Biodiversity Measurement in

Protected Area Management

D.S. (Dave) Reynolds30th January, 2012

Science for Biodiversity Management

• There is a long history of scientific research and putting the natural sciences to work in the country’s Pas

• The three main streams of activity can be broadly categorised as – Producing and updating species inventories– Monitoring (for adaptive management)– Executing applied research

Science for Biodiversity Management

• Development of Institutional Scientific Staff– Early years 20th Century professional zoologists and

botanists worked principally in specialist fields of academic or institutional research (often taxonomic)

– Management of Pas was regarded as more practical, administrative responsibility (Fortunate that many early managers (Rangers and Wardens ) took more than just a amateur interest in nature...

– By 1950 the broader ecological sciences were developing and this growing field was included in the management of PAs

• Development of Institutional Scientific Staff (Cntd)

– Since the 1950’s the numbers of professional scientists in PA management organisations has grown (slowly at first and then more rapidly since the 1970s and 80s)

– Since the 1990s these institutional scientists have started facilitating research partnerships

– These now include local and international universities and other research institutions

• The influence of changing beliefs/views on the Three main streams of PA research

– Compiling inventories

The compilation of descriptive inventories/catalogues of all species within Pas was an early research imperative.

(1960s) – Lists of vertebrate groups and plants(have become more comprehensive over the last few decades)(1970s-80s) – emphasis on the identification and biology of other groups

(butterflies, amphibians, reptiles and small mammals) Today it is entirely expected that these important species inventories exist for

each PA. These inventories gained increased/wider significance in the 1990s when South Africa became party to international agreements on biodiversity

The wildlife and plant inventories have in many cases been augmented by later detailed classifications of soils, geological formations and landscapes. Also the listing of the vast and largely unknown invertebrate fauna has begun.

– Monitoring

In most cases monitoring has been driven by the rationale that measurement is required in order to ensure that PA management accomplishes its mission successfully.

Key parameters (Measurements) have included:• Wildlife stocks• Grass production• Grass – bush balance

With campaigns to conduct such measurement regularly.

Such information and monitoring have become the fundamental basis of all annual management operations in the majority of cases.

However, the interpretation of those measurements has changed radically as the underlying paradigms of ecology have been transformed over the past three decades.

Paradigm shifts in researcher’s understanding of the ecosystem:

Early ecologists subscribed to a paradigm of orderly plant succession and to the notion that the ‘balance of nature’ always returned close to some ‘optimum’ point. In PAs a consequence of this belief was to avoid prolonged local concentrations of large herbivores in a particular area; an idea that had its origins in commercial stock management theory.

However these ideas – together with the underlying understanding of optimum carrying capacity and equilibrium systems – have been challenged.

Rangeland science now takes alternative paradigms into account, including systems flipping between multiple stable states, or even the more radical idea that plant and animal dynamics are uncoupled (Behnke et al 1993).

The quest for biodiversity has also changed the aim of scientific management. Eg: Stock managers focus on productivity and using the total range as efficiently as possible. By contrast, the goal of protected areas is to conserve the full spectrum of the diversity of all those organisms that historically have been present in that particular location. (SanParks, 2003)

– Executing and applying Research Changing issues in research support to PAsFire Management Modern PA managers intentionally promote

heterogeneity at various scales in the system; this was not prominent in earlier management objectives.

While no final synthesis on these changing paradigms has been made, it is nevertheless clear that explanations of how ecosystems function are neither simple nor universal.

Partly because of this, it is critical that clearly articulated objectives are defined for PAs and the management activities conducted therein.

Some of the Problems with applying biodiversity management in PAs

• We will take a quick look at some current examples in various parts of southern and East Africa - (Google earth)

Northern Tanzania

Tanzania – Mozambique border area(Ruvuma landscape)

RSA – Mozambique Border area(Greater Tongaland landscape)