The European Landscape Convention (2000) obligates European Union countries to identify and implement landscape quality objectives (LQOs) understood as the specification of public expectations and preferences concerning the landscape of a given area, expressed by competent public authorities. The convention emphasizes the important role of local community representatives in this field. In Polan...

The Shark Reef Marine Reserve in Fiji is an ecotourism project designed to protect a small reef patch and its fauna while preserving the livelihood of local communities. It involves the local communities by using a participatory business planning approach to Marine Protected Area management, generating income through diver user fees, distributed to the local villages that have exchanged their t...

The willingness of a species to leave a forest fragment is a prerequisite for subsequent dispersal across the intervening non-forested landscape. Species with stringent fidelity to the forest patch will be isolated from populations in other fragments and predisposed to factors that promote extinction of local populations. Here, we document which fruit-feeding, forest-dwelling butterflies occur ...

This paper describes an interactive web-based near real-time (NRT) forest monitoring system using four levels of geographic information services: 1) the acquisition of continuous data streams from satellite and community-based monitoring using mobile devices, 2) NRT forest disturbance detection based on satellite time-series, 3) presentation of forest disturbance data through a web-based applic...

However, in 1988 the National Forest Policy heralded a significant shift in forest policy by acknowledging the needs and interests of local communities concerning their utilization of forest resources, and involving them in the protection and regeneration of forests. However, deforestation and violation of local community interests continued, due to the conflict between conserving endangered na...

In India, the Hoolock gibbon, Hoolock hoolock, is found only in a small part in the northeast, south of the Brahmaputra River and east of the Dibang River. The Hoolock gibbon, a canopy dependent species, occurs in some reserve forests of Cachar district of Barak Valley, Assam. but its numbers is declining due to habitat loss and hunting. They are now surviving in some isolated pockets in the re...

Collective action by local communities has increasingly been recognised as crucial for effective management of natural resources, particularly the management of forests in the rural settings. This recognition is principally based on the universal and often unquestioned assumption that the involvement of local communities in the management of forests can improve the forest condition and utilisat...

Given the extent of tropical forest deforestation and as a number of conservation programmes and local communities rely on forest fragments, it has become important to understand how fragment exploitation by local communities affects forest structure and function. The effects of forest exploitation on forest structure and status of forest fragments were investigated in 20 nonreserved forest fra...

Abstract Background Forests are naturally endowed to combat climate change by protecting people and livelihoods as well creating a base for sustainable economic social development. But this natural mechanism is often hampered anthropogenic activities. It therefore imperative take measures that environmentally not only mitigation but also its adaptation. This study was carried out assess the rol...