Study On Community’s Participation In Management Of Nature Reserves

Community participation in the management of Nature Reserve (NR) is one of the important ways to improve the efficiency of NR management and the coordination between the nature protection and community development. The research selected6NRs at different levels in Beijing, and12local communities (LCs) around these NRs as research areas;12managers,12community leaders and256farmers from these areas as participants. The research collected the data of participants by key informant interview, questionnaire survey and secondary documents analysis, and then analyzed the main factors which have the influences on local farmers’engagement in the management of NRs with Probit model. This research also explored the relationship among NRs and LCs, and compared LCs’ participation level and divergence of farmer’s attitudes on the management of NRs in2typical LCs.The results showed that local farmers had positive attitudes on the management of NRs. However, their participation were at lower stage and just involved in activities like fire control and employed as forest guard, and lack of participation at higher level, such as were involved in decision making, management and evaluation. The study also found that6influence factors (farmers’education backgrounds, recognition and resources use within NRs, crops damage caused by wild animals, gain jobs and income from NRs) were closely related to community participation and other factors did not show any significances. Lower education, single income source, lacking awareness of related regulations and laws, inappropriate policy, and unfit organization structure were the main constraints for farmers’ participation. The advantage factors which could enhance farmers’participation were their experiences in nature protection activities and willingness to participate in future, supportive attitudes to NRs management and benefit they could get from NRs.Based on these results and analysis, our research provide suggestions as below:1). improving institutions and capacity building of NRs to enhance farmers’participation;2). creating a communicative channel and space between NRs and LCs;3). building an incentive mechanism to encourage local farmers’participation;4). paying attention to local traditional knowledge and culture to stimulate local initiative;5). raising awareness and building capacity of local participation through training and publicize activities;6). developing community-benefited ecotourism as a startup of participation of communities.