Functionality and Effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas in Southeastern Brazilian Waters for Demersal Elasmobranchs

Ensuring the efficacy of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) requires that adequate management strategies be implemented according to the MPA’s objectives. Within the scope of species conservation, achieving MPA objectives demands understanding of the role played by MPAs for the target species. In 2014, Brazilian stakeholders and experts set the action plan for elasmobranchs’ conservation, which intended to create new protected areas and expand the existing ones. Nevertheless, more than 65% of Brazilian elasmobranch species are threatened by anthropogenic pressures such as fisheries and habitat loss. In addition, their ecological aspects are not well studied, which might jeopardize the success of the proposed actions. To assess the functionality and effectiveness of two no-take MPAs for sixteen demersal species, the Wildlife Refuge of Alcatrazes (WRA) and the Tupinambás Ecological Station (TES), we evaluated the community structure, space-time variations in functional diversity and changes in fishery indicators. Community dynamics were driven by inshore intrusion and time persistent effects of a cold and nutrient-rich water mass, the South Atlantic Central Water, which increased the relative abundance of species, functional groups, and overall diversity. Spatially, the heterogeneity of benthic habitats, due to the action of stronger waves in specific parts of the MPAs, reflects a diverse community of benthic invertebrates, explaining differences in relative abundance and similarities in space use by the functional groups. Regarding effectiveness, the MPAs make up a key network with the surrounding protection areas to support the ecosystem maintenance on the central and northern coast of the São Paulo state. The establishment of the TES has positively influenced the community throughout the years while the recent creation of the WRA may have promoted some improvements in fisheries indicators for a threatened guitarfish. We propose different functions of the Alcatrazes archipelago for each species and suggest some measures to enhance not only elasmobranch conservation but also the MPAs’ effectiveness.

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Heterogeneity in fishers' and managers' preferences towards management restrictions and benefits in Kenya

Environmental Conservation ◽

10.1017/s0376892912000197 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 39 (4) ◽

pp. 357-369 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

TIMOTHY R. MCCLANAHAN ◽

CAROLINE A. ABUNGE ◽

JOSHUA E. CINNER

Keyword(s):

Protected Areas ◽

Marine Protected Areas ◽

Management Strategies ◽

National Level ◽

Minimum Size ◽

Management Tools ◽

Management Actions ◽

Key Stakeholders ◽

Landing Sites ◽

The Government

SUMMARYIncreasing the chances that resource users engage in and comply with management regulations is a continual problem for many conservation initiatives globally. This is particularly common when resource users perceive more personal costs than benefits from specific management actions. Analysis of interviews with managers and fishers from 22 landing sites along the coast of Kenya indicated how key stakeholders perceived the scale of benefits and costs from different management strategies. Potential underlying causes of divergent perceptions towards different management tools were evaluated, including marine protected areas, no-take fisheries closures, gear use, minimum size of fish caught and species restrictions. The analysis identified three distinct opinion groups: (1) a group of nine landing sites that scaled their preference for most management restrictions neutral to low, with exceptions for minimum sizes of captured fish and gear restrictions; (2) a group of eight landing sites that scaled their preference for the above and species restrictions and closed season higher, and were more neutral about closures and marine protected areas; and (3) a group containing four landing sites and the managers’ offices that rated their preference for the above and closed areas and marine protected areas as high. Logistic regression was used to examine whether these groups differed in wealth, education, age, perceptions of disparity in benefits, dependence on fishing and distance to government marine protected areas. The most frequent significant factor was the resource users’ perceived disparity between the benefits of the management to themselves and their communities, with the benefits to the government. Consequently, efforts to reduce this real or perceived disparity are likely to increase adoption and compliance rates. Most widespread positively-viewed restrictions, such as gear use and minimum size of fish, should be promoted at the national level while other restrictions may be more appropriately implemented at the community level.

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Developing a Network of Marine Protected Areas under the Mediterranean Action Plan: Lessons for the South China Sea

Marine Protected Areas Network in the South China Sea ◽

10.1163/9789004266353_007 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 193-234

Keyword(s):

South China Sea ◽

Protected Areas ◽

Marine Protected Areas ◽

South China ◽

Action Plan ◽

The South China Sea ◽

The South ◽

China Sea ◽

The Mediterranean

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Trade-Offs between Species Conservation and the Size of Marine Protected Areas

Conservation Biology ◽

10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01323.x ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 197-206 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

P. M. CHITTARO ◽

I. C. KAPLAN ◽

A. KELLER ◽

P. S. LEVIN

Keyword(s):

Protected Areas ◽

Marine Protected Areas ◽

Species Conservation ◽

Trade Offs

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Multispecies spatial assessment models for the British Columbia groundfish trawl fishery

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences ◽

10.1139/f98-205 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 56 (4) ◽

pp. 601-628 ◽

Cited By ~ 35

Author(s):

Carl J Walters ◽

Ramón Bonfil

Keyword(s):

British Columbia ◽

Protected Areas ◽

Gravity Model ◽

Marine Protected Areas ◽

Management Strategies ◽

Fishing Effort ◽

Catch Per Unit Effort ◽

Trawl Fishery ◽

Spatial Redistribution ◽

Quota Management

A multispecies spatial model is proposed for evaluation of trawl management strategies and tested with data from British Columbia groundfish. Minimum stock sizes are estimated for 16 species using spatial catch per unit effort data; these data indicate that only small proportions of most stocks are exposed to fishing at any time and that exchange rates of fish between the grounds and other habitats are rapid. A gravity model for spatial effort allocation predicts substantial side effects of marine protected areas or discarding of particular species on nontarget species/grounds due to redistribution of fishing effort. Multispecies, multiground delay-difference models are used in conjunction with the gravity model for spatial effort distribution to predict long-term population responses to various regulatory strategies. This simulation suggests that species composition and spatial structure of the fishery are changing slowly due to reduction in abundance of long-lived species, but rapid collapses of target stocks are unlikely due to spatial redistribution of effort in response to local declines. We question whether quota management (individual vessel quotas) can be safely implemented due to extreme uncertainty about current stock sizes and suggest that a better strategy may be to simply denominate fishing rights as individual effort quotas while providing protection for sensitive stocks through carefully placed marine protected areas.

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Defining Cost-Effective Solutions in Designing Marine Protected Areas, Using Systematic Conservation Planning

Frontiers in Marine Science ◽

10.3389/fmars.2021.683271 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

Author(s):

Ibon Galparsoro ◽

Ángel Borja

Keyword(s):

Protected Areas ◽

Marine Protected Areas ◽

Conservation Planning ◽

Basque Country ◽

Management Strategies ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Environmental Conservation ◽

Environmental Benefits ◽

Systematic Conservation Planning ◽

Economic Costs

Environmental conservation is currently one of the main objectives of marine management. It is agreed that effective management requires evaluating the tradeoffs between protection and economic costs for negatively impacted maritime activities. For these reasons, integrated approaches combining ecological and socio-economic aspects are needed to achieve nature conservation and sustainability targets. Here, we present an approach to identify cost-effective priority marine areas for protection through a Systematic Conservation Planning method, adopting the Basque Country as case study (SE Bay of Biscay). Eight protection scenarios were defined, targeting a combination of protection features: benthic habitats, biological value of cetaceans, birds, macroalgae, and macroinvertebrates, potential provision of ecosystem services, and habitat sensitivity to human activities. In turn, the total fishing pressure produced by artisanal fisheries was adopted as a measure of the socio-economic costs of protection (assuming, for this research, that fishing would be banned in the protected areas). The results indicated that existing marine protected areas (MPAs) were very close to achieving prescribed protection targets, while these targets could be achieved by increasing the size of the existing MPAs. Higher costs were associated with the declaration of areas that were targeting a larger number of protection features. Nevertheless, cost/effectiveness was higher in these cases, with the environmental benefits outweighing a comparatively smaller increase in cost. However, the most cost-effective scenarios were those that included the extension of already existing MPAs. The method implemented can assist managers and decision makers in identifying conservation gaps and ecosystem components that require special attention. In addition, the approach can be used to develop management strategies that may be adopted under different protection scenarios. Thus, the approach proposed here could be used to inform ecosystem-based marine spatial planning.

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Tourism in Protected Areas and Appraisal of Ecotourism in Nepalese Policies

Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Education ◽

10.3126/jthe.v9i0.23680 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

pp. 40-73 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Chandramani Aryal ◽

Bina Ghimire ◽

Narayan Niraula

Keyword(s):

Protected Areas ◽

Protected Area ◽

Action Plan ◽

Species Conservation ◽

Primary Source ◽

Management Plan ◽

Conservation Action ◽

Environmental Diversity ◽

Specific Policy ◽

The Impact

Ecotourism is a form of nature-based tourism. It is recognized as the sustainable alternative to the mass tourism and is executed to contribute to the protection and enhancement of various component of the environment. As environmental and cultural diversity are considered as the greatest assets to ecotourism, Nepal with high cultural and environmental diversity is prime destinations for ecotourism and other forms of nature-based tourism. Ecotourism contributes to the conservation of biodiversity as a primary source of internal funding in the protected areas. Researches on the aspects of ecotourism in Nepal were focused towards potentiality evaluation, impact assessment and the impact of climate change including others. Despite the significance of ecotourism in the Nepalese economy, research on governance aspects of ecotourism is limited. This article aims to analyze the role of government in ecotourism development in Nepal through policy-based approach. Beside this, data of visitation in the protected areas was evaluated. Tourist number in the protected area was observed to increase in a gradual fashion in response to the growing number of tourists visiting Nepal. Tourism policies of government primarily focus to increase the number of tourists in the country and fail to recognize tourism carrying capacity and environmental implication. Different tourism and other sectoral policies attempt to cover the issues of ecotourism, but, ecotourism specific policy is yet to be drafted. In addition to this, the tourism aspect is addressed by the species conservation action plan for species-level conservation within the country. In all, nine action plans reviewed, the provisions relating to tourism were found to be too general, most of them acknowledging ecotourism as a source of conservation funding but failed to define species-specific policy. A similar trend can be observed in the protected area management plan excluding the Chitwan and Banke National Park. Further study on the implementation status and formulation of new policy to address the holistic issues of ecotourism is an urgent requirement.

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How good is your marine protected area at curbing threats?

10.31230/osf.io/2ry6t ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Mirta Zupan

Keyword(s):

Protected Areas ◽

Marine Protected Areas ◽

Marine Protected Area ◽

Human Impacts ◽

Management Strategies ◽

Threat Assessment ◽

Local Scale ◽

Coastal Environments ◽

Multiple Use ◽

Reduction Capacity

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are key tools to mitigate human impacts in coastal environments, promoting sustainable activities to conserve biodiversity. The designation of MPAs alone may not result in the lessening of some human threats, which is highly dependent on management goals and the related specific regulations that are adopted. Here, we develop and operationalize a local threat assessment framework. We develop indices to quantify the effectiveness of MPAs (or individual zones within MPAs in the case of multiple-use MPAs) in reducing anthropogenic extractive and non-extractive threats operating at local scale, focusing specifically on threats that can be managed through MPAs. We apply this framework in 15 Mediterranean MPAs to assess their threat reduction capacity. We show that fully protected areas effectively eliminate extractive activities, whereas the intensity of artisanal and recreational fishing within partially protected areas, paradoxically, is higher than that found outside MPAs, questioning their ability at reaching conservation targets. In addition, both fully and partially protected areas attract non-extractive activities that are potential threats. Overall, only three of the 15 MPAs had lower intensities for the entire set of eight threats considered, in respect to adjacent control unprotected areas. Understanding the intensity and occurrence of human threats operating at the local scale inside and around MPAs is important for assessing MPAs effectiveness in achieving the goals they have been designed for, informing management strategies, and prioritizing specific actions.

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Modelling marine protected areas: insights and hurdles

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2014.0278 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 370 (1681) ◽

pp. 20140278 ◽

Cited By ~ 51

Author(s):

Elizabeth A. Fulton ◽

Nicholas J. Bax ◽

Rodrigo H. Bustamante ◽

Jeffrey M. Dambacher ◽

Catherine Dichmont ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Protected Areas ◽

Marine Protected Areas ◽

Management Strategies ◽

Simulation Models ◽

Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽

Alternative Interventions ◽

Mobile Species ◽

Development Scenarios ◽

Marine Realm ◽

Modelling Environment

Models provide useful insights into conservation and resource management issues and solutions. Their use to date has highlighted conditions under which no-take marine protected areas (MPAs) may help us to achieve the goals of ecosystem-based management by reducing pressures, and where they might fail to achieve desired goals. For example, static reserve designs are unlikely to achieve desired objectives when applied to mobile species or when compromised by climate-related ecosystem restructuring and range shifts. Modelling tools allow planners to explore a range of options, such as basing MPAs on the presence of dynamic oceanic features, and to evaluate the potential future impacts of alternative interventions compared with ‘no-action’ counterfactuals, under a range of environmental and development scenarios. The modelling environment allows the analyst to test if indicators and management strategies are robust to uncertainties in how the ecosystem (and the broader human–ecosystem combination) operates, including the direct and indirect ecological effects of protection. Moreover, modelling results can be presented at multiple spatial and temporal scales, and relative to ecological, economic and social objectives. This helps to reveal potential ‘surprises', such as regime shifts, trophic cascades and bottlenecks in human responses. Using illustrative examples, this paper briefly covers the history of the use of simulation models for evaluating MPA options, and discusses their utility and limitations for informing protected area management in the marine realm.

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