Certified community forests positively impact human wellbeing and conservation effectiveness and improve the performance of nearby national protected areas

Community forests (CFs) aim to improve human wellbeing and conservation effectiveness, though their performance remains contested. A recent innovation in protected area (PA) governance is to combine CFs with forest certification. We assess (1) the impact of certified CFs on wellbeing and conservation effectiveness; (2) gender inequality and elite capture; (3) interaction effects with neighboring national PAs. We used a novel approach that integrates field data consisting of locally identified indicators representative of multidimensional wellbeing, with remotely sensed data on conservation effectiveness and statistical matching to improve causal inference. We found that CFs positively impacted wellbeing, conservation effectiveness, and reduced gender inequality, though they did not reduce elite capture. We also detected positive interaction effects between certified CFs and neighboring national PAs. Our findings suggest that locating contrasting local and national PA governance approaches next to each other may help to maximize wellbeing and conservation benefits within complex multiuse landscapes

A quasi-experimental study of impacts of Tanzania’s Wildlife Management Areas on rural livelihoods and wealth

Since the 2000s, Tanzania’s natural resource management policy has emphasised Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), designed to promote wildlife and biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation and rural development. We carried out a quasi-experimental impact evaluation of social impacts of WMAs, collecting data from 24 villages participating in 6 different WMAs across two geographical regions, and 18 statistically matched control villages. Across these 42 villages, we collected participatory wealth ranking data for 13,578 households. Using this as our sampling frame, we conducted questionnaire surveys with a stratified sample of 1,924 household heads and 945 household heads’ wives. All data were collected in 2014/15, with a subset of questions devoted to respondents’ recall on conditions that existed in 2007, when first WMAs became operational. Questions addressed household demographics, land and livestock assets, resource use, income-generating activities and portfolios, participation in natural resource management decision-making, benefits and costs of conservation. Datasets permit research on livelihood and wealth trajectories, and social impacts, costs and benefits of conservation interventions in the context of community-based natural resource management

Protected areas and poverty

Protected areas are controversial because they are so important for conservation and because they distribute fortune and misfortune unevenly. The nature of that distribution, as well as the terrain of protected areas themselves, have been vigorously contested. In particular, the relationship between protected areas and poverty is a long-running debate in academic and policy circles. We review the origins of this debate and chart its key moments. We then outline the continuing flashpoints and ways in which further evaluation studies could improve the evidence base for policy-making and conservation practice

A novel copro-diagnostic molecular method for qualitative detection and identification of parasitic nematodes in amphibians and reptiles

© 2017 Huggins et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Anthropogenic disturbance via resource acquisition, habitat fragmentation and climate change, amongst other factors, has led to catastrophic global biodiversity losses and species extinctions at an accelerating rate. Amphibians are currently one of the worst affected classes with at least a third of species categorised as being threatened with extinction. At the same time, they are also critically important for many habitats and provide man with a powerful proxy for ecosystem health by acting as a bioindicator group. Whilst the causes of synchronised amphibian losses are varied recent research has begun to highlight a growing role that macroparasites are playing in amphibian declines. However, diagnosing parasite infection in the field can be problematic, principally relying on collection and euthanasia of hosts, followed by necropsy and morphological identification of parasites in situ. The current study developed a non-invasive PCR-based methodology for sensitive detection and identification of parasitic nematode DNA released in the faeces of infected amphibians as egg or tissue fragments (environmental DNA). A DNA extraction protocol optimised for liberation of DNA from resilient parasite eggs was developed alongside the design of a novel, nematode universal, degenerate primer pair, thus avoiding the difficulties of using species specific primers in situations where common parasite species are unknown. Used in conjunction this protocol and primer pair was tested on a wide range of faecal samples from captive and wild amphibians. The primers and protocol were validated and detected infections, including a Railletnema nematode infection in poison dart frogs from ZSL London Zoo and Mantella cowani frogs in the wild. Furthermore, we demonstrate the efficacy of our PCR-based protocol for detecting nematode infection in other hosts, such as the presence of pinworm (Aspiculuris) in two tortoise species and whipworm (Trichuris muris) in mice. Our environmental DNA approach mitigates problems associated with microscopic identification and can be applied to detect nematode parasitoses in wild and captive hosts for infection surveillance and maintenance of healthy populations