Case studies offer rich insight into the way knowledge is gathered, understood, and applied (or not) in parks and conservation contexts. This study aims to understand how knowledge and information have been used to inform decision-making about human-wildlife co-existence—specifically what knowledge has informed decisions related to grizzly bear management in the Kananaskis Valley. Focus groups of decision-makers involved in the valley’s bear program painted a rich account of decision-making since the late 1970s that was coded thematically.

At present, the protection of nature and landscape in the high mountains of the Western Carpathians, protected as national parks, is becoming increasingly at the forefront of society’s interests in connection with the development of their economic use and the development of mass tourism. Our research was focused on analyzing the extent and character of land cover changes in the Low Tatras National Park in Slovakia over the last 30 years (1990–2018) using CORINE land cover (CLC) data. The period captures almost the entire existence of the Slovak Republic.

The nature conservation regimes of post-socialist EU countries are multi-layered, consisting of initial components established before Socialism, reinforced and solidified during Socialist period, and changes brought about by the democratic transition. For nature conservation, the transition to democracy led to new political and legal frameworks, the re-allocation of resources and land tenure changes, which Central Eastern European countries approached differently.

Effective protection of biodiversity in areas of high conservation value requires trade-offs between local use of natural resources and conservation restrictions. The compromise is often difficult to reach, which causes conflicts over the management priorities of existing and potential protected areas. Ecosystem services (ES) perspective offers a promising avenue for diagnosing and reconciling contrasting interests concerning the use of benefits from ecosystems.

This toolkit provides guidance on the making of fair arrangements that guarantee local benefits to community negotiators and consultants who work with Indigenous communities in Canada. This involves negotiation techniques and strategies. It focuses primarily on the mining sector, but it will be useful in the context of other sectors and contexts too.

This resource is part of the CCSI’s Directory of Community Guidance on Agreements Relating to Agriculture or Forestry Investment.

Community forestry (CF) and Community Protected Areas (CPA) have been established for well over a decade in Siem Reap province. The study investigates the socioeconomic benefits gained by CPA and CF members from their participation in Community-Based Resources Management CBNRM. In CBNRM, local communities are responsible for the management of local resources. However, many CBNRM initiatives in Cambodia are more controlled by government than by communities. The report analyzes and compares two communities and the results of their CBNRM practices.

Within the ecosystem services framework, cultural ecosystem services (CES) have rarely been applied in state-wide surveys of protected area networks. Through a review of available data and online research, we present 22 potential proxy indicators of non-material benefits people may obtain from nature in Natura sites in Greece. Despite the limitations due to data scarcity, this first distance-based study screens a recently expanded protected area system (446 Natura sites) providing steps towards an initial CES capacity review, site prioritization and data gap screening.

Beach litter accumulation patterns are influenced by biotic and abiotic factors, as well as by the distribution of anthropogenic sources. Although the importance of comprehensive approaches to deal with anthropogenic litter pollution is acknowledged, integrated studies including geomorphologic, biotic, and anthropic factors in relation to beach debris accumulation are still needed. In this perspective, Species Distribution Models (SDMs) might represent an appropriate tool to predict litter accumulation probability in relation to environmental conditions.

Over the past 40 years, roads have been the main driver behind the State of Acre’s occupation and development. However, the expansion of roads, has often been associated with the advance of deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and social conflicts. There are no up-to-date data available on the current extent of Acre’s road network nor its environmental and socioenvironmental impacts. In this study, we updated the State of Acre’s road network map for the period 2007 to 2019 through the visual interpretation of 153 Landsat images (5, 7, and 8) at a scale of 1:50,000.

Protected areas are places that provide diverse ecosystem services, including cultural ecosystem services. At the same time, the development and unbalanced use of natural resources in protected areas often create environmental threats and social conflicts. This study estimates the economic value of environmental consequences derived from the construction of an airport in a national park in Korea.

Since 2012, the Alberta Parks division in the Province of Alberta, Canada has been engaged in a process of building scientific, research, and evidence-informed capacity and practices across the parks system. Following a series of priority-setting workshops and agreements with the research, Parks management, and local communities, Alberta Parks has adopted a working group approach and subsequent framework, to support the research and decision-making goals of parks and protected areas management, and the research communities.

Declines in global biodiversity due to land conversion and habitat loss are driving a "Sixth Mass Extinction" and many countries currently fall short of meeting even nominal land protection targets to mitigate this crisis. Here, we quantify the potential contribution of Indigenous lands to biodiversity conservation using case studies of Australia, Brazil and Canada. Indigenous lands in each country are slightly more species rich than existing protected areas and, in Brazil and Canada, support more threatened species than existing protected areas or random sites.