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a b s t r a c tChina has $8000 protected areas, with different categories and levels of designation. These include many reserves of global conservation significance. There are more numerous but smaller parks in the more heavily populated provinces of the south and east, and fewer larger parks in the northwest. We sampled 1200 representative parks nationwide, using questionnaires delivered to park managers in person, with 160 categorical or ordinal parameters. Response rate was 92.5%. We carried out three analyses: first, for each parameter independently; second, for five multi-parameter aggregate indices; and third, for two top-level indices of environmental and visitor management respectively. We tested for patterns by category, level, size, age, region, visitor volume and revenue, with >600 individual tests, and >70 patterns significant at p < 0.0001. We found that both environmental and visitor management practices are more intensive for large, old, rich, heavily visited parks. A number of parks receive >100,000 visitors per day, and have adopted large-scale infrastructure approaches which successfully minimise impacts and maintain conservation values, as confirmed by on-site audits. Key conservation concerns include off-park air and water pollution sources in some regions, and sale of items including threatened species, in 7% of parks.

Conservation triage focuses on prioritizing species, populations or habitats based on urgency, biodiversity benefits, recovery potential as well as cost. Population Viability Analysis (PVA) is frequently used in population focused conservation prioritizations. The critical nature of many of these management decisions requires that PVA models are repeatable and reproducible to reliably rank species and/or populations quantitatively. This paper assessed the repeatability and reproducibility of a subset of previously published PVA models. We attempted to rerun baseline models from 90 publicly available PVA studies published between 2000 and 2012 using the two most common PVA modeling software programs, VORTEX and RAMAS-GIS. Forty percent (n = 36) failed, 50% (45) were both repeatable and reproducible, and 10% (9) had missing baseline models. Repeatability was not linked to taxa, IUCN category, PVA program version used, year published or the quality of publication outlet, suggesting that the problem is systemic within the discipline. Complete and systematic presentation of PVA parameters and results are needed to ensure that the scientific input into conservation planning is both robust and reliable, thereby increasing the chances of making decisions that are both beneficial and defensible. The implications for conservation triage may be far reaching if population viability models cannot be reproduced with confidence, thus undermining their intended value.

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