Over the past several decades, the preservation of Brazil's natural landscapes and traditional cultures has received significant global attention; the focus of which has been primarily on the Amazon Basin. In order to safeguard the Amazon's unique biodiversity, natural resources, and traditional cultures, Brazil's state and federal governments have designated hundreds of thousands of square kilometers as conservation units with legally protected statuses. To effectively accomplish conservation objectives, it is necessary to maintain the permanence of protected areas. However, over the past decade, a host of circumstances has plagued Brazil's protected areas. Due to land use and economic pressures, the sizes of many protected areas throughout the Amazon are being reduced. Understanding the drivers and outcomes of reductions to protected areas is essential for the long-term preservation of ecosystem services. To that end, the objectives of this thesis were to understand why and how quickly a national park in the Legal Brazilian Amazon was being reduced in size by the Brazilian government. Interviews with key informants demonstrated that the park historically lacked legitimacy amongst newly arrived migrants which influenced the colonization amongst its borders. Moreover, inept governance regimes facilitated settlements within the park. Satellite imagery was used to detect and quantify the substantial rise in deforestation within the park. Spontaneous settlement in the region and a governance structure that did not enforce the park’s legality played a significant influence on the downsizing of Amazon National Park. In addition, domestic energy demands prompted the federal government to embark on a national energy strategy centered on hydropower construction that has directly impacted the park’s conservation effectiveness of maintaining natural forest cover. Together, these two drivers have united to considerably reduce both the size and the effectiveness of Amazon National Park. / text

Stewardship is a key tool for the protection of natural areas at the landscape-scale. This is nowhere more evident than in the Carolinian Life Zone of Southern Ontario, where habitat exists for approximately 80% of Canada???s Species at Risk and where the majority of land is in private ownership. However, the implementation of stewardship initiatives has not always been successful. While an outcome of stewardship has been increased protection, initiatives that do not serve landowner needs can lead to reduced landowner support for future stewardship efforts. As such there is a need to look beyond landowner participation/non-participation, and instead examine the factors influencing landowner support for stewardship. The existing stewardship research on landowner support has found three main influencing factors: stewardship ethics, property rights concerns and bureaucracy. To examine if these themes are relevant to the Carolinian Life Zone interviews were conducted at three case study sites: Point Pelee, Rondeau and Long Point. The findings indicate that while the three broad themes are present, certain themes are more salient than others. It was also found that the local stewardship context made a great difference for landowner responses. Recommendations from the findings involve changes to stewardship programs, the role of landowners in conservation decision-making and land-use regulations.

Stewardship is a key tool for the protection of natural areas at the landscape-scale. This is nowhere more evident than in the Carolinian Life Zone of Southern Ontario, where habitat exists for approximately 80% of Canada’s Species at Risk and where the majority of land is in private ownership. However, the implementation of stewardship initiatives has not always been successful. While an outcome of stewardship has been increased protection, initiatives that do not serve landowner needs can lead to reduced landowner support for future stewardship efforts. As such there is a need to look beyond landowner participation/non-participation, and instead examine the factors influencing landowner support for stewardship. The existing stewardship research on landowner support has found three main influencing factors: stewardship ethics, property rights concerns and bureaucracy. To examine if these themes are relevant to the Carolinian Life Zone interviews were conducted at three case study sites: Point Pelee, Rondeau and Long Point. The findings indicate that while the three broad themes are present, certain themes are more salient than others. It was also found that the local stewardship context made a great difference for landowner responses. Recommendations from the findings involve changes to stewardship programs, the role of landowners in conservation decision-making and land-use regulations.

Thesis (Ph. D., Natural Resources)--University of Idaho, January 2008. / Major professor: William J. McLaughlin. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online (PDF file) by subscription or by purchasing the individual file.

This research evaluates the development of strategy and planning undertaken by the three federal protected areas management organisations in Canada. These organisations and the protected areas they manage are: the Canadian Wildlife Service (National Wildlife Areas and Migratory Bird Sanctuaries), the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (Oceans Act Marine Protected Areas), and the Parks Canada Agency (National Parks, National Marine Conservation Areas, and National Historic Sites). As non-renewable resources become more valuable, urban centres expand, and the climate changes, protected areas will face an increasing number of threats, the mitigation of which will require significant new financial resources. In order to acquire these new resources, protected areas management organisations will have to compete with other aspects of the government’s agenda. In this research, strategy is identified as an important component of successful competition. A review of literature from various disciplines explains some of the main theories of strategy development: strategic planning, strategic management, and collaborative planning. Management planning for protected areas helps to understand the congruence between strategy and site management. Using a qualitative approach, the research triangulates the results of interviews, reviews of documents, and participant-observation to evaluate the way that each of the organisations develops strategy and understands management planning activities. The research also includes a model strategic plan for the Canadian Wildlife Service protected areas network. The model plan stems from data collected during this research. This research supports the results from a previous study (Foresta, 1985) that found Parks Canada (now the Parks Canada Agency, or PCA) has been actively pursuing a coherent strategy through systematic management planning since the late 1960s. The PCA can attribute a significant degree of its ongoing success in creating and managing National Parks to its consistent strategy and systematic planning efforts. Another important part of the PCA success has been its external orientation, which demonstrates its awareness of the importance of maintaining public satisfaction and its high public profile. No prior research on the development of strategy or of systematic planning at the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) was uncovered. This research concludes that the CWS, which has many strategic plans on paper, has not actively pursued strategic or management planning. The lack of strategic thinking and planning contribute significantly to the relatively low budgets of the CWS, and to its low public profile. The DFO has decided to take a “learning approach” to its protected areas, by creating a set of pilot marine protected areas and then identifying the policies and procedures needed to manage the sites. The public profile of the DFO protected areas is even lower than that of the CWS. The CWS and the DFO are internally-oriented, do not have significant public outreach programs, long-range or strategic planning, and do not seem to have champions. The most important contributors to the PCA’s success are the finite nature and the simplicity of their goals, which Parks staff can easily communicate to decision-makers and to the public. The external orientation of the PCA, demonstrated by extensive public outreach programming, such as natural history interpretation and the provision of camping opportunities, is also an important part of its success. Another important contributor, identified in this research, is the support of a small number of key political champions. This research identifies means by which organisations could improve their competitiveness, including by improving public profile. The research highlights the importance of externally-focused strategic plans that include certain elements that are well-defined in the literature, and the importance of strategic thinking. The results suggest that there is a need for a new approach to developing strategy, and proposes the exploration of collaborative planning as a potential model. This research contributes to the academic literature and to planning practice by identifying key elements that created conditions of success for the PCA. The PCA experience highlights the importance of strategic thinking, in the context of developing a strategic plan.

This research evaluates the development of strategy and planning undertaken by the three federal protected areas management organisations in Canada. These organisations and the protected areas they manage are: the Canadian Wildlife Service (National Wildlife Areas and Migratory Bird Sanctuaries), the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (Oceans Act Marine Protected Areas), and the Parks Canada Agency (National Parks, National Marine Conservation Areas, and National Historic Sites). As non-renewable resources become more valuable, urban centres expand, and the climate changes, protected areas will face an increasing number of threats, the mitigation of which will require significant new financial resources. In order to acquire these new resources, protected areas management organisations will have to compete with other aspects of the government’s agenda. In this research, strategy is identified as an important component of successful competition. A review of literature from various disciplines explains some of the main theories of strategy development: strategic planning, strategic management, and collaborative planning. Management planning for protected areas helps to understand the congruence between strategy and site management. Using a qualitative approach, the research triangulates the results of interviews, reviews of documents, and participant-observation to evaluate the way that each of the organisations develops strategy and understands management planning activities. The research also includes a model strategic plan for the Canadian Wildlife Service protected areas network. The model plan stems from data collected during this research. This research supports the results from a previous study (Foresta, 1985) that found Parks Canada (now the Parks Canada Agency, or PCA) has been actively pursuing a coherent strategy through systematic management planning since the late 1960s. The PCA can attribute a significant degree of its ongoing success in creating and managing National Parks to its consistent strategy and systematic planning efforts. Another important part of the PCA success has been its external orientation, which demonstrates its awareness of the importance of maintaining public satisfaction and its high public profile. No prior research on the development of strategy or of systematic planning at the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) was uncovered. This research concludes that the CWS, which has many strategic plans on paper, has not actively pursued strategic or management planning. The lack of strategic thinking and planning contribute significantly to the relatively low budgets of the CWS, and to its low public profile. The DFO has decided to take a “learning approach” to its protected areas, by creating a set of pilot marine protected areas and then identifying the policies and procedures needed to manage the sites. The public profile of the DFO protected areas is even lower than that of the CWS. The CWS and the DFO are internally-oriented, do not have significant public outreach programs, long-range or strategic planning, and do not seem to have champions. The most important contributors to the PCA’s success are the finite nature and the simplicity of their goals, which Parks staff can easily communicate to decision-makers and to the public. The external orientation of the PCA, demonstrated by extensive public outreach programming, such as natural history interpretation and the provision of camping opportunities, is also an important part of its success. Another important contributor, identified in this research, is the support of a small number of key political champions. This research identifies means by which organisations could improve their competitiveness, including by improving public profile. The research highlights the importance of externally-focused strategic plans that include certain elements that are well-defined in the literature, and the importance of strategic thinking. The results suggest that there is a need for a new approach to developing strategy, and proposes the exploration of collaborative planning as a potential model. This research contributes to the academic literature and to planning practice by identifying key elements that created conditions of success for the PCA. The PCA experience highlights the importance of strategic thinking, in the context of developing a strategic plan.

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Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-100)

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-100)

Protected areas (PAs) are considered a key strategy to ensure the in situ persistence of biodiversity and the ecosystem services (ES) that this provides. The coverage of PAs has exponentially expanded in the last 25 years, and they now account for approximately 13% of the Earth's surface. Alongside this expansion, PA research literature has also increased seeking to identify and assess the main factors that influence the effectiveness of PAs in sheltering biodiversity and ES from anthropogenic pressures. Spatial distribution, spatial design, management strategy and threats, have been widely acknowledged as key factors. However, despite significant progress, several aspects of these factors remain poorly explored. This thesis aims to identify and address some of the gaps, which I detail below. The second chapter contributes to understanding of how the distribution of PAs affects the representation of biodiversity and ES. To this end, the Chilean PA system was used as a case study as this has never been previously assessed in terms of ES. I found that the strong bias in Chilean PAs distribution toward southern areas, which contain mainly ice and bare rock, hampers the PA system in achieving effective representativeness. The third and fourth chapters address some gaps in PA spatial design. The third assesses for the first time the spatial design of the global PA system and provides new methodologies to achieve this at such a large scale. Focusing on the size, shape, level of fragmentation, occurrence of buffer zones and proximity to the closest PA, I demonstrate that PAs tend to be small, irregularly shaped and fragmented. However, they are often close to one another and generally have buffer zones. Using the methodology generated on third chapter, I explicitly test in the fourth chapter the combined and interactive effects of PA spatial features on their ability to represent biodiversity, which has never been tested before. Using South America as a model for study I show that the spatial design largely explains biodiversity representation and that the interaction between spatial features affects the latter. The fifth chapter focuses on threats to PAs, assessing the extent to which metal mining activities represent an actual conflict with the global PA system. Evidence suggests that the global terrestrial PA system has been effective at displacing metal mining activities from within its bounds. However, given the high proportion of mines found in the close surroundings of PAs, and the distances over which mining activities can have influences, it is highly likely that the conservation performance of a significant proportion of PAs is being affected. So far I have demonstrated that PAs are not always optimally distributed and they can compete with other land uses, which can undermine their functionality. In this regard, in the final analytical chapter I explore how using spatial conservation prioritization (SCP) tools it is possible to optimize the representation of conservation features by minimizing competition with other land uses. Specifically, I assess the consequences for biodiversity and ES representation of incorporating land use trade-offs in SCP analyses. I show that the dichotomist decision of treating a land use as a trade-off or not can have enormous consequences on biodiversity and ES representation, and the implications of such decisions have to be considered before policy recommendations. This thesis shows that distribution, spatial design and threats play an important role in PA representativeness, and that SCP techniques can make a significant contribution to balancing biodiversity and ES conservation with human activities, when trade-offs are treated comprehensively. Finally, I discuss the importance of prioritising the interactions between, rather than just individual effects of, factors in order to optimise PA effectiveness and the distribution of scarce conservation resources.