Influences on the Successful Implementation of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar) among Member Countries

Wetlands are very dynamic ecosystems and are featured all over the world’s landscape. Recent studies suggested that wetlands are in continuous decline, both and quantity and quality and between 64-71% is the estimated global wetland loss in the 20th century (Davidson 2014; Gardner et al., 2015). Therefore, as wetland loss increases around the world, more effort to protect and restore wetland habitat, values, and services become crucial. For this reason, the Ramsar Convention was established four decades ago to highlight the severity of wetland loss and to produce guidelines that aim to guide Contracting Parties toward sustainable and efficient management of their wetlands natural resources. To date, 169 countries have signed the agreement and become Contracting Parties. The research questions addressed in this study are: Which Ramsar Member Countries are more able or willing to participate in the Convention and successfully implement its milestones or pillars? What factors account for variation in the level of commitment to the Ramsar Convention among Contracting Parties? What is role of the Ramsar’s Convention in protecting wetlands in urban sites? Using information available through the Ramsar Convention administration, more successful implementation at the sites level is indicated by three variables: the number of years since entry into force to the Ramsar Convention, the number of designated sites, and the number of available management plans, aggregated through Principal Components Analysis (PCA). Next, Thirteen independent variables were selected to examine their relation to the dependent variable, level of policy development for wetlands protection at designated sites level. These independent variables were categorized as follows: socioeconomic attributes, environmental pressures, government type, and programmatic characteristics. Statistical analysis including bi-variate Correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis were used to identify key influences that play a role in the successful implementation of the Ramsar Convention among Member Countries and, thus, reduce wetland loss. Overall, the findings suggest that the commitment to protect wetlands may be more easily achieved in countries with the government and societal infrastructure to better support human health and well-being. Countries with fewer elements of such infrastructure appear to face additional challenges in protecting wetlands

Diversity, distribution and conservation of the terrestrial reptiles of Oman (Sauropsida, Squamata)

All authors: Salvador Carranza , Meritxell Xipell, Pedro Tarroso, Andrew Gardner, Edwin Nicholas Arnold, Michael D. Robinson, Marc Simó-Riudalbas, Raquel Vasconcelos, Philip de Pous, Fèlix Amat, Jiří Šmíd, Roberto Sindaco, Margarita Metallinou †, Johannes Els, Juan Manuel Pleguezuelos, Luis Machado, David Donaire, Gabriel Martínez, Joan Garcia-Porta, Tomáš Mazuch, Thomas Wilms, Jürgen Gebhart, Javier Aznar, Javier Gallego, Bernd-Michael Zwanzig, Daniel Fernández-Guiberteau, Theodore Papenfuss, Saleh Al Saadi, Ali Alghafri, Sultan Khalifa, Hamed Al Farqani, Salim Bait Bilal, Iman Sulaiman Alazri, Aziza Saud Al Adhoobi, Zeyana Salim Al Omairi, Mohammed Al Shariani, Ali Al Kiyumi, Thuraya Al Sariri, Ahmed Said Al Shukaili, Suleiman Nasser Al Akhzami.In the present work, we use an exceptional database including 5,359 records of 101 species of Oman’s terrestrial reptiles together with spatial tools to infer the spatial patterns of species richness and endemicity, to infer the habitat preference of each species and to better define conservation priorities, with especial focus on the effectiveness of the protected areas in preserving this unique arid fauna. Our results indicate that the sampling effort is not only remarkable from a taxonomic point of view, with multiple observations for most species, but also for the spatial coverage achieved. The observations are distributed almost continuously across the two-dimensional climatic space of Oman defined by the mean annual temperature and the total annual precipitation and across the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the multivariate climatic space and are well represented within 17 out of the 20 climatic clusters grouping 10% of the explained climatic variance defined by PC1 and PC2. Species richness is highest in the Hajar and Dhofar Mountains, two of the most biodiverse areas of the Arabian Peninsula, and endemic species richness is greatest in the Jebel Akhdar, the highest part of the Hajar Mountains. Oman’s 22 protected areas cover only 3.91% of the country, including within their limits 63.37% of terrestrial reptiles and 50% of all endemics. Our analyses show that large areas of the climatic space of Oman lie outside protected areas and that seven of the 20 climatic clusters are not protected at all. The results of the gap analysis indicate that most of the species are below the conservation target of 17% or even the less restrictive 12% of their total area within a protected area in order to be considered adequately protected. Therefore, an evaluation of the coverage of the current network of protected areas and the identification of priority protected areas for reptiles using reserve design algorithms are urgently needed. Our study also shows that more than half of the species are still pending of a definitive evaluation by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).This work was funded by grants CGL2012-36970, CGL2015-70390-P from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spain (cofunded by FEDER) to SC, the project Field study for the conservation of reptiles in Oman, Ministry of Environment and Climate Affairs, Oman (Ref: 22412027) to SC and grant 2014-SGR-1532 from the Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca del Departament d'Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya to SC. MSR is funded by a FPI grant from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spain (BES-2013-064248); RV, PT and LM were funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) through post-doc grants (SFRH/BPD/79913/2011) to RV, (SFRH/BPD/93473/2013) to PT and PhD grant (SFRH/BD/89820/2012) to LM, financed by Programa Operacional Potencial Humano (POPH) – Quadro de Referência Estrategico Nacional (QREN) from the European Social Fund and Portuguese Ministerio da Educação e Ciência

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the climatic space of Oman (grey dots) using 12 BIOCLIM variables.

<p>Dashed lines delimit the climatic clusters that group 10% of the explained variance by PC1 and PC2. Green dots represent the climatic space of protected areas.</p

Number of species displayed in a cumulative way.

<p>Dots represent the years with species descriptions. Dashed lines divide the graph into intervals of 20 years. The last dot includes the species in the process of being described.</p

Climate variability of Oman.

<p>(A) Map showing the distribution and extension of the 20 climatic clusters of Oman identified in this study that group 10% of the explained variance by PC1 and PC2; (B) Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the climatic space of Oman using 12 BIOCLIM variables and with the 20 climatic clusters that group 10% of the explained variance by PC1 and PC2 with the same colors as in the map. Clusters have been numbered from 1 to 20 with the following order: from left to right and from bottom to top.</p

Physical map of Oman.

<p>Map of Oman showing topographical relief and names of the most relevant toponyms mentioned in this study.</p

Maps of species richness.

<p>(A) Species richness by governorate; (B) species richness by grids of 10 arc-minutes of latitude and longitude.</p

Percentage of the species’ distribution area included within a protected area.

<p>Dashed lines indicate the conservation target of 17% and 12% of the total species’ distribution area within a protected area. (A) The extent of species occurrence was defined using the presence-absence in every pixel of 1 km x 1 km. (B) The extent of species occurrence was defined using a minimum convex polygon (MCP) of the observations filtered by the species’ average altitude.</p

Map of protected areas of Oman.

<p>Topographical map of Oman showing the distribution, limits and names of the 22 protected areas. Information provided by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Affairs of Oman.</p

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the climatic space of Oman (grey dots) using 12 BIOCLIM variables.

<p>Dashed lines delimit the climatic clusters that group 10% of the explained variance by PC1 and PC2. Red dots represent the distribution of the 5,359 observations in the PCA of the climatic space.</p