The present-day location of public parks should be understood in the proper social and historical context of residential segregation and urban development. In Los Angeles, discriminatory practices such as restrictive covenants were used not only for housing, but also to maintain segregated recreational spaces. In addition, the economic changes that came as a result of White flight, suburbanization, and inner city job loss brought with it a reduction in local government resources, including funds for public parks. These changes to the urban landscape disproportionately impacted low-income immigrant communities, including Latino neighborhoods. Health disparities researchers are concerned with the inequitable distribution of parks and recreation facilities because it may contribute to disparities in physical inactivity and obesity, health risks that disproportionately impact Latinos. However, much of the literature investigating disparities in the built environment fails to include a racial analysis. The current study uses a Critical Race Theory framework to examine disparities in park availability in Los Angeles. We used a unique park dataset created in ArcGIS to carry out a county-wide assessment of the availability of park features at the neighborhood level. Data come from two sources, the Los Angeles County Location Management System, which includes information on specific park features (e.g., swimming pools, parks and gardens, recreation centers) and the American Community Survey, which includes neighborhood-level sociodemographic information. A zero-inflated negative binomial regression model was used to test whether Latino immigrant neighborhood characteristics are associated with the availability of park features in Los Angeles. Results indicate that Latino immigrant neighborhoods have limited park availability. The discussion situates these findings of inequitable distribution of park resources in the appropriate social and historical context of Latinos living in Los Angeles.

The economic impacts of recreational visits to state parks on the economies of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee were estimated using the U.S. Forest Service IMPLAN input-output modeling system. Recreational expenditure data associated with state parks were obtained from the Public Area Recreation Visitors Study (PARVS). Results suggest that recreational spending may stimulate a considerable amount of economic activity in the state economies studied. Hence, future research into the economic development potential of outdoor recreation seems warranted.

Direct and bloody violence has a long history on stage. In recent years, a different mode of violence can be distinguished in the work of prominent American playwrights – less direct than indirect, more covert than overt, and likely to affect a group rather than individuals. In this article Russell Vandenbroucke applies concepts from Norwegian sociologist and Peace Studies scholar Johan Galtung to examine structural and cultural violence in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, & 3) and traces similar representations of violence in Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror, Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Lynn Nottage's Ruined, Ayad Aktar's Disgraced, The Laramie Project by Moisés Kauffman and the Tectonic Theater Project, and Tim Robbins's adaptation of Dead Man Walking by Sr Helen Prejean. These writers have in common the status of traditional outsiders – black, female, gay, Muslim – and this informs their engagement in the social and political vitality of the stage. The shift in focus of these plays from direct violence echoes observations in Steven Pinker's recent The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Russell Vandenbroucke is Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Louisville and Director of its Peace, Justice, and Conflict Transformation programme. He previously served as Artistic Director of Chicago's Northlight Theatre. His publications include Truths the Hand Can Touch: the Theatre of Athol Fugard and numerous articles on South African theatre.

Protected areas are intended to conserve biodiversity by restricting human activities within their boundaries. However, such restrictions are difficult to enforce fully in many tropical parks. Improving regulatory enforcement requires an understanding of prevailing challenges to detection and sanctioning activities. Drawing from empirical field research in 15 Colombian parks, I show that current enforcement efforts may be insufficient to deter most priority threats. For long-term infractions, such as agriculture, livestock grazing, and construction, sanctioning violators is challenging, whereas for furtive infractions, such as logging and hunting, it may be difficult to detect violators. Investment in staff, equipment and infrastructure may fail to increase enforcement capacity and yield positive conservation outcomes unless accompanied by resolution of land tenure, clarification of use rights, improved patrolling strategies and protection of park guards.

Despite significant expansion of the global protected area (PA) network, this investment has not commonly been matched by investment in their management. This includes managing trade-offs between social and biodiversity goals, including resource use in PAs. While some resource-use activities receive significant attention, the full suite of resources extracted from PA systems is rarely documented. This paper illustrates the potential risk of resource use to PA ecological performance through a survey of resources harvested in South Africa's national parks. Even for this comparatively well-managed suite of parks, significant data gaps preclude assessments of harvest sustainability. Harvest quantities were known for < 8% of the 341 used resources, while 23% were not identified to species level. International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List conservation status had not been evaluated for 78% of species, and 31% of all species (83% of marine species) had not been evaluated nationally. Protected areas face ongoing pressure to balance people-based and biodiversity outcomes, but whether or not both objectives can be achieved cannot be assessed without adequate data. Managing PAs in future will require consideration of trade-offs between investing in PA expansion, increasing the monitoring and management capacity of PA agencies, and investing in the research needed to support decision making.

Traditionally, conservation programmes assume that local peoples’ support for parks depends on receiving material benefits from foreign exchange, tourism, development and employment. However, in the case of forest parks in Africa, where annual visitation can be small, local support may instead result from ecosystem services. Kibale National Park, a forest park in Uganda, demonstrates that people appreciate parks in ways that are seldom cited nor explored. Public perceptions of benefits accrued from Kibale were explored using two different sampling techniques: a community census and a geographic sample. In both surveys, over 50% of respondents perceived benefits provided by Kibale National Park, and over 90% of those who perceived benefits identified ecosystem services, whereas material benefits were cited less frequently. Multimodel selection on a suite of general linear models for the two different sampling methods provided a comparison of factors influencing perceptions of ecosystem services. Perceptions of Park benefits were influenced by geography, household and respondent characteristics, and perception of negative impacts from the Park. Perceived ecosystem benefits played an important role in the way the Park was viewed and valued locally. Parks have considerable impacts on neighbouring communities, and their long-term political and economic sustainability depends on managing these relationships well. Since local people have the most to gain or lose by conserving neighbouring parks, analyses that incorporate the perceptions of local people are essential to management and sustainability of park landscapes.

Reference points are an approach to defining the thresholds of sustainable human use of environmental resources. The rationale for reference points can be found in a number of foundational environmental frameworks, including common property resources, carrying capacity, ecosystem management, and sustainability. However, these frameworks also suggest that reference points have both ecological and social components, and that formulation of reference points should be informed by society. Social norms, developed in sociology, offer a theoretical and empirical approach to informing reference points and have been useful in defining, measuring and managing the sustainability of parks and protected areas. Integrating sociology and ecology through the application of social norms to reference points may be a useful approach to environmental management. This paper describes social norms and their application, and illustrates the integration of sociology and ecology to more fully inform reference points.

Wildlife tourism is a growing phenomenon, particularly in emerging economies such as India. Purported benefits of this growth in tourism include greater tourist interest in, and support for, conservation. We examined the interest, awareness and potential for this support in three prominent Indian national parks, Nagarahole, Kanha and Ranthambore. Park records indicate that most tourists (71%) are Indian nationals. Our surveys of 436 Indian tourists indicate that many were on their first visit to the park (71%) and are well educated (82% with bachelor and master degrees). Most tourists (88%) visited for <1 week and spent <USD 600 on their visit. The main reasons for visiting parks were opportunities to see nature, tigers Panthera tigris and scenic beauty. Seventy-one percent of tourists indicated they are likely or somewhat likely to return to the parks but only 34% would be willing to visit the parks if tigers are absent. Forty-two percent indicated willingness to pay higher gate fees. Surprisingly, those spending less on their trip were more willing to pay higher fees than those spending more. Sixty-five percent believed that local people benefit from the park, whereas in reality local benefits are few. Our results indicate the potential for the growth of domestic wildlife tourism and support for conservation among tourists but highlight the need for increasing education and awareness on the difficult realities of conservation in India.

A content analysis of 167 country reports submitted for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's State of the World's Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was conducted to determine the extent to which protected areas are recognized as means of conserving domestic animal diversity. For countries in which protected areas were reported to help conserve the diversity of domesticated animals, additional details were sought from a review of related literature. Protected areas were seldom discussed in country reports and were most often mentioned as means to protect biodiversity in general, wild relatives of domesticated animals or wild game species. The most frequently mentioned way in which protected areas conserve domestic animal diversity is through initiatives that utilize indigenous breeds of livestock in nature conservation programmes. By offering farmers financial incentives for these ecological services, protected areas help offset potential economic disadvantages of raising indigenous breeds that may be less productive in industrial environments. Additional incentives to raise indigenous breeds are supported by protected areas such as niche marketing of organic food and fibre, establishing “seed herd” programmes and tourism promotion. Many opportunities exist for protected area managers and authorities responsible for conserving animal genetic resources for food and agriculture to fulfil mutually compatible objectives.

South Africa contains an extensive, well-managed protected area network which generates considerable economic benefits from tourism, but the extensive land and financial resources required by the parks and reserves are difficult to reconcile with the acute social and economic development needs of poor rural people with very limited access to any kind of resources. Local communities have incurred substantial costs from the establishment of these parks while receiving few benefits in return. National and provincial governments, as well as the conservation authorities, have now recognized that the long-term future of parks and reserves depends on taking effective steps to redress the local imbalance of benefits and costs. Integrated conservation-development projects (ICDPs) are beginning to test a range of specific measures to increase local community participation in the benefits from protected areas. Parks have considerable resources and expertise which they can use to support local development through ICDPs, although it would be unrealistic to expect parks to solve widespread rural poverty amongst their neighbours. Instead, park authorities should take the lead in forming partnerships to mobilize the combined resources and expertise of other national and provincial government agencies, NGOs and the private sector, as well as the local communities themselves. Community participation in wildlife tourism may best be achievable through joint ventures with the private sector or park management authorities.

The relationship between conservation and poverty has received extensive attention recently, and the impacts of protected areas on the welfare of communities surrounding them has been debated. I seek to contribute to this debate by using a unique sub-national database of infant mortality rates for an analysis of such mortality surrounding protected areas in developing countries. The paper tests the hypotheses that poverty rates in regions surrounding protected areas in developing countries are higher than national averages and that poverty rates are highest around large and strictly protected areas. Preliminary evidence suggests that infant mortality rates surrounding protected areas, and even those surrounding the most strictly protected areas, are not very different from national rates. Infant mortality rates are significantly higher among populations surrounding larger protected areas but the causal relationship is uncertain. Data limitations and other problems related to this kind of global analysis are discussed. Information of the kind presented in this paper can assist management authorities to assess the relative poverty surrounding protected areas in their countries so as to set priorities for poverty alleviation interventions, and may serve as a useful sampling frame for local case studies and long-term monitoring.