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Parks in Sumatra may reduce deforestation in adjacent unprotected areasmongabay.comJuly 06, 2009
Analyzing 98 LANDSAT satellite images across Sumatra and the smaller island of Siberut from 1990 to 2000 and applying a statistical method known as "propensity score matching", David Gaveau and colleagues found that "a reduction in deforestation rates inside Sumatran protected areas has promoted protection, rather than deforestation, in adjacent unprotected land lying within 10 km of protected area boundaries."
"We report the absence of a 'detrimental neighborhood leakage' effect around Sumatran reserves, indicating that Sumatran PAs have not attracted population growth and development projects along their boundary," lead author David Gaveau, a researcher at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology of the University of Kent, told mongabay.com via email. "Instead, this study provides evidence for the presence of a 'beneficial neighborhood leakage' effect. It appears that reducing deforestation inside Sumatran protected areas has promoted protection to adjacent unprotected areas." But Gaveau and colleagues caution that their findings may be explained by demographic changes — specifically depopulation of rural areas due to urbanization — rather than the influence of conservation efforts extending beyond park boundaries. "Whether Sumatran protected areas extend their conservation influence beyond their boundary may prove controversial, because enhanced law enforcement and ecotourism activities on private lands around protected areas are not well developed on the island of Sumatra," they write. "The unexpected presence of a beneficial leakage effect that conserves forests adjacent to protected areas may be explained by an island-wide decreasing population growth effect near Sumatran protected areas as human population moves closer to urban centers."
"The real question for policy makers is not whether tropical PAs have lower rates of deforestation than unprotected areas, but rather whether the long-term viability of tropical forests has been secured by establishing protected areas," the authors conclude. Maps online at SumatranForest.org. David L. A. Gaveau, Justin Epting, Owen Lyne, Matthew Linkie, Indra Kumara, Markku Kanninen and Nigel Leader-Williams. Evaluating whether protected areas reduce tropical deforestation in Sumatra. Journal of Biogeography (J. Biogeogr.) (2009) www.blackwellpublishing.com/jbi doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02147.x Related articles Deforestation maps for Sumatra now available on Google Earth (03/31/2009) Despite many years of research in conservation biology, precise maps of tropical deforestation that document the global spatial extent of tropical forests destruction are generally not available outside of the scientific community, says David Gaveau a researcher from Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) points out. For nearly seven years, Gaveau has been documenting forest destruction on the entire island of Sumatra since early 1970s using satellite technology, and he has found the way to make his full-resolution maps and scientific results public using Google Earth. Parks help people to the detriment of biodiversity, suggests study (07/03/2008) The establishment of nature reserves in Africa and Latin America has been a boon to human settlement but comes at a cost to biodiversity, suggests a new study published in the journal Science. Analyzing 306 rural protected areas in 45 countries in Africa and Latin America, George Wittemyer and colleagues found that the rate of human population growth along the borders of reserves was nearly twice that of neighboring rural areas.
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