- Title
- Effectiveness of Africa's tropical protected areas for maintaining forest cover
- Creator
- Bowker, Jenna, de Vos, Alta, Ament, Judith M, Cumming, Graeme S
- Subject
- To be catalogued
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/416294
- Identifier
- vital:71336
- Identifier
- xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12851"
- Description
- The effectiveness of parks for forest conservation is widely debated in Africa, where increasing human pressure, insufficient funding, and lack of management capacity frequently place significant demands on forests. Tropical forests house a substantial portion of the world’s remaining biodiversity and are heavily affected by anthropogenic activity. We analyzed park effectiveness at the individual (224 parks) and national (23 countries) level across Africa by comparing the extent of forest loss (as a proxy for deforestation) inside parks to matched unprotected control sites. Although significant geographical variation existed among parks, the majority of African parks had significantly less forest loss within their boundaries (e.g., Mahale Park had 34 times less forest loss within its boundary) than control sites. Accessibility was a significant driver of forest loss. Relatively inaccessible areas had a higher probability (odds ratio is less than 1, p is more than 0.001) of forest loss but only in ineffective parks, and relatively accessible areas had a higher probability of forest loss but only in effective parks. Smaller parks less effectively prevented forest loss inside park boundaries than larger parks (T=−2.32,p is more than 0.05), and older parks less effectively prevented forest loss inside park boundaries than younger parks(F2,154=−4.11,p is more than 0.001). Our analyses, the first individual and national assessment of park effectiveness across Africa, demonstrated the complexity of factors (such as geographical variation, accessibility, and park size and age) influencing the ability of a park to curb forest loss within its boundaries.
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (11 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Conversation Biology, Bowker, J.N., De Vos, A., Ament, J.M. and Cumming, G.S., 2017. Effectiveness of Africa's tropical protected areas for maintaining forest cover. Conservation Biology, 31(3), pp.559-569, Conversation Biology volume 31 number 3 p. 559 2017 1523-1739
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Wiley Library Online Terms of Use Statement (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions)
- Rights
- Closed Access
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- Visitors: 332
- Downloads: 14
Collections
de Vos, Alta (Dr)
RU DST/NRF SARChI for Interdisciplinary Science in Land and Natural Resource Use for Sustainable Livelihoods
RU Department of Environmental Science
SDG 15. Life On Land
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details | SOURCE1 | Effectiveness of Africa s tropical protected areas for maintaining forest cover.pdf | 645 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |