Measure Development Summary: Conservation Status

Svancara, L.

The conservation status (ownership, stewardship, and use) of land surrounding parks can have profound impacts on resources (GAO 1994; Hansen et al. 2005). Impacts – positive or negative – can be driven by a number of different mechanisms within general categories of changes in the effective size of reserves, changes in ecological flows, loss of critical habitat, and increased exposure to humans (Hansen and DeFries 2007). Within each category, Hansen and Defries (2007) distinguished the types of mechanisms that drive changes, such as species area effects, trophic structure, migration habitats outside parks, and hunting and poaching. A common feature of these effects is that they are known or strongly postulated to be directly related to land use intensification. While it can be difficult to directly measure impacts, several broad-scale data sets can provide important information to evaluate the likely condition of parks, and current or likely threats to park resources.