrated field and policy activitiesaimed at the protection, responsible management, and restorationof forests, whilst at the same time working to address the keythreats which could potentially undermine these efforts. Those ofparticular concern to WWF are illegal logging and forest crime,conversion of forests to plantation crops of palm oil and soy, forestfires, and climate change.The Forests for Life Programme consists of a global network ofmore than 250 staff working on over 300 projects in nearly 90 coun-tries. Regional forest officers coordinate efforts in each of the fiveregions, supported by a core team based at WWF International inSwitzerland. The programme also draws on the complementaryskills and support of partners to help achieve its goals.

Forest Landscape Restoration in Context

People have been actively using forests since long before the beginning of history. The oldest known written story, the Epic of Gilgamesh recorded on 12 cuneiform tablets in Assyria in the seventh century b.c., includes reference to the problems of forest loss. The need for good tree husbandry was stressed in Virgil’s pastoral poem The Georgics in 30 b.c., written to promote rural values within the Roman Empire. The oldest records of forest management in the world have been kept without a break for 2000 years in Japan, relating to forests managed to produce timber for Shinto temples. The need for large-scale restoration has also been recognised for centuries; for example, the English pamphleteer John Evelyn wrote a tract calling for major tree planting during the time of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1600s. In more recent times, forest departments around the world have developed major efforts at reforestation in Europe, eastern North America, Australia, New Zealand, and increasingly in parts of the tropics. In the last 20 years, hundreds of aid and conservation projects have promoted and carried out tree planting schemes and the development of tree nurseries, aimed at both supplying goods such as fuelwood and at restoring ecological functions and protecting biodiversity. Following the Society for Ecological Restoration International (SERI) and its chapters around the world, the scientific knowledge on ecological restoration has been conceptualised and applied to many different types of ecosystem, including forest landscapes. Good books have already been published. Why then do we need another book about restoration? The arguments for forest restoration are becoming more compelling. Forest loss and degradation is a worldwide problem, with net annual estimates of forest loss being 9.4 million hectares throughout the 1990s and those for degradation uncalculated but universally agreed to be even higher. The most severe losses are currently concentrated mainly, although not exclusively, in the tropics, with 1 Forest Landscape Restoration in Context

Why Do We Need to Consider Restoration in a Landscape Context

Conservation strategies that rely solely on protected areas and sustainable management have proved insufficient either to secure biodiversity or to stabilise the environment. The United Nations Environment Programme now classifies a large proportion of the world’s land surface as “degraded,” and reversing this damage is one of the largest and most complex challenges of the 21st century. Habitat loss is already so severe that conservation programmes need to include restoration if they are to deliver long-term success. Analysis of the WWF Global 200 ecoregions—identified as those of the highest conservation importance— demonstrates the problems. Over 80 percent of the G200 forest ecoregions need restoration in at least parts of their area; deforestation is a key threat to water quality in 59 percent of G200 freshwater ecoregions, and three quarters of G200 mangrove ecoregions are under threat. Even where forest is stable or increasing, parallel losses of forest quality create the need for restoration. In Western Europe, for instance, research by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe found that most countries had less than 1 percent of their forests surviving in an unmanaged state. Forest loss is not only of concern to conservationists.The United Nations estimates that 60 million people are directly dependent on forest 7 Why Do We Need to Consider Restoration in a Landscape Context?