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Ten individuals of Cephalopholis cruentata, a marine serranid common on Caribbean coral reefs and important to artisanal reef fisheries, were implanted with acoustic transmitters on two reefs within the Soufriere Marine Management Area, St. Lucia. The mean home range area determined was 2120m2. Home range shape was non-circular, with a mean aspect ratio of 0.72. Neither home range size nor home range shape differed between the study sites or as a function of fish size. However, more active fish, as determined by movement per hour and displacement per hour, had larger home ranges. / Use of space within the home range was characterised as activity rates (movement per hour), displacement rates (maximum distance between fish locations per hour), and preferential use of specific areas (% of position fixes in different areas). All fish demonstrated a clear preference for specific areas in their home range. Activity, displacement and % time spent in the preferred reef area were not correlated with fish size. Activity and displacement were higher by night than by day, and consistent with this, fish spent less time in their preferred home range area by night than by day. Given the home range size and movement patterns of C. cruentata determined in the study, the effectiveness of the marine reserve zones in the Soufriere Marine Management Area in protecting C. cruentata is assessed.

By law, parks are the only preservation areas in my home country, Paraguay. Still, these parks -including the Ybycui National Park- are facing environmental degradation (Sanjurjo, 1989). Misusage and overuse of these parks, due to lack of environmental awareness, greatly contribute to this situation.This creative project consists of the design of the Visitors' Center of the Ybycui National Park of Paraguay. Environmental education is one of the main issues addressed in this project. This Visitors' Center serves as a place to welcome visitors, to promote the park and its appropriate uses for environmental preservation purposes, and to increase environmental awareness in the country.The project will address issues of land analysis, architectural elements in the landscape (signage, fencing, seating furniture, etc.) within this national park setting, and major concentration in the Visitors' Center design. The functional program of the Visitors' Center will be oriented towards recreational and educational activities in both outdoor and indoor settings at the public and private levels. The master plan of the Ybycul National Park "Plan de Manejo y Desarrollo Conceptual del Parque Nacional Ybycui" (1975), will be my guide for the future development of the park.The Visitors' Center will be an important part of the park, for it will serve as the filter through which most of the visitors will pass. This entry will greatly influence their impression of and respect for the park. / Department of Architecture

Marine reserves have increasingly been recognised for their potential to address the pervasive problem of unsustainable harvest of fisheries worldwide. Biologists advocate the benefits of increased spawning biomass, larger modal sizes and greater densities of fish within marine reserves, and the possibility of spillover to adjacent fishable areas. Bioeconomic studies, however, find that pay-offs from stand-alone marine reserves rarely compete with sustainable yield management schemes, but that they can be beneficial when stocks are heavily exploited. Most of these bioeconomic models are analytical and deterministic in nature, and therefore ignore the redistribution of effort in response to closure and the inherent uncertainty of the marine environment. We present a bioeconomic analysis of a network of no-take areas around Stewart Island in New Zealand applied to the shellfish species paua (abalone) that incorporates both predicted redistribution and reduction in effort, as well as stochastic recruitment. A nested logit model is applied to spatially recorded catch and effort data by the Ministry of Fisheries between 1998 and 2003 to capture the two level decision-making process of divers. On any given day, divers decide whether to go diving at all, and if so, which of the 16 statistical areas around Stewart Island to visit. Weather conditions, spatially varying levels of catch per unit of effort and distance are used as explanatory variables to select areas for closure according to the �least economic impact� in terms of loss of diving trips. An age-structured biological model is developed with parameters specifically applied to paua stocks around Stewart Island. Virgin paua biomass as of 1974 is estimated on the basis of growth, survival, post-larval recruitment and egg production in the absence of fishing. Historic catch rates are then applied to find overall and area-specific levels of exploitation rates, spawning biomass, egg production, legal biomass and numbers of paua. In a final step, the economic model is linked to the biological model to simulate the imposition of no-take areas when taking account of the initial disproportional shift of harvest to fished areas in the first year, and the increase in overall pressure on legal biomass in the years thereafter. We contribute to the marine reserve debate by showing that in the very long run, the overall yield under closure of a relatively small area approaches and even slightly surpasses the yield under no closure for an assumed spillover gradient of 40% despite the redistribution of effort. The most important benefits of marine reserves emerge when stochastic recruitment is included in the recruitment function. In practice, predictions about the stock status and the impact of different harvest levels become much more difficult when acknowledging the inherent variability of the marine environment. The likelihood of stock collapse depends on the assumed value of two recruitment parameters, which highlights the effects of parameter uncertainty and emphasizes the role of marine reserves for population persistence. We also show that under uncertainty average yields under a management regime of a network of no-take areas in addition to the quota system can equal yields under no closure for an assumed spillover gradient of 40%, despite the increased pressure on areas adjacent to the closed areas. Our findings have significant implications for the management of the paua fishery at Stewart Island. For a heterogeneously abundant species, such as paua, spatial management in addition to quota limits could be vital in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the fishery given the inherent variability of the marine environment.

For protected areas worldwide, commercial tour operators are increasingly providing the services and products desired and needed by visitors to these areas. Given the engagement of both protected area managers and tour operators in protected areas, and inevitably with each other, it is critical that their relationship and its complexities are clearly understood. As such, the interests of managers and operators overlap insofar as that they work in the same locales, share some of the burden of service provision, and aim to offer a quality product. However, this study shows that they diverge in other ways, particularly given the commercial imperative that necessarily strongly influences the activities of their business, irrespective of its location. This thesis seeks to unpack the complexities of a relationship that is critically important both in terms of the quality of the tourism experiences offered by protected areas, and the conservation of such areas in the longer term. In order to obtain an understanding of the complexity of the interactions between protected area managers and tour operators, qualitative research methods were used, in which in-depth interviews provided a rich picture of the important diverse aspects and facets impacting on their relationships. This study found that both managers and operators considered the purpose of protected areas to be the conservation of biodiversity and their recreational use and enjoyment. Surprisingly, their similar values were unknown to them. A major influence on their relationships was their perceptions of power, with ‘dominant’ power largely based on legislative and regulatory mandates, perceived to rest with the protected area managers. In contrast, this study also found evidence of ‘resistant’ power. This form of Foucauldian power was held particularly by operators in one geographic locale, and was associated with the concepts of cultural groupings and groupthink. The underlying public policy context influenced the effectiveness of the collaborative efforts of managers and operators. Interwoven with these differences were variable expectations regarding the nature and purpose of communication and what collaboration might ‘mean’. These findings importantly suggest several future directions for both practice and research. First, managers and operators share values and hold both similar and different expectations and perceptions, similarities and differences which are significant. Secondly, understanding the importance of power and how it is exercised is critical if successful relationships between managers and operators are to be fostered. Finally, further unpackaging of the meaning of communication and collaboration for managers and operators, a process initiated in this study, is essential if relationships between these groups involved in conservation and recreation in protected areas are to be improved. Therefore, this study suggests that their collaboration can be enhanced at individual, organisational/locale and policy levels, by adopting and implementing an action research framework.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-131). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M. Env. Studies)--University of Adelaide, 1981. / Includes appendices. Includes bibliographical references (p. 141-147).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Delaware, 2008. / Principal faculty advisor: George R. Parsons, College of Marine & Earth Studies. Includes bibliographical references.