Conservation Outcomes Research Articles

Guided endodontics a pathbreaking approach to the management of calcified canals: A case report

Abstract Pulp calcification refers to the accumulation of hard tissue in the root canal space as a response to dental trauma. Despite being a common finding in dental practice, access to an obliterated pulp chamber and subsequent canal negotiation remains challenging for clinicians due to the increased likelihood of iatrogenic errors such as gouging, ledging, or perforation. In this current report, a 21-year-old male patient presented with a discolored maxillary central incisor and reported a history of trauma that occurred 15 years ago. The tooth exhibited sensitivity to percussion; with no vestibular obliteration or periodontal pockets. Intraoral periapical radiograph revealed a completely calcified root canal associated with apical widening, suggestive of apical periodontitis. A 3D-printed endodontic guide was fabricated using the cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) images and digital planning software to aid in locating the root canal orifice. The canal was successfully navigated with the help of the endodontic guide, and a 12-month follow-up revealed that the patient remained clinically asymptomatic, with radiographic evidence indicating periapical healing. For conservative, precise, and predictable outcomes, a digital workflow that makes use of CBCT imaging, planning software, and a 3D-printed endodontic guide may be taken into consideration when managing extensively calcified canals.

Human Rights-Based Conservation: The Integral Role of Human Rights Director in the Conservation Sector

Historically, many conservation organizations operated without a dedicated focus on human rights, lacking a systematic approach to ensure compliance with global human rights standards. This oversight led to practices that inadvertently disregarded fundamental human rights principles. Recognizing the pivotal role of communities and Indigenous rights in resource management, there has been a paradigm shift. Conservation organizations now acknowledge the need for a Human Rights Director, a role catalysing a community-centric approach and aligning initiatives with human rights principles. While this shift is in its early stages, it signifies a crucial step towards more responsible and sustainable conservation practices. The Human Rights Director, often underestimated, plays a vital role in navigating the delicate balance between biodiversity conservation and community well-being. This paper explores the responsibilities, challenges, and impact of individuals in this position, emphasizing their role as stewards of ethical practices and advocates for social justice. Through a comprehensive review, case studies and best practices, the paper sheds light on the intricate intersections of human rights and conservation. It underscores the indispensable contributions of Human Rights Directors and their teams to conscientious and sustainable conservation strategies. The discussion contributes to the broader discourse on the synergies between human rights advocacy and effective conservation, emphasizing the imperative for organizations to prioritize the creation of a Human Rights unit. This unit can empower teams to achieve socially responsible conservation outcomes, marking a transformative journey towards ethical conservation practices.

Recovery of cirl bunting, Emberiza cirlus, song diversity after translocation

AbstractIn order to improve conservation outcomes translocation or reintroduction of individuals may be necessary. When song learning birds are translocated, changes in the cultural diversity of song repertoires, or abnormal vocalizations, in the new population can be a problem. We monitored song production over 8 years in a reintroduced population of the cirl bunting (Emberiza cirlus). Chicks were removed from nests in Devon, UK, between 2006 and 2011, translocated at 6 days old to be hand‐reared and released in Cornwall, UK. Recordings at the release site in 2011 showed a significantly reduced population repertoire and individuals sang abnormal song types compared to the source populations in Devon. However, recordings in 2019, showed population song repertoire had reached the level of source populations of similar size, and song types were species typical. Our study shows that species can recover from a cultural bottleneck and suggests that, for some song learning birds, if translocation of nestlings is necessary it may not lead to long‐term problems for communication and thus population persistence. For future translocations of nestlings, we recommend that efforts are made to provide tutoring to enable song learning. This may be achieved by providing recordings, but may also include providing adult song tutors. In addition, playback of “normal” songs to translocated populations may aid in development of species typical song repertoires, although care must be taken that this is not disturbing the reintroduced birds.

One size fits all: How the “Ethiopian Highlands” made Bale Mountains National Park inscrutable

The categories we use to make sense of a place are never neutral. Scientific classifications can maintain ignorance about some aspects of a landscape, even as they create knowledge about others. This article considers this in the context of Ethiopia's Bale Mountains National Park, a landscape whose hydrologic and socio-cultural characteristics have been made inscrutable through the convergence of imperial legacies, processes of knowledge production, and complex biophysical properties. We use the example to conduct a genealogy of the notion of the “Ethiopian Highlands” and its associated metaphors, tracing the political-economic, biophysical, and epistemic factors by which this category came into use, and how these intersected to maintain a particular yet partial vision of the region. By critically analyzing bibliometric data, historical sources, and chains of reasoning in the scientific literature, we show how a small group of foreign experts erroneously conflated the landscapes, peoples, and environmental concerns of one area with those of another. Together these forces reify imperial gazes, perpetuate degraded wilderness narratives, and overlook significant geologic, (paleo)climatic, sociocultural, and land use differences. The result is a simplistic understanding of a distinct hydrosocial landscape, the perpetuation of conflict and resentment, and poorer conservation outcomes.

Role of Conservative Treatment and Outcome of Traumatic CSF Rhinorrhea

Background: Traumatic cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) rhinorrhea, a rare but serious consequence of head injuries, poses significant challenges in diagnosis and management. Understanding the efficacy of treatment modalities is crucial to improve patient outcomes and reduce complications. Objective: This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of conservative versus surgical treatment in managing traumatic CSF rhinorrhea and to identify factors influencing treatment outcomes. Methods: A descriptive case series was conducted at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, Karachi, from September 2022 to February 2023. Thirty patients with traumatic CSF rhinorrhea, aged 18-60 years, were included. Data on patient demographics, site of CSF leakage, management approach, and recovery were collected. Diagnostic methods involved glucose oxidase test strips and imaging techniques. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 23. Results: Of the patients, 73.3% were male, and 26.7% were female. CSF leakage sites included the sphenoid sinus (36.7%), frontal sinus (33.3%), ethmoidal sinus (20.0%), and cribriform plate (10.0%). Conservative treatment controlled 80% of CSF rhinorrhea cases within 48 hours. Surgical intervention was necessary in 20% of cases, primarily for persistent leaks. The mean age of patients was 40.67±10.54 years. Conclusion: The study indicates that conservative management is effective in the majority of traumatic CSF rhinorrhea cases. However, surgical intervention remains crucial for cases unresponsive to initial treatment. These findings highlight the need for individualized treatment plans and suggest further research into optimizing management strategies for traumatic CSF rhinorrhea.

Evaluation of Conservative Breast Surgery After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Early Breast Cancer

Background: The breast cancer is a frequent type of cancers. It is associated with high mortality related to cancer in women. The treatment options transferred from radical surgery to less invasive operations. This was attributed to surgical advance and available neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Objective: This work aimed to evaluate the conservative breast surgery feasibility and outcome for early breast cancer received neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) for downstaging. Patients and Methods: Thirty women (30) with early breast cancer were included between November 2022 and May 2023. All women were assessed in systematic manner by history, clinical, laboratory and radiological investigations before chemotherapy, before and after surgery. A true cut biopsy was drawn to estimate the histopathological nature. All surgeries were performed one and half months after the last session of NACT. A regular postoperative follow up was carried out up to six months. Any complications were recorded. Effect of NACT on the tumor grading was the primary outcome, while cosmetic results and patient satisfaction were the secondary outcomes. Results: Complications were in the form of wound infection, seroma and hematoma in 6.7%, 13.3% and 3.3% respectively. These were mild and treated conservatively. The excellent cosmetic result was achieved for 80.0% and excellent patient satisfaction was recorded for 60.0%. The effect of chemotherapy showed significant improvement of clinical and pathological post chemotherapy tumor size values when compared to clinical tumor size values before chemotherapy, the T1 grade (≤2cm) increased from 50% to 66.7%, while the T2 grade (> 2cm <5 cm) decreased from 50% to33.3%. Conclusion: NACT was associated with excellent response regarding tumor size reduction, negativity of lymph nodes as well as pathological response of early breast cancer, before breast conservation surgery (BCS). The BCS after NACT could be considered as a safe option with acceptable aesthetic outcome.

Forest carnivores living on the edge with invasive predators

AbstractThe proliferation of forest edges and invasive predators have been identified as two primary threats to carnivore populations globally. These threats often occur in unison, facilitated by anthropogenic activities (e.g., fragmentation), and together may pose a greater influence than when they occur separately. Targeted conservation actions for forest carnivores, including Madagascar carnivores, have been hindered by a failure to understand the relative contributions of these factors in driving species declines. To fill this gap, we conducted an extensive camera survey along the edge of intact, continuous protected rainforests in eastern Madagascar to evaluate the extent invasive predators and forest edge separately and in combination affect native carnivore space use. We hypothesized that structural vegetation changes at the forest edge interact with invasive predator trap success and occurrence to reduce native carnivore space use near the forest edge and separately have less influence than when combined. In contrast to findings in fragmented and degraded forests of Madagascar, we found hard forest edge and invasive predators alone do not indiscriminately reduce native carnivore space use in continuous intact forest. Instead, we found free‐roaming dogs and cats interact with their surrounding environment (i.e., forest edge) in unique ways that shape species response differently than within interior forest. At the forest edge, vegetational changes of increasing shrub cover and the occurrence of dogs reduce space use of three of four native carnivores. However, we found greater effects of proximity to villages, especially with high invasive predator activity (free‐roaming cats). Ultimately, native carnivores showed variable sensitivities to pressures we examined, providing support for species‐specific management actions to maximize conservation outcomes. We encourage future studies to consider evaluating the magnitude of separate and combined threats to carnivores. In doing so, conservationists can better identify when threats can be managed in isolation and when they require simultaneous mitigation.

Conservative treatment outcome for Achilles tendon re-rupture occurring in the subacute phase after primary repair.

Until now, a treatment protocol for Achilles tendon re-rupture (ATRR) occurring in the postoperative period 5-12weeks following primary Achilles tendon repair has not been established. We refer to this time frame as the subacute postoperative phase, and the objective of this study was to assess the efficacy of conservative treatment for subacute ATRR in this phase. We conducted a retrospective review of 390 cases (385 patients) who had undergone primary Achilles tendon repair using the 4-strand Krachow method between January 2010 and August 2021. All patients were subjected to more than 12months of follow-up and were categorized into two groups based on the presence of subacute ATRR: Group 1 comprised 370 cases without ATRR, while Group 2 comprised 20 cases with ATRR. Following confirmation of ATRR, we immediately applied a below-knee cast in an ankle plantar flexed position (25°-30°), followed by bracing according to the same rehabilitation plan used for the primary repair. After administering conservative treatment to the patients with ATRR, we compared several outcome parameters between the two groups, including isokinetic plantar flexion power measured using a dynamometer, time required for a single heel raise (t-SHR), time needed for ten repetitive SHRs (t-SHR10), Achilles Tendon Total Rupture Score (ATRS), and Foot and Ankle Ability Measure (FAAM) scores. The baseline timepoints for Groups 1 and 2 were the dates of the primary repair and the re-injury event. After primary Achilles tendon repair, subacute ATRR occurred in 5.1% of patients. There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of t-SHR and t-SHR10 (P = 0.281, 0.486). Similarly, the isokinetic dynamometer measurements revealed no significant differences in peak torque for plantar flexion at angular velocities of 30°/s and 120°/s, both in absolute values and as a percentage of the contralateral side, between the groups (P > 0.05 for each). However, ATRSs were significantly lower in Group 2 compared to Group 1 before 6months (P < 0.05), as were FAAM-Activities of Daily Living scores at 6months (P < 0.05). After 12months, there were no significant differences in these scores between the two groups (both P > 0.05). Conservative treatment for subacute ATRR following primary Achilles tendon repair yields clinical outcomes comparable to those without ATRR. Therefore, we recommend that surgeons consider relying on the patient's natural healing capabilities rather than opting for aggressive surgical interventions, as expediting such operations may be unnecessary for subacute injuries.

Contrasting performance of marine spatial planning for achieving multiple objectives at national and regional scales

Although spatially explicit decision support tools are widely used in marine conservation planning, only a few studies have used multi-objective approaches to explicitly achieve biodiversity conservation and sustainable use objectives. Here, we use spatial analyses of a comprehensive environment-based classification (developed using Gradient Forest modelling) that summarises spatial patterns in demersal fish composition and turnover in the oceans around New Zealand, and a 20-year record of trawl locations (representing spatial use by fishers), to identify options for biodiversity protection that vary in their relative delivery of conservation outcomes and impacts on fishers. We also compare analyses carried out at a national scale with those generated by aggregating independent regional analyses. The top-ranked 20% of sites identified using fish composition data alone would on average protect 33% of the geographic range of each fish species, but would result in a 58% loss of areas currently fished. By contrast, using the trawl locations as a cost layer reduced average fish protection by 23% in relative terms, but loss of fished areas was almost eliminated. Using different weightings to vary the influence of the trawl footprint, a range of intermediate scenarios were identified that delivered greater fish protection than the fully cost-constrained scenario. However, these intermediate scenarios resulted in greater reductions in the area retained for fishers than the biodiversity optimised scenario. Aggregated regional scenarios delivered lower conservation returns and higher impacts on fisheries than comparable single national scenarios, reflecting the constraining of opportunities for biodiversity protection whilst avoiding overlaps with trawling. While stakeholder MPA design processes often occur at regional scales, our analyses demonstrate the value of considering both regional and national analyses to identify optimal reserve configurations.

An impact evaluation of conservation investments targeting long-distance migratory species.

We evaluated the impact of a philanthropic program investing in the conservation of sites along the Pacific Americas Flyway, which spans >16,000km of coastline and is used by millions of shorebirds. Using a quasi-experimental, mixed methods approach, we estimated what would have happened to shorebird populations at 17 wintering sites without the sustained and additional investment they received. We modeled shorebird populations across the entire flyway and at sites with and without investment. Combining shorebird abundance estimates with a land-cover classification model, we used the synthetic control method to create counterfactuals for shorebird trends at the treatment sites. We found no evidence of an overall effect across three outcome variables. Species- and site-level treatment effects were heterogeneous, with a few cases showing evidence of a positive effect, including a site with a high level of overall investment. Results suggest six shorebirds declined across the entire flyway, including at many Latin American sites. However, the percentage of flyway populations present at the sites remained stable, and the percentage at the treatment sites was higher (i.e., investment sites) than at control sites. Multiple mechanisms behind our results are possible, including that investments have yet to mitigate impacts and negative impacts at other sites are driving declines at the treatment sites. A limitation of our evaluation is the sole focus on shorebird abundance and the lack of data that prohibits the inclusion of other outcome variables. Monitoring infrastructure is now in place to design a more robust and a priori shorebird evaluation framework across the entire flyway. With this framework, it will prove easier to prioritize limited dollars to result in the most positive conservation outcomes.

Mapping Firescapes for Wild and Prescribed Fire Management: A Landscape Classification Approach

Risks associated with severe wildfire are growing in forest landscapes due to interactions among climate change, fuel accumulation from fire suppression, an expanding wildland–urban interface, and additional factors. People, infrastructure, ecosystem services, and forest health all face varying degrees of risk. The spatial distributions of the many social and ecological factors that influence wildfire, its impacts, and management responses are an important landscape-level context for managing risks and fostering resilient lands and communities. Decision-support tools that integrate these varied distributions can provide a holistic and readily interpreted characterization of landscapes, helping fire management decision making be appropriate, efficient, and effective. Firescapes—landscape types defined in relation to fire, its drivers, and its effects as a socioecological system—fill this role, providing a way to organize and interpret spatial variation along multiple relevant dimensions. We describe a quantitative approach for classifying and mapping firescapes for decision support, using the southeastern United States as a case study. We worked with regional partners to compile relevant large-scale datasets and identify 73 variables for analysis. We used factor analysis to reduce the data to eight factors with intuitive interpretations relevant to fire dynamics, fire history, forest characteristics, climate, conservation and ecosystem service values, social and ecological landscape properties, and social vulnerabilities. We then used cluster analysis on the factors to generate quantitative landscape classes, which we interpreted as nine distinctive firescape classes. The firescapes provide a broad-scale socioecological information context for wildfire risk management and planning. The analytical approach can accommodate different data types at a variety of scales, incorporate new monitoring data as they are available, and can be used under data-driven scenarios to assess possible consequences of future change. The resulting firescape maps can provide decision support to forest managers, planners, and other stakeholders, informing appropriate strategies to manage fire and associated risks, build community and forest resilience to fire, and improve conservation outcomes.

Sustained participation in a Payments for Ecosystem Services program reduces deforestation in a Mexican agricultural frontier

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) provide conditional incentives for forest conservation. PES short-term effects on deforestation are well-documented, but we know less about program effectiveness when participation is sustained over time. Here, we assess the impact of consecutive renewals of PES contracts on deforestation and forest degradation in three municipalities of the Selva Lacandona (Chiapas, Mexico). PES reduced deforestation both after a single 5-year contract and after two consecutive contracts, but the impacts are only detectable in higher deforestation-risk parcels. Enrollment duration increases PES impact in these parcels, which suggests a positive cumulative effect over time. These findings suggest that improved spatial targeting and longer-term enrollment are key enabling factors to improve forest conservation outcomes in agricultural frontiers.

First, do no harm? Dark logic models, social injustice, and the prevention of iatrogenic conservation outcomes

In medicine and public health, the Hippocratic injunction to ‘first do no harm’ has inspired a longstanding tradition of research and practice seeking to mitigate iatrogenic (doctor or practitioner-created) risks. Aiming to anticipate and prevent iatrogenic outcomes, dark logic models challenge practitioners to explicitly consider mechanisms through which harms may arise from the implementation of proposed interventions. Placing recent literatures on conservation (in)justice in closer dialogue with debates about the utility of dark logic models in the health sciences, this article explores how such approaches may or may not be useful for avoiding negative social impacts or injustices in conservation governance. Particularly considering resurgent spatial ambitions in global biodiversity conservation – as evidenced by the Half Earth and 30 × 30 conservation targets – we suggest that dark logic models may ultimately prove to be a worthwhile component of conservation practice vis-à-vis the UN Convention on Biological Diversity's Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. In this context, dark logic models constitute an additional tool – which can be used in complementary fashion, alongside others – to better anticipate and prevent conservation harms, as well as to avoid further burdening those who have done the least to cause the biodiversity crisis with conservation's negative socioeconomic impacts.

Long-term conservative treatment outcomes for midshaft clavicle fractures: a 10-to-30-year follow-up

BackgroundFew reports exist on the long-term outcomes of midshaft clavicle fracture conservative treatments. Therefore, this study investigated the long-term outcome of this treatment in patients with midshaft clavicle fractures.MethodsPatients were treated conservatively for midshaft clavicle fractures with a figure-of-eight bandage between 10 and 30 years ago. Subsequently, a telephone survey was used to follow-up these patients, and 38 were successfully evaluated. The mean term after trauma was 17.0 years. Afterward, the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons Shoulder (ASES) score and Shoulder pain and disability index (SPADI) on the affected and unaffected sides were calculated based on the filled questionnaires. We defined patients whose ASES and SPADI on the affected side were worse than the unaffected side as the symptomatic group. Furthermore, plain radiographs measured proportional changes in clavicular length and displacement.ResultsThe ASES scores of the affected side were significantly lower than those of the unaffected side, and the SPADI of the affected side was significantly higher than that of the unaffected side. Furthermore, the symptomatic group's proportional changes in clavicular length and displacement were significantly larger than the asymptomatic group.ConclusionThe affected shoulder side was more symptomatic than the unaffected side 10 to 30 years after the trauma when midshaft clavicle fractures were treated conservatively. Moreover, several patients became symptomatic for fractures with a larger proportional change in clavicular length or displacement.

Fisheries subsidies exacerbate inequities in accessing seafood nutrients in the Indian Ocean

Harmful, capacity-enhancing subsidies distort fishing activities and lead to overfishing and perverse outcomes for food security and conservation. We investigated the provision and spatial distribution of fisheries subsidies in the Indian Ocean. Total fisheries subsidies in the Indian Ocean, estimated at USD 3.2 billion in 2018, were mostly harmful subsidies (60%), provided to the large-scale industrial sector by mainly a few subsidising countries, including Distant Water Fishing countries. We also explored possible socio-economic drivers of the composition of subsidies, and show that the extent of harmful subsidies provided by Indian Ocean Rim (IOR) countries to their industrial sector can be predicted by the seafood export quantities of these countries. These results illustrate the inequity in accessing fisheries resources for the small-scale sector of nutrient insecure and ocean-dependant IOR countries. The present study can benchmark future assessments and implementation of fisheries subsidy disciplines in the region following the World Trade Organisation Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies.

Mechanism of action of marine ecological restoration on ecological, economic, and social benefits—An empirical analysis based on a structural equation model

Marine ecological restoration is not only an important means to ensure the continuous delivery of ecosystem services by marine ecosystems, but also a socioeconomic process of economic investment and value recovery. Identifying the links to the benefits accrued to society from ecological restoration is of significant importance for achieving successful conservation outcomes and guiding financial investments in ecological restoration. This paper aims to analyze the action mechanism of marine ecological restoration on ecological, economic and social benefits in China. The research hypothesis of ecological, economic, and social benefits generated by marine ecological restoration was first proposed from a theoretical research perspective. On this basis, a structural equation model was employed to validate theoretical assumptions and quantitatively analyze the mechanism of ecological, economic, and social benefits generated by marine ecological restoration in China. We find that marine ecological restoration can improve the level of marine ecosystem services and have a significant positive impact on promoting economic and social development. The results indicate that marine ecological restoration has the greatest impact on social benefits, followed by ecological benefits, and finally on economic benefits, and this result is consistent with the original intention of marine ecological restoration, which aims to directly improve the ecosystem services and social welfare level and indirectly drive economic development.

Multi-habitat carbon stock assessments to inform nature-based solutions for coastal seascapes in arid regions

Coastal ecosystems are integral to global carbon cycling and are increasingly recognised for their role in mitigating climate change. Within these ecosystems, the dynamics of carbon storage are diverse, varying significantly across different habitats. However, existing management strategies often focus predominantly on vegetated habitats neglecting the contributions of non-vegetated areas. We address this knowledge gap by providing a quantitative spatial assessment of carbon storage across coastal seascapes varying in plant biomass. Our comprehensive multi-habitat inventory of carbon stocks in the United Arab Emirates confirmed that mangroves are the largest carbon-storing habitat per hectare (94.3 t/ha), followed by saltmarshes (63.6 t/ha), microbial mats (51.6 t/ha), mudflats (46.8 t/ha), seagrass (32.5 t/ha), and coastal sabkha (31.0 t/ha).Mean carbon content in the top 50 cm of mangrove soils (53.9 t/ha) was similar to saltmarshes (52.7 t/ha), microbial mats (51.6 t/ha), and mudflats (46.8 t/ha). We highlight the importance of including non-vegetated habitats in carbon accounting and management strategies. Our findings suggest that a more context-specific whole-system approach is essential for guiding effective ecosystem management and designing ecologically meaningful Nature-based Solutions (NbS). Adopting this broader perspective in NbS can ensure more comprehensive conservation and restoration outcomes, which not only protect and enhance blue carbon ecosystems but also contribute to broader ecological and social benefits. This approach is pivotal for advancing our understanding of interconnected coastal ecosystems and their role in climate change mitigation.

Coverage and beyond: how can private governance support key elements of the Global Biodiversity Framework’s Target 3?

A vast cross-societal effort will be needed to achieve the ambition of protecting and conserving 30% of the earth’s lands and oceans by 2030, as called for in Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. While focus is often given to the 30% coverage aspect of this target, other elements – on the location and effectiveness of protected and conserved areas – are equally important. As the implementation of Target 3 progresses, it is increasingly acknowledged that non-profit organisations, for-profit organisations, and individual landowners play a key role by choosing to manage their lands and waters to deliver conservation outcomes. However, privately protected and conserved areas lack recognition by many governments charged with reporting progress on the target. For countries and territories where these areas have been reported, we use the World Database on Protected Areas to explore their contribution towards elements of Target 3, particularly coverage, connectivity and ecological representation. In addition, we explore how privately governed ‘other effective area-based conservation measures’ contribute to Target 3 in countries and territories where they have been identified. Our results demonstrate that privately protected and conserved areas play a significant role in some countries’ efforts to meet Target 3. Since these areas are known to be under-reported, we stress the need for scaled up efforts for their recognition and documentation. This is vital not only for Target 3 tracking and implementation, but to ensure private actors receive appropriate recognition and support for their role in tackling the biodiversity and climate crises.

Park’s benefits to surrounding communities and its impact on wildlife conservation in Kainji Lake National Park, Nigeria

Projects linking conservation and development have been implemented around protected areas with a trust to generate benefits for local communities to garner support for the conservation of biodiversity in Nigeria's protected areas. Hence, this study assessed the Park's benefits to surrounding communities and its impact on wildlife conservation in Kainji Lake National Park (KLNP), Nigeria, to provide park managers with additional information in planning their activities. Four (4) randomly selected villages: Luma, Malale, Wawa and Gada Oli were surveyed with 110 questionnaire copies. The results show that the majority of respondents (55.5%) are males, whereas most households (38.18%) comprise 6 to 10 members. The major occupation of the respondents revealed that 42.7% were farmers in the surrounding national park, followed by traders (20%) and civil servants (16.4%). Most of the respondents were non-indigenes of the communities, while 37.20% of the respondents indicated that their monthly income was between ₦20,001 and ₦40,000. Eighty four per cent (84%) of the respondents agreed that the host communities' derived lots of benefits from KLNP, which include the donation of farm inputs (38.18%), employment (18.18%), empowerment programmes (16.36%) and infrastructural development (14.55%) through a majority (65%) of respondents indicated that there is no communities' involvement in the planning of park-initiated projects. The study further established that there is a significant relationship between income and the perception of respondents to wildlife conservation. However, other variables, such as age, sex, occupation, education, and household size are not significant to the notion. This study shows that Kainji Lake National Park's surrounding communities have an overall positive attitude towards the park. However, local people's responses to specific concerns and benefits showed a mixed perception. It is imperative for park authority to build on the communities' perception of conservation and development outcomes. Biodivers. Conserv. Bioresour. Manag. 2023, 9(2): 49-56

Simulating benefits, costs and trade‐offs of spatial management in marine social‐ecological systems

AbstractDesigning effective spatial management strategies is challenging because marine ecosystems are highly dynamic and opaque, and extractive entities such as fishing fleets respond endogenously to ecosystem changes in ways that depend on ecological and policy context. We present a modelling framework, marlin, that can be used to efficiently simulate the bio‐economic dynamics of marine systems in support of both management and research. We demonstrate marlin's capabilities by focusing on two case studies on the conservation and food production impacts of marine protected areas (MPAs): a coastal coral reef and a pelagic tuna fishery. In the coastal coral reef example, we explore how heterogeneity in species distributions and fleet preferences can affect distributional outcomes of MPAs. In the pelagic case study, we show how our model can be used to assess the climate resilience of different MPA design strategies, as well as the climate sensitivity of different fishing fleets. This paper demonstrates how intermediate complexity simulation of coupled bio‐economic dynamics can help communities predict and potentially manage trade‐offs among conservation, fisheries yields and distributional outcomes of management policies affected by spatial bio‐economic dynamics.