Abstract Marine protected areas (MPAs) are an important tool for conservation but can be victims of their own success—higher fish biomass within MPAs create incentives to poach. This insight underpins the finding that fishing persists in most worldwide, and it raises questions about MPA monitoring enforcement. We propose a novel institution enhance design—a ‘Conservation Finance Area (CFA)’—tha...

We compile over 270 wildlife counts of Kenya's wildlife populations conducted over the last 30 years to compare trends in national parks and reserves with adjacent ecosystems and country-wide trends. The study shows the importance of discriminating human-induced changes from natural population oscillations related to rainfall and ecological factors. National park and reserve populations have de...