The wetlands of the jalca ecoregion in the Andes of northern Peru form peat and play a major role in the hydrological ecosystem services of the ecoregion. Although peat is globally valued for carbon sequestration and storage, peatlands have not yet been mapped in the jalca. In this region, the Gocta waterfall, one of the 20 highest waterfalls in the world, depends on the jalca’s wetlands ecosystem. The local population depends on tourism to the waterfall and is concerned about preserving its drainage area. To inform conservation planning, in this study we delimited the drainage area of the Gocta waterfall and identified land tenure by applying Geographic Information System (GIS), remote sensing and participatory mapping techniques. Then, by classifying optical, radar and digital elevation models data, we mapped peatland in the jalca of the Gocta drainage area with an overall accuracy of 97.1%. Our results will inform conservation strategy in this complex area of communal, private and informal land tenure systems. At a regional level, this appears to be the first attempt at mapping peatlands using remote sensing imagery in the jalca ecoregion, and it represents a milestone for future efforts to map and conserve peatlands in other tropical mountain areas of the world.

Riverine systems and associated fish populations worldwide are threatened by human impacts, especially in tropical countries with emerging economies. In India, community-based fish sanctuaries are a key mechanism for the conservation of freshwater fish populations, but there are few peer-reviewed studies on this subject. Here we integrate over 35 combined years of field experience with a literature synthesis to define and classify community-based fish sanctuaries. We present a novel, critical analysis of fish sanctuaries as social–ecological systems with a functional characterization based on natural capital, ecosystem services, human well-being, and policy and governance. We find that such sanctuaries are shaped by complex social–ecological processes, including coevolution of religious practices and ecological change, feedback processes created by retaliatory conflicts between river users, and diverse and dynamic governance strategies. These sanctuaries hold great potential for the conservation of rare fish species in India, but are subject to myriad threats at local, regional and global scales. Given the complexity of these social–ecological systems, we outline their conservation potential and highlight directions for future research.

The Congo basin forests have vast conservation potential but because of their inaccessibility and periodic insecurity there is little formal protection or ecological research occurring there. Community-based conservation efforts in the unprotected forest corridor separating Kahuzi-Biega and Maiko National Parks in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo aim to protect a unique forest ecosystem and facilitate the development of ecological research. To support this process, we obtained baseline data on the occurrence of terrestrial mammals in the Nkuba Conservation Area by conducting camera-trap (2014–2018) and transect (2013–2018) surveys. From camera-trap images we also extracted diel activity patterns and estimated overlap in these patterns between selected pairs of species. We identified 29 mammal species weighing > 1 kg using camera traps and 22 species in transect surveys, with a total of 33 mammal species, of which seven are categorized as threatened on the IUCN Red List. Among this mammalian community, we recorded nocturnal and diurnal species with short core activity periods, and several cathemeral species with long activity periods, with various degrees of temporal separation of diel activity between species. The presence of threatened species, including the Critically Endangered Grauer's gorilla Gorilla beringei graueri, suggests that the Nkuba Conservation Area harbours a forest community that requires continuous monitoring, further research and investment in protection from the ongoing deforestation and resource exploitation occurring in the surrounding region.

Sacred forests or groves are patches of forest vegetation that are traditionally protected by local communities because of their religious or cultural significance. The ecological aspects of sacred forests have been the focus of most of the scholarly discourse; little scholarship has examined how local people perceive their sacred areas. This scholarly lacuna is especially pronounced with respect to women, as the majority of sacred forests have traditionally been the domain of the men. Until recently, the sacred forests tradition in most regions endured with minimal participation of women, but with changing socio-economic and cultural conditions, sacred forests are declining. By examining women's perspectives regarding their relationship with their sacred forests, this research informs the scholarship on gender and sacred forests, and explores the role women can play in forest conservation. In 2015–2017, we conducted village meetings and in-depth interviews in four villages located in and around the Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats region of Maharashtra state, India. We found that apart from rules and taboos governing the protection of these sacred forests, taboos also revolve around the access and interaction of women with the sacred forests, with women having less control and decision-making power than men. Nevertheless, women expressed interest in continuation of the tradition of sacred forests, and the younger generation wants some of the gendered rules to change. We recommend including women in management and decision-making processes to strengthen the institution of sacred forests.

Many in the conservation sphere have noted that robust and gender-equitable stakeholder engagement is crucial in achieving conservation outcomes, ensuring project sustainability and supporting human well-being. However, despite policies, international agreements and increasing requirements of donors, gender is still often viewed as an add-on rather than as a fundamental element of effective conservation. In an effort to overcome this, Conservation International has invested in nearly 20 project sites since 2014 to support targeted gender integration into existing conservation projects. We conducted a survey with practitioners across these sites to examine the barriers to and enablers of gender integration, and practitioners’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges involved in this. Our findings demonstrate the importance of both external drivers (funding requirements) and a supportive environment (capacity building, technical and financial support) in incentivising a focus on gender. Respondents also reported a suite of benefits (e.g. increased participation, higher quality of the project) and costs (mainly financial) related to gender integration. In documenting these efforts to build gender-related capacity, and the associated benefits and challenges, we highlight the importance of gender-responsive conservation initiatives, and evaluate a method of achieving this. As conservation practitioners may be more inclined to listen to each other (given their shared objectives) rather than to gender specialists, this research can help to shift practitioner dialogue and conservation practice to be more open and responsive to gender.

Biocultural and indigenous approaches to conservation, such as the sacred forests of India, are increasingly being recognized and valued. At these sites, the ecological aspects as well as the local community management and cultural significance of the landscape contribute to conservation success. From 2012 to 2015, we investigated five sacred forests in western Odisha (India) that varied in size from 1 to 1000 ha. Through interviews with 81 residents, we explored the types of groves, their use and management approaches. We investigated levels of grove disturbance and plant use with botanical survey methods. Some groves experience pressures from annual pilgrimage visitors, and we documented the relative impacts of pilgrims and other activities using ethnographic methods. Community participation or management by the Forest Department alone has not been completely effective in conserving these sacred natural sites; however, collaborative work can contribute to successful conservation. Continued community involvement is key to future biodiversity conservation in the sacred groves.

The scope and scale of wildlife crimes around the world have risen in intensity and complexity, yet current enforcement strategies have often not delivered desired effects on illegal activities, even within protected areas. Tackling the array of illegal activities by emphasizing law enforcement above other options is challenging and potentially unsustainable. We explored the potential for social norms, community regulations and socioeconomic factors to promote compliance with wildlife laws by interviewing 334 respondents in 28 villages that share boundaries with protected areas in Nigeria. Using an anonymous direct questioning approach, we recorded a high prevalence of non-compliance behaviours in all studied communities. Injunctive norms (i.e., perceptions of acceptable behaviour within a social group) significantly predicted compliance, as respondents with no complicit friends or family members were more likely to comply with wildlife regulations. Perceived likelihood of community-level sanctions played a more salient role than the fear of arrest by rangers in influencing compliance. In addition, non-compliance increased with number of dependents, but reduced with average monthly household income. Our study demonstrates that clear knowledge of the social norms that drive local behaviour as well as the authorities that enforce them is integral to understanding the forces that drive community involvement and participation in conservation. Incorporating local communities in planning enforcement interventions may help protect threatened species and landscapes.

Ostional in Costa Rica is the second largest nesting site of the olive ridley sea turtle Lepidochelys olivacea, which is categorized as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. In Ostional the local community helps maintain the nesting site and collects olive ridley eggs for consumption and trade within Costa Rica. Since its inception in 1987 the egg harvesting project has integrated sea turtle conservation with community development. We assessed the current status of this project in terms of community awareness, dependency, involvement and perceptions, using a household survey and semi-structured interviews with key informants. We also compared some of our findings with those of previous studies at the site, finding that the project has fewer dependents, primary livelihood activities have shifted towards tourism and hospitality, and respondents are more aware about environmental conservation and stewardship. We map outcomes of the project with the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, and suggest that further capacity building for research and tourism could contribute towards sustaining the turtle population, local livelihoods, and the community-based conservation institution.

In the highlands of northwestern Ethiopia, Orthodox Christian churches provide habitats for plants that have become rare in the surrounding agricultural landscapes. The objective of this paper is to investigate why and how the local clergy and laypeople protect and promote woody plants within their sacred spaces. Interviews at 11 churches in the Debark District of North Gonder generated a list of 47 woody species, of which most are rare in the rest of the landscape. Three tree species (indigenous cedar, Juniperus procera; indigenous olive, Olea europaea subsp. cuspidata; and exotic Eucalyptus globulus) were identified as most important. While cedar and olive are symbols of tradition and witnesses to church history, eucalyptus is a source of income and alternative material for church construction and repair. A significant proportion of indigenous species within Debark's church forests were said to have been planted, including cedars and olives. Knowledge that these species are cultivated enhances the conservation value of these forests by inspiring local people to continue planting trees and shrubs. In addition to serving as refugia for rare species, Ethiopia's church forests nurture the knowledge necessary to promote plant diversity in the rest of the landscape and serve as archetypes for community-driven conservation.

Through the commodification of nature, the framing of the environment as a ‘natural resource’ or ‘ecosystem service’ has become increasingly prominent in international environmental governance. The economic capture approach is promoted by international organizations such as the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). This paper will inquire as to how forest protection is related to issues of social and ecological justice, exploring whether forest exploitation based on the top-down managerial model fosters an unequitable distribution of resources. Both top-down and community-based approaches to forest protection will be critically examined and a more inclusive ethical framework to forest protection will be offered. The findings of this examination indicate the need for a renewed focus on existing examples of good practice in addressing both social and ecological need, as well as the necessity to address the less comfortable problem of where compromise appears less possible. The conclusion argues for the need to consider ecological justice as an important aspect of more socially orientated environmental justice for forest protection.

Many global efforts to decrease deforestation have focused on community-based conservation programmes to reach their goals. However, many such programmes are lacking a potentially helpful population, women. We employed key-informant interviews to examine attitudes towards, and barriers to, women's participation in a community-based conservation programme prior to implementation. We conducted 47 semi-structured interviews in January 2015 in communities adjacent to the Vaca Forest Reserve in the Cayo District of Belize. Results indicated that the benefits of involving women in community-based conservation activities included them learning more about the forest and conservation, transferring this knowledge to their family and community, and helping the environment. Some possible barriers to participation included lack of time and motivation to participate. However, there were notable differences between men's and women's responses relating to women's available time and their willingness to participate, with men not mentioning time as a barrier and stating that women would need more motivation to participate. The results will be used to work with local women to collaboratively develop and implement a community-based conservation programme around the Vaca Forest Reserve.

Declining availability of prey is potentially a major factor limiting snow leopard Panthera uncia populations in Tajikistan and neighbouring states. Conservation initiatives to develop community-based trophy hunting programmes for ibex Capra sibirica and argali Ovis ammon polii aim to provide financial incentives for communities to limit poaching of wild ungulates. Such programmes could help to reverse local declines in ibex and argali populations, and consequently snow leopard populations, while simultaneously improving the economic status of local people. However, in practice the desired effect may not materialize. To investigate the premise, we estimated the population density of the snow leopard, using a spatial capture–recapture model based on camera trapping in two study areas (each c. 1,000 km2) in the Tajik Pamirs: a well-managed trophy hunting concession and an otherwise similar area where grazing and poaching are unmanaged. We used distance-truncated counts to assess relative densities of wild and domestic ungulates between sites, and faecal analyses to compare the dietary habits of snow leopards. Our data were limited in scope but suggested that the density of snow leopards and the relative density of wild and domestic ungulates may have been greater in the hunting concession, where wild ungulates accounted for a greater proportion of prey items. Our results provide preliminary evidence that trophy hunting of ungulates may be a viable tool for achieving snow leopard conservation goals; however, we conclude that further investigation is necessary to adequately address the question.

The contribution of protected areas to biodiversity conservation is well attested but many taxa in many regions remain dependent on the unprotected wider landscape. To develop conservation plans for large mammals such as the Endangered pygmy hippopotamus Choeropsis liberiensis of West Africa's Upper Guinea Forests it is critical to understand the importance of unprotected land. Despite being a conservation priority, little is known about the habitat associations of this species, or its distribution across its range. Through a combination of field surveys, species distribution models and community questionnaires we investigated the use of unprotected areas by the pygmy hippopotamus in the Sierra Leone–Liberia border region. We found signs of the species in 128 of 525 1-km2 cells surveyed. Our analysis suggested that the species is reasonably widespread in this region and is associated with major rivers. It occurred close to, but rarely within, large areas of intact forest, and 80.4% of pygmy hippopotamus signs were recorded outside protected areas. The expansion of the protected area network in this area is unrealistic in Sierra Leone and to some extent in Liberia, mainly because of anthropogenic pressure and the overlap of proposed protected areas with mining and logging concessions. Thus pygmy hippopotamus conservation activities in the region need to include programmes on community lands while maintaining a robust network of protected forests. Community-based conservation of the pygmy hippopotamus may prove valuable for other threatened and endemic species that are not confined to protected areas in this region.

Community-based conservation efforts are designed to foster local stewardship of important ecological resources. However, inequitable distribution of costs and benefits in communities surrounding protected areas can negatively impact livelihoods, increase wealth disparities and create conflict. To examine the potential for conflict between host communities involved in a community-based conservation program and neighbouring (non-host) communities, we explored local residents’ attitudes towards conservation at Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary (TIWS) in Sierra Leone. Intercept surveys (n = 368) were conducted in 18 villages (eight host, ten non-host) within 8 km of TIWS during 2010. Results revealed significant differences between residents of the host and non-host villages with respect to attitudes towards resource use and overall support for site protection. The most substantial discrepancies centred on perceived benefits associated with TIWS, and these drastically different perspectives generated a high potential for conflict. To minimize conflict and foster broader community support for conservation, managers must carefully consider how benefits associated with protected areas are communicated and distributed across protected area-proximate landscapes.

While conservation and development projects focusing on non-timber forest products (NTFPs) remain popular approaches to address complex issues of livelihood improvement and conservation, governance of NTFPs is still poorly understood. In the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot of Brazil, non-governmental organizations, researchers and community leaders are encouraging the commercialization of fruit pulp-based products from the endangered palm Euterpe edulis, known as juçara, to replace income from illegal heart of palm extraction. In order to assess the governance of development of juçara pulp as an NTFP and the potential to increase conservation of juçara through management on smallholder properties, we conducted qualitative research in São Paulo State from October 2012 to October 2013. Major challenges include policy barriers, difficulties integrating production and commercialization, problematic assumptions about poverty alleviation and the inability of the most disadvantaged members of communities to benefit. These governance challenges are a function of poor access, or the ‘bundle of powers’ that enables the ability to benefit. However, engagement with juçara fruit pulp production links farmers and former poachers with sustainable agricultural concepts and with networks, changing their perceptions of conservation and enhancing ability to benefit from improved policy.

Little is known about the Endangered Grevy's zebra Equus grevyi in far northern Kenya, where the species exists in small, isolated populations at the periphery of its range. Understanding the threats facing this species is a prerequisite for effective conservation planning but its rarity makes obtaining accurate information challenging. We set out to establish the current status of, and attitudes towards, Grevy's zebra in northern Kenya using local knowledge as the primary source of information. Pastoralists perceived Grevy's zebra to be in decline as a result of drought, lack of pasture and water, and hunting for consumptive use. There was also evidence of competition with livestock. Attitudes towards Grevy's zebra were predominantly positive, influenced by a range of perceived benefits of living alongside the species, and an absence of severe costs. Coupled with evidence of local conservation efforts in several locations, this is a positive starting point for community-based conservation.

The rate at which the poaching of rhinoceroses has escalated since 2010 poses a threat to the long-term persistence of extant rhinoceros populations. The policy response has primarily called for increased investment in military-style enforcement strategies largely based upon simple economic models of rational crime. However, effective solutions will probably require a context-specific, stakeholder-driven mix of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms grounded in theory that represents human behaviour more realistically. Using a problem-oriented approach we illustrate in theory and practice how community-based strategies that explicitly incorporate local values and institutions are a foundation for combating rhinoceros poaching effectively in specific contexts. A case study from Namibia demonstrates how coupling a locally devised rhinoceros monitoring regime with joint-venture tourism partnerships as a legitimate land use can reconcile individual values represented within a diverse stakeholder group and manifests as both formal and informal community enforcement. We suggest a social learning approach as a means by which international, national and regional governance can recognize and promote solutions that may help empower local communities to implement rhinoceros management strategies that align individual values with the long-term health of rhinoceros populations.

The North American model of wildlife conservation, based on the public trust doctrine, is credited for the recovery of several charismatic wildlife species, including the plains bison Bison bison. In that model, wildlife is a public resource from which the private sector may not profit either individually or collectively. In recent years, however, resilience thinking is driving changes in the traditional state-run wildlife management model to allow for integrated multi-sector approaches at the landscape scale. A free-ranging herd of bison on public land in the Henry Mountains of Utah is used as a case study to consider if and how a community-based conservation programme could be developed for a state-managed wildlife resource to benefit all stakeholders. The Henry Mountains bison, which are disease-free, share the rangeland with cattle that are privately owned by individual ranchers and corporations with various economic goals and environmental values. The ranchers currently derive no benefits from the bison and have concerns regarding competition between bison and cattle. However, a threshold harvesting strategy with community participation could generate revenue to offset these concerns. It could also provide benefits to the local community, increase state revenue, and increase the size of the bison population while securing its long-term genetic viability. Implementation would initially require facilitation by policy specialists, after which we suggest a Henry Mountains bison partnership could serve as a model for bison recovery efforts elsewhere in North America.

Members of the public and resource-dependent communities are increasingly participating alongside professional scientists to monitor the natural world. This study applies the contention from development studies that participatory approaches may be tyrannical to participatory monitoring of Nepal's community forests. There is a tyranny of the group because elites within the community stand to benefit at the cost of those already marginalized. In theory, tyranny is produced through the methods employed in the projects, as they promote scientific systems of monitoring at the expense of local understandings of environmental change; in practice, however, the latter aspects override official monitoring to enable effective learning from the projects. In some instances, tyranny is produced through decision-making and control, whilst, in other cases, the reverse is true and communities are empowered through their participatory monitoring efforts. Policy makers and those involved in participatory monitoring should endeavour to transform tyranny created at local and wider scales. Participatory monitoring holds huge potential in the assessment of biodiversity, natural resources and ecosystem services, but programmes and projects need to effectively deliver associated benefits of conservation and community empowerment.