[c]Conservation of endangered fragments of ecosystems

This strategy used both in places where degradation and replacement of natural ecosystems has already been widespread, and also where key features are at risk within otherwise managed landscapes or seascapes. It is a trade-off between conserving entire ecosystems and carrying out conservation in altered or highly pressured areas. This use of protected areas is increasingly integrated into wider conservation strategies, so that conservation within protected areas is one element in a suite of responses (Groves et al, 2002). In theory, these fragments allow the survival (for example by providing breeding places) of species that can also utilise part of the wider landscape or seascape for feeding and dispersal. These fragments also help to preserve plant species that would not find suitable habitat in managed landscapes. They are predicated, in the long-term, on the assumption that species will be able to disperse and thus mix genetic material, to avoid inbreeding, because most are too small for populations to remain viable if completely isolated.

In places where ecosystem change has been profound, or where disturbance factors (e.g. invasive species) can upset the local ecology, protected areas may be places where management actions can be tailored explicitly to maintain a particular species or way of ecosystem functioning. Such areas may of necessity be highly managed but here management decisions are driven primarily by conservation needs. Management interventions might include for example artificial removal of invasive species (increasingly important in many protected areas); restoration of native vegetation, re-introduction of native species or simpler measures like mimicking natural grazing pressures (which might mean reduction of livestock in some cases or reintroduction of artificial grazing in others).

In situations where long-term management has produced changes in ecology, protected areas can be based on maintenance of traditional practices. Implicit in this is that such practices are themselves under threat, often from changing technologies or social conditions, so that protected areas frequently support traditional management through financial or other means. Here the objective is to maintain the mix of species currently present within the cultural landscape. It is frequently said that without management in these situations biodiversity will “decline”. In fact protection without management intervention in these situations would certainly cause biodiversity to change but in many cases the absence of research means that it is not possible to tell if the overall richness will rise or fall, or to put it another way how the degree of threat faced by different species will alter. There are many examples of such approaches in the European Mediterranean, such as maintenance of culturally-defined grassland habitats in the Minorca Biosphere Reserve in Spain, which helps to protect plant and animal species adapted to grassland, in an island where human influences have created the vegetation mosaic over centuries (Chust et al, 1999; Borrini-Feyerabend et al, 2004).

Some species are so rare or have such restricted distribution that protected areas conserve all or a significant proportion of the population, to buffer them from current pressures or as an insurance against future threats. Many islands fall into this category, because their isolation means that they have evolved unique species types. Examples of protected areas conserving island populations include Teide and Garajonay National Parks on the Canary Islands of Spain with unique plant and bird species and the Galapagos National Park in Ecuador, protecting a large but still un-quantified number of species endemic to the islands (Willersley et al, 2002). As natural habitat becomes increasingly isolated, ecological “islands” occur on the mainland as well, and in marine areas. Kaziranga National Park in Assam, India, supports the world’s largest population of Asian rhinoceros (see case study). Many other protected areas have been created to conserve less iconic endemic species, which occur throughout the world. In Scotland, a country not usually noted for high biodiversity levels. Keen of Hamar National Nature Reserve in the Shetland Islands protects the only known population of Edmondston’s chickweed (Cerastium nigrescens).

Protected areas are sometimes established specifically to conserve particular periods of the life-cycle of a species or group, in ways that include a temporal aspect in protection or some kind of flexible zoning. The most common cases are temporary zoning to protect the breeding grounds of marine or freshwater fish, which are described in chapter 5 or to allow recovery of plant species with high economic or social value such as medicinal herbs (see chapter 2). However such focused protection can also be aimed at species without economic value; for example through the preservation of veteran trees to maintain nesting sites for birds of prey in managed forestry in Sweden, or the protection of ponds during the spawning season of frogs and toads.

Migratory species face particular challenges in needing suitable habitat along routes of hundreds or even thousands of miles. Protected areas that maintain flyways, “swim-ways” or mammal routes have specialised management approaches. These may include, for example, provision of food for migratory birds, as for several crane species including the white-necked crane; fishing restrictions on rivers with spawning salmon; or protection of “stepping stones” for migratory birds, like the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network in the Americas. Birds or flying insects are relatively easier to develop strategies for because they can pass easily over inhospitable habitat, although here hunting pressure in between can undermine protection as is currently the case with hunting in Malta and was the cause of the disappearance of the western Siberian crane population, despite protection at both “ends” of the migration route. Mammals that migrate face immediate problems if there is a single break in their route, which can be caused by something as simple as a road or by management changes that make then unwelcome. The planting of oil palm right up to the banks of the Kinabatangan River in Sabah, Borneo (which is itself illegal) has broken the migration route for Borneo forest elephants, who now literally have to swim around areas to avoid being shot at during their twice-yearly journey along the river. Other example of the use of protected areas for migratory species include the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico (Alonso-Mejía et al, 1997) and maintaining biological connectivity along heavily modified stretches of the River Danube in Austria (Chovanec et al, 2002). Because they are often needed in crowded or modified landscapes and seascapes, many such sites are protected under governance forms other than direct management by governments.

Less well recognised, but of considerable importance, is the role that protected areas in the less “strict” categories play in providing test sites for combining sustainable management and biodiversity conservation that can be expanded more generally into the wider landscape (Phillips 2002). This is a very different use to the ones described above, with its implicit trade-offs between conservation and other uses. It can create tensions between conservation and other social or economic drivers, which has led to criticism of protected landscapes and extractive reserves and some governments have used these designations as easy options to meet conservation targets. The debate about the precise role of IUCN categories V and VI remains unresolved. However, increasing attention on these protected area designations has built pressure to deliver and the best examples of IUCN category V and VI demonstrate a variety of ingenious ways in which conservation and development can be integrated successfully, for example in some extractive reserves in the Amazon, where rubber tappers and other users extract economic value from otherwise protected forests and from some of the protected landscapes in Europe, where large mammals such as the bear and wolf survive alongside farming and recreational interests.

Most wild nature exists outside protected areas and many species (Rodrigues et al, 2004) and habitats (Hoekstra et al, 2005) remain unprotected or under-protected by the global protected areas network. Protected areas also remain severely under pressure from illegal use, conflict, social tensions and climate change. Protected areas on their own cannot maintain all species, but most people still recognise them as an essential element – perhaps the essential element – in conservation strategies. Whilst much of this book has focused on wider values of these areas, their underlying importance in biodiversity conservation should never be under-estimated.

Alonso-Mejía, A., Rendon-Salinas, E., Montesinos-Patiño, E. and Brower, L. P. (1997) Use of Lipid Reserves by Monarch Butterflies Overwintering in Mexico: Implications for conservation, Ecological Applications 7: 934-947

Ricketts, T. H., Dinerstein, E., Boucher, T., Brooks, T. M., Butchart, S. H. M., Hoffmann, M., Lamoreux, J. F., Morrison, J., Parr, M., Pilgrim, J. D., Rodrigues, A. S. L., Sechrest, W., Wallace, G. E., Berlin, K., Bielby, J., Burgess, N. D., Church, D. R. Cox, N., Knox, D., Loucks,C., Luck, G. W., Master, L.L. Moore, R., Naidoo, R., Ridgely, R. Schatz, G. E., Shire, G., Strand, H., Wettengel,W. and Wikramanayake, E. (2005) Pinpointing and preventing imminent extinctions, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102: 18497–18501

Vinod Mathur and Sue Stolton

Kaziranga is a relatively small park (430km²) and the nature of the ecosystem means that land is being lost to the floods. Whilst there have been attempts to add more land to the park, only one addition of just over 40 km² has so far been gazetted as well as a new 96 km² sanctuary in Karbi Anglong (Choudhury, 2004). Whilst efforts to expand the park will continue, it is clear that the park management needs to adopt an approach which looks beyond the boundaries of the protected area and works with regional government and private interests to agree a landscape mosaic that will provide a supportive environment in which Kaziranga can continue to flourish.

Over the last 100 years Kaziranga National Park has been able to secure the habitat of several endangered species including rhino, elephant, tiger, wild buffalo and swamp deer. The park managers, frontline staff, local communities and civil society have, under the guidance of the administrative as well as political leadership in Assam, played a vital role in achieving this success. Over the next century, Kaziranga, in common with many other protected areas, will likely find management within its boundaries threatened by changes in the wider landscape. Future success will depend on a the Government of Assam’s commitment to adopting a landscape approach to conservation throughout the state, and ensuring that changes that take place outside the park do not create pressures so large that Kaziranga can no longer function effectively.

Nigel Dudley, Marc Hockings and Sue Stolton

Protected areas – including those controlled by the state but also indigenous and community conserved areas, private reserves and protected areas managed by companies or trusts – provide the most effective tools yet developed to maintain natural habitats in the face of development pressures. Worldwide there are certainly differences in their delivery of conservation outcomes, distribution of social benefits or in their management effectiveness, but they are currently the strongest approach to in-situ conservation that we have. The pre-eminent examples serve as a set of inspirational models for maintenance and management of natural ecosystems in the 21^st century.

We hope that this book has shown protected areas also contain an abundance of different values, some of which accrue or could accrue significant financial benefits, some of which are vital for subsistence and others with values that are more intangible but no less important to recognise and maintain. Many of these benefits are a long way from traditional perceptions of national parks and nature reserves. They are summarised in the box 11.