Servicenavigation

Project Details

Back

Projekt Print View

Protected area effectiveness in the Caucasus during socioeconomic and political shocks

Subject Area Physical Geography
Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Policy, Agricultural Sociology
Term from 2018 to 2022
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 409732304
 
Final Report Year 2023

Final Report Abstract

Biodiversity loss is among the major global crises of the 21st century. An important tool to stop this loss is area-based conservation (e.g., protected areas), with a recent call by the Convention on Biological Diversity for its expansion to 30% of the global land and ocean area. Yet, measuring the effectiveness of protected areas is not trivial, and many protected areas have little to no impact on the ground. This is often due to socioeconomic and political conditions, which have rarely been considered in evaluations to date. In the PArCS project, we aimed to address these knowledge gaps by adopting a social-ecological approach to assess the effectiveness of protected areas in the southern Caucasus, considering the impacts of shocks (e.g., the collapse of the Soviet Union). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and unexpected events for the Iranian project partners (anyhopefornature.info), we had to shift some of our plans, especially related to the collection of in-situ data and visiting the project sites. In WP1, we measured the effectiveness of protected areas against rangeland degradation in 52 protected areas, considering the impacts of shocks. Our results showed that protected areas were overall effective in lowering rangeland degradation, despite country-specific variations. To validate our rangeland degradation predictions, we tracked the movement of five cattle in the pastures of Borjomi National Park, Georgia. In WP2, we measured poaching pressure in Golestan National Park, Iran using ranger logbook data. We showed that despite low detection probability, poaching is widespread targeting wild ungulates, leading to recommendations on improving the quantity and quality of ranger patrols. We also conducted a metapopulation analysis of the endangered Persian leopard, showing the higher importance of the threat from poaching than prey depletion in the Caucasus. Within WP3, we developed a novel, outcome-oriented framework for assessing the effectiveness of protected areas. Rooted in the social-ecological systems perspective, we called for holistic assessments of the protected areas along ecological, social and interaction outcome dimensions. Finally, in WP4, we focused on conservation beyond protected areas and identified corridors for Persian leopards in northern Iran, showing that by ignoring the human-wildlife conflict, the permeability of the landscape could be overestimated. Based on this example, we developed the concept of ‘anthropogenic resistance’ as a means to incorporate the impacts of human behaviours on species movement in conservation planning. Overall, in the PArCS project, we advanced tools and frameworks for assessing area-based conservation measures and demonstrated them in a number of case studies in the Caucasus region. Our results are applicable to a range of ecosystems and geographies, and have high relevance to the science-policy interface.

Publications

 
 

Additional Information

© 2025 DFG Disclaimer / Copyright / Privacy Policy

Textvergrößerung und Kontrastanpassung