Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control. Robert Bursik , Harold Grasmick

By Alain F. Zuur, Elena N. Ieno and Graham M. Smith, New York, Springer, 2007, xxvi + 672 pp., £54.00 or US$84.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-387-45967-7 As stated in the preface, finding a suitable and...

Analysing ecological data

Humanity will soon define a new era for nature—one that seeks to transform decades of underwhelming responses to the global biodiversity crisis. Area-based conservation efforts, which include both protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, are likely to extend and diversify. However, persistent shortfalls in ecological representation and management effectiveness diminish the potential role of area-based conservation in stemming biodiversity loss. Here we show how the expansion of protected areas by national governments since 2010 has had limited success in increasing the coverage across different elements of biodiversity (ecoregions, 12,056 threatened species, ‘Key Biodiversity Areas’ and wilderness areas) and ecosystem services (productive fisheries, and carbon services on land and sea). To be more successful after 2020, area-based conservation must contribute more effectively to meeting global biodiversity goals—ranging from preventing extinctions to retaining the most-intact ecosystems—and must better collaborate with the many Indigenous peoples, community groups and private initiatives that are central to the successful conservation of biodiversity. The long-term success of area-based conservation requires parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to secure adequate financing, plan for climate change and make biodiversity conservation a far stronger part of land, water and sea management policies.

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Area-based conservation in the twenty-first century

As systems of marine protected areas (MPAs) expand globally, there is a risk that new MPAs will be biased toward places that are remote or unpromising for extractive activities, and hence follow the trend of terrestrial protected areas in being ‘residual’ to commercial uses. Such locations typically provide little protection to the species and ecosystems that are most exposed to threatening processes.
There are strong political motivations to establish residual reserves that minimize costs and conflicts with users of natural resources. These motivations will likely remain in place as long as success continues to be measured in terms of area (km2) protected.
The global pattern of MPAs was reviewed and appears to be residual, supported by a rapid growth of large, remote MPAs. The extent to which MPAs in Australia are residual nationally and also regionally within the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) Marine Park was also examined.
Nationally, the recently announced Australian Commonwealth marine reserves were found to be strongly residual, making almost no difference to ‘business as usual’ for most ocean uses. Underlying this result was the imperative to minimize costs, but without the spatial constraints of explicit quantitative objectives for representing bioregions or the range of ecological features in highly protected zones.
In contrast, the 2004 rezoning of the GBR was exemplary, and the potential for residual protection was limited by applying a systematic set of planning principles, such as representing a minimum percentage of finely subdivided bioregions. Nonetheless, even at this scale, protection was uneven between bioregions. Within-bioregion heterogeneity might have led to no-take zones being established in areas unsuitable for trawling with a risk that species assemblages differ between areas protected and areas left available for trawling.
A simple four-step framework of questions for planners and policy makers is proposed to help reverse the emerging residual tendency of MPAs and maximize their effectiveness for conservation. This involves checks on the least-cost approach to establishing MPAs in order to avoid perverse outcomes.


© 2014 The Authors. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Reinventing residual reserves in the sea: are we favouring ease of establishment over need for protection?

Oceanography and marine biology: an annual review

No-take marine reserves are increasingly popular tools for conservation and fisheries management. While much attention has been paid to evaluating the effects of design aspects (size, location, etc.) in achieving reserve objectives, less emphasis has been placed on the role of stakeholder compliance. Therefore, the first aim of this study was to evaluate the state of compliance literature and examine the methods used to measure compliance in reserves. The state of compliance literature is limited, although publications with compliance information have increased sixfold in the last decade. However, most studies containing compliance information (63%) fail to provide quantitative estimates. Furthermore, most (95%) quantitative estimates of compliance were reported using a single method, which is problematic because each method has biases and limited applicability. Methods used to indicate compliance include (i) direct observation; (ii) indirect observation; (iii) law enforcement records; (iv) direct questioning; (v) expert opinion; and (vi) modelling. Our second aim was to empirically demonstrate the critical role of compliance in reserve outcomes by comparing a mixed-effects model on compliance data synthesized from 63 marine reserves to that of a null model. The model of best fit demonstrated a negative relationship between non-compliance and target species biomass response ratios. Thus, without incorporating any aspects of reserve design, compliance data predicted reserve response ratios of fish biomass. Accordingly, researchers should explore ways to better understand and measure non-compliance. Therefore, future research should triangulate multiple sources of quantitative compliance data collected using standardized techniques and conduct baseline surveys before reserve implementation.

Measuring and monitoring compliance in no‐take marine reserves

Social-ecological systems are often highly complex, making effective governance a considerable challenge. In large, heterogeneous systems, hierarchical institutional regimes may be efficient, but effective management outcomes are dependent on stakeholder support. This support is shaped by perceptions of legitimacy, which risks being undermined where resource users are not engaged in decision-making. Although legitimacy is demonstrably critical for effective governance, less is known about the factors contributing to stakeholders' perceptions of legitimacy or how these perceptions are socially differentiated. We quantitatively assessed stakeholder perceptions of legitimacy (indicated by support for rules) and their contributory factors among 307 commercial fishers and tourism operators in Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Legitimacy was most strongly associated with trust in information from governing bodies, followed by confidence in institutional performance and the equity of management outcomes. Legitimacy differed both within and among resource user groups, which emphasizes the heterogeneous nature of commonly defined stakeholder groups. Overall, tourism operators perceived higher legitimacy than did commercial fishers, which was associated with higher trust in information from management agencies. For fishers, higher levels of trust were associated with: (1) engagement in fisheries that had high subsector cohesion and positive previous experiences of interactions with governing bodies; (2) location in areas with greater proximity to sources of knowledge, resources, and decision-making; and (3) engagement in a Reef Guardian program. These findings highlight the necessity of strategies and processes to build trust among all user groups in large social-ecological systems such as the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Furthermore, the social differentiation of perceptions that were observed within user groups underscores the importance of targeted strategies to engage groups that may not be heard through traditional governance channels.

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Trust, confidence, and equity affect the legitimacy of natural resource governance

https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol21/iss3/art18/ES-2016-8542.pdf

Trust, confidence, and equity affect the legitimacy of natural resource

Effective conservation depends upon people's compliance with regulations, yet non-compliance (eg poaching) is often the rule rather than the exception. Poaching is often clandestine and socially undesirable, requiring specialized, multidisciplinary approaches for assessment and management. We estimated poaching by recreational fishers in no-fishing reserves of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) by conducting social surveys and quantifying derelict (lost or discarded) fishing gear. Our study revealed that (1)between 3-18% of fishers admitted to poaching within the past year, (2) poaching activities were often concentrated at certain times (holidays) and in specific places (poaching hotspots), and (3) fishers' primary motivations to poach were the perception of higher catches in reserves and a low probability of detection. Our results suggest that extolling certain ecological benefits of marine reserves where enforcement capacity is low could lead to the perverse outcome of encouraging non-compliance. Our combined social-ecological approach revealed that even in an iconic marine park such as the GBRMP, poaching levels are higher than previously assumed, which has implications for effective management.

A social–ecological approach to assessing and managing poaching by recreational fishers

Apex predators are declining at alarming rates due to exploitation by humans, but we have yet to fully discern the impacts of apex predator loss on ecosystem function. In a management context, it is critically important to clarify the role apex predators play in structuring populations of lower trophic levels. Thus, we examined the top-down influence of reef sharks (an apex predator on coral reefs) and mesopredators on large-bodied herbivores. We measured the abundance, size structure, and biomass of apex predators, mesopredators, and herbivores across fished, no-take, and no-entry management zones in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, Australia. Shark abundance and mesopredator size and biomass were higher in no-entry zones than in fished and no-take zones, which indicates the viability of strictly enforced human exclusion areas as tools for the conservation of predator communities. Changes in predator populations due to protection in no-entry zones did not have a discernible influence on the density, size, or biomass of different functional groups of herbivorous fishes. The lack of a relationship between predators and herbivores suggests that top-down forces may not play a strong role in regulating large-bodied herbivorous coral reef fish populations. Given this inconsistency with traditional ecological theories of trophic cascades, trophic structures on coral reefs may need to be reassessed to enable the establishment of appropriate and effective management regimes.

Brock J. Bergseth

Papers

Measuring and monitoring compliance in no‐take marine reserves

Trust, confidence, and equity affect the legitimacy of natural resource governance

Trust, confidence, and equity affect the legitimacy of natural resource

A social–ecological approach to assessing and managing poaching by recreational fishers

Impact of conservation areas on trophic interactions between apex predators and herbivores on coral reefs