Conservation in the Human Landscap

The protection of global biodiversity and the conservation of the earth's natural resources are paramount to future wellbeing of mankind. Humans are a hugely influential part of the global ecosystem, and the ways in which we use, create, and change global biodiversity patterns are as important to understand as the ways in which those patterns function without our interference. Of more specific importance is an understanding of the ways in which human values, behaviors and practices (especially those surrounding leadership, management, and finance) relating to biodiversity management can be helpful or harmful as we attempt to meet our self-determined goals of global conservation.;To that end, the first chapter of this dissertation focuses on the potential influence of leadership and management on outcomes in wildlife reintroduction programs. Wildlife reintroductions and translocations are statistically unlikely to succeed. Nevertheless, they remain a critical part of conservation because they are the only way to actively restore a species into a habitat from which it has been extirpated. Past efforts to improve these practices have attributed the low success rate to failures in the biological knowledge (e.g., ignorance of social behavior, poor release site selection), or to the inherent challenges of reinstating a species into an area where threats have already driven it to local extinction. Such research presumes that the only way to improve reintroduction outcomes is through improved biological knowledge. This emphasis on biological solutions may have caused researchers to overlook the potential influence of other factors on reintroduction outcomes. I employed a grounded theory approach to study the leadership and management of a successful reintroduction program (the Sea Eagle Recovery Project in Scotland, UK) and identify four critical managerial elements that I theorize may have contributed to the successful outcome of this 50-year reintroduction. These elements are: (i) Leadership & Management: Small, dedicated team of accessible experts who provide strong political and scientific advocacy ("champions") for the project. (ii) Hierarchy & Autonomy: Hierarchical management structure that nevertheless permits high individual autonomy. (iii) Goals & Evaluation: Formalized goal-setting and regular, critical evaluation of the project's progress toward those goals. (iv) Adaptive Public Relations: Adaptive outreach campaigns that are open, transparent, inclusive (esp. linguistically), and culturally relevant.;This study represents an initial, but valuable inquiry into the ways in which leadership and management can impact programmatic (and therefore, biodiversity) outcomes.;The second chapter of this dissertation explores the potential relationship between financial mechanisms and outcomes in non-governmental biodiversity conservation programs. Although local laws, trends, and markets forces often shape the specific laws and market conditions under which conservation transactions occur, focusing analysis on the broader mechanisms of transfer may provide new opportunities to identify patterns, improve efficiency, and link transfer mechanisms to conservation outcomes.;Through a series of seven brief, descriptive case studies built around interviews with senior officers at US non-governmental organizations, this chapter seeks to highlight potential linkages between inflows of conservation dollars, financial mechanisms used to transfer them to conservation actors/entities/organizations, and eventual outflows of conservation dollars into measurable outcomes. This chapter also presents a preliminary framework for categorizing mechanisms and predicting their impacts on availability and outflow of conservation dollars. Although the framework fails to predict all outcomes, its failure highlights several emergent themes in the impact of financial mechanism, including: (i) longer time horizons of funding availability can decrease the value of conservation investments, but increase accountability (ii) time-bound (or time-limited) funding mechanisms can create uncertainty and decrease investment in program outcomes (iii) mechanisms granting greater control to donors/investors can decrease the autonomy and adaptability of conservation organizations, and can skew outcomes toward donor biases.;We hope that these results are useful as a first step toward the greater consideration of financial mechanisms in conservation planning and financial analysis.;The third chapter of this dissertation applies principles of the first two chapters as part of an in-depth look at one conservation initiative: the Anne K. Taylor Fund's Boma Fortification Program, taking place in Narok County, Kenya. In the pastoral steppe of East Africa, lions (Panthera leo) kill livestock. The subsequent lethal retaliation by livestock owners has helped reduce lion numbers by more than 80% and driven it from most of its historic range. This conflict is especially intense along the western edge of the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya, where some of the densest lion and livestock populations in Africa overlap.;We evaluated the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of implementation for one proposed solution -- the Anne K. Taylor Fund's subsidized construction of fortified, chain-link livestock fences ('bomas') -- in reducing livestock loss to depredation. We collected 375 predation reports from 308 semi-structured household interviews and predation records. We used these data to study the impact of subsidised boma fortification on the depredation of cattle, sheep and goats. Of 179 fortified bomas, 67% suffered no losses over one year; of 60 unfortified bomas, only 15% had no losses over one year. Furthermore, losses of greater than five animals per year occurred at only 17% of fortified bomas, compared to 57% of unfortified bomas. The overall reduction in losses to predation at fortified bomas equated to savings of more than $1,200 USD per household per year, but with a return on investment of 778%, partially fortified bomas are vastly more cost effective than fully fortified bomas (return on investment = 349%).;However, the broad applicability of the boma fortification approach is uncertain, as its financial structure relies heavily on a single large donor to act as subsidizing entity. This single-supplier approach introduces cost inefficiencies, as well as supply chain vulnerabilities. Future fortification programs should consider alternative decentralized approaches to strengthen supply lines and scale the solution.;These chapters collectively represent a thorough examination of the human dimensions of conservation -- and the ways in which leadership, management, finance, and valuation can contribute to harmful or helpful outcomes in the effort to preserve global biodiversity.