Teri D. Allendorf

Community attitudes toward three protected areas in Upper Myanmar (Burma)

SUMMARY An effective protected area system is essential for thelong-termconservationofMyanmar’sbiodiversity. This study examined the attitudes of 2915 residents in 97 communities around three protected areas (PAs) in upper Myanmar: Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park in the western mountains, Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary in the hills bordering the Chindwin and Uru rivers, and Chatthin Wildlife Sanctuary in the central dry zone. Logistic regression indicated a positive attitude toward the PAs was most highly correlated with a perception of conservation benefits and benefits resulting from management of the areas. Attitude was also significantly correlated with a perception of extraction benefits, conflicts with PA staff and crop damage by wildlife. Socioeconomic variables were less powerful than perceptions in predicting attitude and, unlike perceptions, their effectsvariedamongtheareas.Themuchgreatereffect of perceptions, especially positive ones, on people’s attitudes indicates that understanding perceptions is important to improving the relationship between local residents and these PAs. This finding underscores the fact that a focus on conflicts to understand people’s attitudes toward PAs may undervalue or miss critical positive perceptions that people hold. Understanding local residents’ perceptions of PAs makes possible the creation of strategic, place-based management strategies that build on people’s positive perceptions and mitigate their negative perceptions.

Residents’ attitudes toward three protected areas in southwestern Nepal

Understanding people’s beliefs and attitudes toward protected areas is a key factor in developing successful management plans to conserve those areas over the long-term. Yet, most of the emphasis in understanding people’s perceptions has been on the conflicts that exist between people and protected areas, such as loss of traditional extraction access or damage by wildlife to crops and livestock. This study addresses the need to explore people’s attitudes toward protected areas in a way that allows them to define and describe the values they hold toward the areas and the relevant issues and concepts. Three contrasting protected areas in the southwestern region of Nepal were chosen for this study to gain a broad representation of the values people hold toward different types of protected areas. Three themes emerged that describe the positive perceptions residents have: recreation/esthetics, environmental preservation, and economic benefits. Four themes emerged that describe the negative perceptions: negative economic impacts, belief that benefits are for the government or foreigners, fear of wildlife, and negative interactions with park guards. People’s perceptions are affected by different aspects of the areas, including the size of the area and people’s access to them, management objectives, history, and tourism. The diversity of these perceptions suggests that conservation strategies should recognize both positive and negative perceptions and work to foster and integrate diverse values in order to more accurately reflect the reality and complexity of people’s lives.

Gender and Attitudes toward Protected Areas in Myanmar

From grassroots conservation projects to international committees on the environment, womens representation is an important component of a fair, inclusive, and effective conservation process. In this article, we focus on gender differences in local residents’ attitudes toward protected areas in Myanmar. We found women are less likely to have a positive attitude toward the protected areas and are less likely to express perceptions of problems and benefits associated with the areas than men. Using decomposition analysis, we find that the majority of the difference between mens and womens attitudes is explained by these differences in perceptions. Further, much of the difference is explained by men being more likely to perceive conservation and ecosystem service benefits than women, which is the most influential determinant of attitude.

A framework for the park–people relationship: insights from protected areas in Nepal and Myanmar

While local residents are recognized as critical to the conservation of protected areas (PAs), most studies are done on a case-by-case basis, with no conceptual underpinnings to facilitate comparisons. The lack of a common framework limits not only our understanding, but also the development of future research areas and approaches to balancing conservation and sustainable development around protected areas. If we are to understand and address fundamental PA–people issues, we need a descriptive framework that enables the understanding of the relationship that people have with PAs and that facilitates comparisons among PAs. I propose a framework for PA–people relationships based on research conducted in Nepal and Myanmar. The framework consists of: (1) peoples physical relationship with the PA; (2) their attitude toward the PA, which consists of their liking or disliking the area and the perceptions they have of the PA; and (3) the linkage of the PA–people relationship to the broader social, political, and economic context.

Motivations of the community forest protection forces of the Manas Biosphere Reserve in Assam, India

Conservation with a high level of community involvement is proving to be an effective way to conserve forests with benefits for livelihoods and biodiversity. However, people’s motivations to participate in conservation in developing countries are not well studied or understood. One example of a highly successful community conservation program is the Golden Langur Conservation Project (GLCP) in the Manas Biosphere Reserve. The project was initiated in 1998 to protect the endangered golden langur (Trachypithecus geei) and its forested habitat. By 2005, community forest protection forces had been created and were successfully protecting the forest. They have been effective in stopping illegal poachers and confiscating illegally taken timber and wildlife. The objectives of this study are to describe the community forest guards’ motivations to participate in the program, and their perceptions of the project. Results show that these community-based guardians are motivated to participate by multiple factors: conservation, social benefits, and economic opportunities. Conservation of forests and wildlife seem to play the primary role in motivating guards to participate in conserving the forest. However, economic benefits and social benefits also play important roles.

Effects of national‐level forest management regimes on non‐protected forests of the Himalaya

Globally, deforestation continues, and although protected areas effectively protect forests, the majority of forests are not in protected areas. Thus, how effective are different management regimes to avoid deforestation in non-protected forests? We sought to assess the effectiveness of different national forest-management regimes to safeguard forests outside protected areas. We compared 2000-2014 deforestation rates across the temperate forests of 5 countries in the Himalaya (Bhutan, Nepal, China, India, and Myanmar) of which 13% are protected. We reviewed the literature to characterize forest management regimes in each country and conducted a quasi-experimental analysis to measure differences in deforestation of unprotected forests among countries and states in India. Countries varied in both overarching forest-management goals and specific tenure arrangements and policies for unprotected forests, from policies emphasizing economic development to those focused on forest conservation. Deforestation rates differed up to 1.4% between countries, even after accounting for local determinants of deforestation, such as human population density, market access, and topography. The highest deforestation rates were associated with forest policies aimed at maximizing profits and unstable tenure regimes. Deforestation in national forest-management regimes that emphasized conservation and community management were relatively low. In India results were consistent with the national-level results. We interpreted our results in the context of the broader literature on decentralized, community-based natural resource management, and our findings emphasize that the type and quality of community-based forestry programs and the degree to which they are oriented toward sustainable use rather than economic development are important for forest protection. Our cross-national results are consistent with results from site- and regional-scale studies that show forest-management regimes that ensure stable land tenure and integrate local-livelihood benefits with forest conservation result in the best forest outcomes.

Securing the Future for Nepal’s Tigers: Lessons from the Past and Present

Publisher Summary The story of tiger conservation in Nepal is a narrative with many twists and turns. Insights from this account are more important to understanding the persistence of tigers than the details of rigorous scientific analysis of a single aspect of tiger population dynamics or ecology. Key components of tiger conservation clearly include knowledge of their ecology and behavior and rigorous, scientific techniques for monitoring changes in the vital rates of tigers. However, the primary agents of change in numbers of tigers and tiger habitat quality are humans, so it is equally important to focus our conservation efforts to understand human behaviors that impact tigers and their habitat. For tiger habitats, Nepals rapidly developing co-management provide insights that may be helpful in stemming the range-wide decline in tiger numbers and increasing pace of local population extinctions. There is an emerging, alternative view that suggests that when conservation focuses at landscape and ecosystem levels the result is a healthier, intact ecosystem, which in turn better sustains tigers, biodiversity, and human economies at various levels. This chapter reviews the history of tigers in Nepal beginning with the early years of tiger hunting by Nepals rulers through the malaria eradication program that permanently altered the tigers habitat.

Effects of National Forest-Management Regimes on Unprotected Forests of the Himalaya

Globally, deforestation continues, and although protected areas effectively protect forests, the majority of forests are not in protected areas. Thus, how effective are different management regimes to avoid deforestation in non-protected forests? We sought to assess the effectiveness of different national forest-management regimes to safeguard forests outside protected areas. We compared 2000-2014 deforestation rates across the temperate forests of 5 countries in the Himalaya (Bhutan, Nepal, China, India, and Myanmar) of which 13% are protected. We reviewed the literature to characterize forest management regimes in each country and conducted a quasi-experimental analysis to measure differences in deforestation of unprotected forests among countries and states in India. Countries varied in both overarching forest-management goals and specific tenure arrangements and policies for unprotected forests, from policies emphasizing economic development to those focused on forest conservation. Deforestation rates differed up to 1.4% between countries, even after accounting for local determinants of deforestation, such as human population density, market access, and topography. The highest deforestation rates were associated with forest policies aimed at maximizing profits and unstable tenure regimes. Deforestation in national forest-management regimes that emphasized conservation and community management were relatively low. In India results were consistent with the national-level results. We interpreted our results in the context of the broader literature on decentralized, community-based natural resource management, and our findings emphasize that the type and quality of community-based forestry programs and the degree to which they are oriented toward sustainable use rather than economic development are important for forest protection. Our cross-national results are consistent with results from site- and regional-scale studies that show forest-management regimes that ensure stable land tenure and integrate local-livelihood benefits with forest conservation result in the best forest outcomes.

Drivers of Change in Myanmar’s Wild Elephant Distribution

Myanmar is considered as a stronghold for wild elephants, though past estimates varied widely from 3,000 to 10,000. Results of a 2004 expert workshop showed estimates between 1,430 and 2,065. Building on surveys from 1990 to 1992, we conducted new expert interviews in townships throughout the range, with questions focusing on numbers of elephants living in townships and threats to and from elephants. We used general linear models to analyze characteristics of townships with and without elephants and to understand factors influencing changes in elephant presence. Our results show a major decrease in the geographic distribution of wild elephants in Myanmar between 1992 and 2006 with deforestation being the major driver. While forest cover is important for elephant presence, continuity with other elephant populations had a stonger influence on elephant persistence between surveys. Fragmentation of elephant populations is also a major driver of decline. Increases in forest cover increased elephant presence, while increases in edge and human population had the reverse effect. Deforestation and fragmentation lead to increased human–elephant conflict in some areas, sometimes concluding with the capture of elephants for timber operations and further draining wild populations. A national elephant action plan that includes monitoring of elephant status and threats is urgently needed and critical for Myanmar’s wild elephants, particularly as more than 50 years of political isolation are rapidly ending and pressure on the country’s natural resources is increasing exponentially.

Shared place and space: a comparison of two interdisciplinary graduate programs

Interdisciplinary training has an important role to play in environmental research, but what aspects of interdisciplinary training are most helpful for graduate students as they seek to define themselves as interdisciplinary environmental scholars? In this paper, we compare two environmentally related NSF IGERT programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that were similar in their research focus but very different in their approach to training. One program required shared coursework, while the other required research in a shared geographical area in Yunnan, China. Our results suggest that the formal structure of interdisciplinary training programs may be less important than providing students with opportunities to interact with people from other disciplines, both intellectually and in practice. However, differences between the programs did impact participants’ approach to interdisciplinarity. Our findings also highlight the importance of professional training to ensure that all trainees are able to take advantage of interdisciplinary opportunities.