These photographs offer illustrations of the people, places and resources in the six communities visited during the Bahamas Biocomplexity project.

In the late 1980s and through the mid-1990s, Mexico underwent an enormous neoliberal transformation that affected almost every level of its economic, political, and social systems. Research has shown that rural and poor areas of Mexico have been particularly hard hit by these transformations. At the same point in time, Mexico established an unprecedented number of natural protected areas - national parks, biosphere reserves, wildlife reserves, and the like. Mexico is not alone in this transformation. Other "less industrialized" countries are also implementing these dual policies.While many working in the field of conservation in less industrialized regions assume little connection between their work in natural protected areas and the larger political economy, I argue that the two are interrelated and have compounding outcomes. The goal of this study is to understand the connection between these two seemingly incongruous policies. In addition, this study seeks to understand the process through which natural protected areas were territorialized and the outcomes of this territorialization process on landscapes and livelihoods within the larger context of Mexico's neoliberal reformation.To understand these questions, I look at Mexico as a case study at the national level as well as two more local case studies - the Loreto Bay National Park (LBNP) in Baja California Sur and Cuatro Ciénegas Wildlife Reserve (CCWR) in Coahuila, Mexico. Both areas support the neoliberal agenda, although in different ways. In addition, both are being reterritorialized so that nature is separated from society and treated as a marketable commodity through tourism or privatization. In addition, both have created uneven or patchy regional landscapes in which resources are more heavily extracted outside of reserves (due largely to neoliberal reforms) while inside the reserves small-scale production activities are limited.

Recently adopted global marine protection targets aim to protect 10-30% of marine habitats within the next 3 to 5 years. However, these targets were adopted without prior assessment of their attainability. Moreover, our ability to monitor progress towards such targets has been constrained by a lack of robust data on marine protected areas (MPAs). In this thesis I present the results of the first explicitly marine-focused, global assessment of MPAs in relation to three global marine protection targets. Approximately 2.35 million km2, equivalent to 0.65% of the world’s oceans, are currently protected, and only 12% of that is ‘no-take’. Over the last two decades, the marine area protected globally has grown at ~5% per year. At this rate, even the most modest target is unlikely to be met for at least several decades. The utility of large-scale conservation targets has been repeatedly questioned, although mainly on ecological grounds. However, if, as is suggested here, their primary role is to motivate behavioural change, then a more serious problem is that they seem to be failing in this regard, too. I explore possible reasons for this and suggest two main problems: firstly, an as yet unmet need to develop a hierarchical system of targets that reflects the multi-scale and pluralistic nature of ecological and political systems; and secondly, feedback mechanisms between political will, perceived attainability, and target formulation which may impede implementation of the targets. Since the adoption of the global targets, no implementation strategy has been developed, which may also impede target attainment. In order to fill this gap, I applied a rarity-complementarity heuristic place prioritisation algorithm (PPA) to a dataset consisting of 1038 global species distributions with 0.5° latitude/longitude resolution, under ten scenarios devised to reflect the global targets. This is the first time that species distribution ranges of marine species have been used in a globally synthetic way, and is by far the largest application of a PPA to date. Global priority areas for protection are identified for each scenario, which may be used to identify where regional-scale protected areas network design efforts might be focused.

The environmental researches are especially effective in the protected territories in which different objects of landscape, nature and culture are preserved. Combined with the teaching curriculum, such researches can visibly improve the practical pupils’ skills. They can improve the natural pupil’s abilities, foster the skills of critical thinking, problem solving and other important skills for the member of the contemporary society member, as well as to train the creative skills and one’s spiritual culture. The object of this research is the protected territories of Birzai and their usage in the teaching process. The protected territories are founded in order to preserve regional landscape of Lithuania, its natural ecosystem and cultural heritage. The goal of this research is to analyze the possibilities of the usage of the protected territories of Birzai and the natural and cultural monuments in the teaching process. The main tasks of this research are: - to do an integrated characterization of the protected territories of Birzai region; - to analyze the possibilities of the application of the protected territories of Birzai and the natural and cultural components in the teaching process; - to analyze the main popular tourist routes, to present other routes and tourist objects which are useful in application in the teaching process; - to do a pedagogical experiment. Having explored the natural and cultural resources of the protected territories of Birzai, it is observed... [to full text]

Global, national and local institutions are adopting coastal management strategies that attempt to facilitate conservation without undermining socioeconomic development. Recently, two global conservation trends have developed that attempt to address prevailing issues of poverty and environmental degradation – community-based conservation and conservation networks. Using a political ecology lens, I examine the intersection of these trends in the local context of Pemba Island. Through fieldwork, textual analysis and literature reviews, I investigate how a community-based conservation association has been impacted by the establishment of a marine conservation network. In theory, community-based conservation and marine conservation networks offer solutions to the failures of fortress conservation and sectoral management. In practice, this case study demonstrates that these lofty objectives are difficult to achieve. These findings contribute to emerging research into the social dynamics of scaling up marine conservation areas and suggest that the success of marine conservation networks hinges on meaningful community participation.

I examined the dynamics of an endangered population of northern bottlenose whales over a 23-year period during which its prime habitat, the Gully canyon, was made a Marine Protected Area (MPA). Using mark-recapture techniques on photo-identifications I estimate a current population of 116 animals (95% CI=101-130). The population size and sex-ratio have remained stable since before the MPA designation suggesting this population is persisting. I used photo-identifications and high definition videography to examine the social organization of northern bottlenose whales, including behavioural synchrony. Relationships are highly variable; most associations are short-lived, but there are also long-term preferred associations lasting from several years (female/immature dyads) to over a decade (mature male dyads). I found little, if any, division of the social community. Synchronized breathing is common, precise, and appears to vary with behaivoural context. Although speculative, synchronized breathing might play a role the maintenance of general social relationships within this population.

Savanoriškos veiklos situacija Lietuvos saugomose teritorijose pagrindžiama ir teoriškai, ir praktiškai. Pasiektas darbo ir tyrimo tikslas, patvirtintos darbe keliamos hipotezės, išsiaiškinama kiek direkcijų yra susidūrusios su savanoriška veikla, kokios priežastys to, jog direkcijoje nebuvo ar nėra vykdoma savanoriška veikla, taip pat sužinome, ar direkcijos suinteresuotos priimti savanorius, kiek jų yra priėmę, iš kokių šalių, kokio amžiaus ir lyties, kokius darbus atlieka savanoriai ir kaip šiuos darbus vertina pačios direkcijos. Labai svarbu, jog atskleidžiamos šios veiklos problemos ir aiškūs šių problemų sprendimo ir savanoriškos veiklos proceso gerinimo būdai, taip pat aiškinamasi kokia yra savanorių motyvacija pasirenkant ir atliekant darbus, atskleidžiama savanorystės svarba ir būtinumas. / A situation of volunteering in the protected areas of Lithuania is based in both theory and practice. The result of the paper and research was achieved; a hypothesis of the paper was confirmed. The paper analyzed how many directorates are familiar with volunteering, what are the reasons for having or not having volunteers; also, it reveals whether directorates are interested in accepting volunteers, how many volunteers there are, from which countries, their age range and gender, which works are carried out by volunteers, and which works are carried out by the directorate. It is important that the paper reveals problems and clear solutions for these problems, as well as steps for improving the volunteering process, and also it analyzes whether volunteers have motivation to choose and carry out works, reveals the importance and necessity of volunteering.

<p>At a meeting of worl leaders at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, it was recognized that because of the tremendous increase in the size of the global populations (which now is estimated to exceed six billion), there were concerns that global biodiversity was at risk if insufficient land were not put aside for conservation within formal Protected Areas. The primary aim of this study was to compare investment in Protected Areas in relation to socio-economic conditions at global and regional levels.</p>

Four geographic information system methods were applied to determine connectivity and fragmentation for a corridor from Riding Mountain National Park to Duck Mountain Provincial Park and Forest. Least-cost path modelling showed that presently there is no corridor of continuous forest or corridor of undeveloped land between these two areas, of which developed land appears to fragment all possible paths. Maps generated from spatial graphs and least-cost path modelling show that undisturbed land and forest is concentrated in the western Bluewing Corridor. Due to its greater connectivity, the Bluewing corridor is the preferred route for a corridor between these conservation areas.

Over the next three decades, there are many predicted disturbances to Earth’s oceans, such as El Nino and hurricanes, which will lead to mass coral bleaching effects. Marine protected areas have been utilized worldwide to maintain coral population sizes and remediate external stressors, such as overfishing or mining. Using a series of modeling techniques, this thesis will propose an experiment that will determine the optimal distance and location for a future MPA in New Zealand. It will also be measuring whether one large reserve or a network of smaller MPAs are more effective in the regeneration of stony corals. These models will be based on Solemosmilia variabilis, the most common stony coral in the region. Based on past studies, it is hypothesized that there will be a significant positive increase with the metapopulation growth of corals in both protected areas. It is also predicted that there will be a higher rate of connectivity within a network of smaller marine protected areas if the MPAs are less than 2 km apart. If the distance is greater, one larger MPA will be more effective due to the lower rates of genetic drift.