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C. Contours of the Agencies' Statutory Mandates 1. The Park Service Organic Act Under the Organic Act of 1916, the NPS must "conserve the scenery and the natural and historic [...]

Dzanga Ndoki is the main National Park located in Dzanga Sangha Complex Protected Area, Central African Republic. This study assesses socioeconomic factors and different NGOs involved in management of the park. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data in 8 villages around the park. Results on socioeconomic study showed that younger people aged of 20-25 (36.55%) and between 25-30 (27. 81%) are more dynamic in the forest than elderly ones (age >35) who represented (5.61%). Better education may help in conservation of the Dzanga Ndoki due to different employment. Admittedly, 39.27% of people had primary education, (6.4%) had secondary level, (1.33%) had higher education and 53.18% were illiterate. Employment and access to market are missing. Participative management has mostly focused on villages of Mossapoula and Yandoumbe. Ba Aka people (60.52%) were not satisfied with the project. In addition, poor conditions of local people let them very dependent to forest resources (illegal hunting and gathering). This project is however unable to provide financial support to national NGOs and associations for local people. Keywords: Socioeconomic factors, Participative Management, Stakeholders, Questionnaire Survey, Dzanga Ndoki National Park, Dzanga Sangha Complex Protected Area, Central African Republic, 1. Introduction Protected areas have deep historical roots: they have existed in varied forms in diverse ancient cultures, dating back to early pre-agrarian societies in Asia and The Near East [...]

The construction of the Ma:Mu Canopy Walk in the Wooroonooran National Park was completed in August 2008 in culmination of eight years of planning and negotiation with the private sector, the Ma:Mu Traditional Owners and protected area managers. This article examines the attempts to attract a private sector partner to contribute capital to the venture, the process of involving Traditional Owners in protecting cultural heritage places, and dealing with native title rights and interests. The Ma:Mu Canopy Walk diversifies the types of visitor experience opportunities in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. The project is the largest single capital works project undertaken by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife in its history. Keywords: rainforest canopy walk, tourism in protected areas, public/private partnerships, Indigenous management, strategic engagement

Our 11 year multidisciplinary study of Koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) in St Bees Island National Park provides an understanding of the implications of the strategic use of fire and control of introduced browsers, goat and swamp wallaby (Wallabia bicolor) for the maintenance of Koalas, Koala habitat and eucalypt woodlands within the national park. The research involved a close association with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and their staff. This relationship integrated research, park planning and management. The project is a model for research-management integration, especially in relation to information relevance, relationships and understandable, timely communication of research findings. We propose strategies for more general application of this model. Keywords: research-management integration, Koala, Phascolarctos cinereus, protected area management, fire management

Climate change is now widely accepted as a key threatening process to biodiversity conservation in national parks. In alpine Australia, some of these effects are already evident, as park managers come to terms with increased threats from large-scale fires and noticeable reductions in annual snow depth and cover. At the same time, businesses are expanding into year-round recreation and tourism, increasing the demand on park agencies to manage visitor needs and impacts. These changes, which transform both the ecology and the human use of alpine parks, will present many challenges to management. While extensive research is being conducted on the impacts of climate change to biophysical systems in national parks, climate change is rarely considered in the broader context of long-standing debates that polarise human use and conservation in parks. Through a qualitative case study of perceptions of climate change in Kosciuszko National Park (KNP), this article suggests that the human use versus conservation dichotomy must be overcome. This article will illustrate how perceptions of, and attachments to, 'place' shape human interactions with a national park. It will discuss the role of myths and paradoxes as barriers to the acceptance of management decisions in KNP. The article suggests that, given the growing number of social and ecological challenges faced by park agencies, it is no longer useful to consider the biophysical and social aspects of national parks separately; rather they should be reconceptualised as complex social-ecological systems and managed as an integrated whole. Keywords: Protected area management, climate change, social-ecological systems, Kosciuszko National Park, place

ABSTRACT: The authors explored the influences of 3- and 5-day residential environmental education programs at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont (TN) on participants' connections with nature, environmental stewardship, [...]

We studied daily activity patterns of 19 (7 males and 12 females) adult red deer (Cervus elaphus) by using continuous tracking sessions in Bialowieza National Park (BNP), Poland, from 2001 to 2004. Male and female red deer were active throughout the day and night during all seasons, with several peaks in activity during the 24-h period, although both sexes tended to be more active during the day in winter. There were no significant differences between males and females in mean time active (8 h/day for both sexes), mean length of activity bouts (42 min), and mean number of activity bouts (12 bouts/day). Additionally, neither sex showed seasonal differences in hours active, bout length, or number of bouts per day. However, rainfall affected activity of males, whereas ambient temperature and snowfall affected activity of females. Although red deer are sexually dimorphic, which often leads to differences in movements and social groupings, our results suggest that their general activity patterns are influenced less by these sexual differences and more by the constraints of feeding and rumination, daily abiotic factors, and possibly predation risk from wolves (Canis lupus). Red deer in BNP did not exhibit strong bimodal peaks in activity at dawn and dusk as shown in previous studies, likely because strict limits on human activities in BNP allowed red deer to base their activity more on natural factors than on human-related factors. Key words: activity, Cervus elaphus, national park, Poland, red deer, strict nature reserve

The identification and prioritisation of natural values and the potential threats to them is an essential part of the management of parks and reserves by Parks Victoria, which regularly explores alternative ways to undertake and improve the efficiency of this process. Here we describe an application of ecological risk assessment techniques for identifying and analysing risks to natural values in the mallee national parks of north-western Victoria. Utilizing a workshop setting and multiple assessors, hazards were identified with the aid of a hazard matrix. A modification of the risk analysis protocol from the Australian Standard for Risk Management, AS/NZS 4360, was used to facilitate assessment by multiple participants and to capture the full range of their judgements so as to best characterise threats to natural values. An iterative process provided opportunity to resolve uncertainty due to linguistic ambiguity and vagueness, and genuine differences of opinion that remained were explicitly represented in the final ranking of the hazards. A fault tree was then used to explore the ecological complexities behind one particular issue of concern in the mallee parks.

1. Background Sustainable development becomes more and more important as recognition of global and regional environmental problems grows. The concept of sustainable development in this article is based on a [...]

A change is taking place across the American landscape. Hikers, climbers, and picnickers are finding a way to promote better care of our resources; they are paying to play. Until [...]

Springtime mass displays of wild flowers are especially prominent on old fields and other disturbed sites in Namaqualand, an arid region in the north-western part of South Africa. This springtime floral spectacle draws thousands of tourists annually. However, there is a potential conflict between biodiversity conservation and the mass flowering that is a valuable source of income to the region. To develop a management plan for the old field vegetation in the Namaqua National Park, the questions of whether to disturb or not, how often to disturb and what type of disturbance should be applied are of vital importance. The aim of this paper is to report on experimental work to determine the impact of disturbance on mass flowering displays and biodiversity. Results show that although species diversity increased with time since last cultivation, the mass effect of the flowering display diminished. The loss of the mass effect appears to be primarily caused by the increased abundance of a short-lived perennial specie s (Leysera gnaphalodes) that suppressed the flowering display of the prominent annual species. To maintain mass displays as a tourist attraction, regular disturbance by tilling therefore seems essential. Initially, a four-year rotational tilling programme is proposed to produce a mosaic of fields of different ages to ensure that there will always be some old fields producing a spectacular and uncluttered display. Frequency of disturbance should thereafter be determined by an adaptive management policy. If the management of the old field vegetation is seen in the context of conserving total landscape ecodiversity, this includes conserving cultural bio-landscapes and their intrinsic values. Viewed in this context, human-induced disturbance in the small area set aside for mass displays in the Namaqua National Park (less than 0.05% of the park) becomes justified. KEY WORDS: Namaqualand, disturbance, diversity, management, old field vegetation, species richness

The authors describe how government agencies in the mountainous St. Elias region of Alaska, Yukon, and British Columbia engage in cooperative management of the ecosystem's protected areas. Suggestions for improving inter-park cooperation are presented.