Community forests and protected areas have each been proposed as strategies to stop deforestation. These management strategies should be regarded as hypotheses to be evaluated for their effectiveness in particular places. We evaluated the community-forestry hypothesis and the protected-area hypothesis in community forests with commercial timber production and strict protected areas in the Maya Forest of Guatemala and Mexico. From land-use and land cover change (LUCC) maps derived from satellite images, we compared deforestation in 19 community forests and 11 protected areas in both countries in varying periods from 1988 to 2005. Deforestation rates were higher in protected areas than in community forests, but the differences were not significant. An analysis of human presence showed similar deforestation rates in inhabited protected areas and recently inhabited community forests, but the differences were not significant. There was also no significant difference in deforestation between uninhabited protected areas, uninhabited community forests, and long-inhabited community forests. A logistic regression analysis indicated that the factors correlated with deforestation varied by country. Distance to human settlements, seasonal wetlands, and degree and length of human residence were significant in Guatemala, and distance to previous deforestation and tropical semideciduous forest were significant in Mexico. Varying contexts and especially colonization histories are highlighted as likely factors that influence different outcomes. Poorly governed protected areas perform no better as a conservation strategy than poorly governed community forests with recent colonists in active colonization fronts. Long-inhabited extractive communities perform as well as uninhabited strict protected areas under low colonization pressure. A review of costs and benefits suggests that community forests may generate more local income with lower costs. Small sample sizes may have limited the statistical power of our comparisons, but descriptive statistics on deforestation rates, logistic regression analyses, LUCC maps, data available on local economic impacts, and long-term ethnographic and action-research constitute a web of evidence supporting our conclusions. Long-inhabited community forest management for timber can be as effective as uninhabited parks at delivering long-term forest protection under certain circumstances and more effective at delivering local benefits.
Landscape level variability of structure and tree species diversity was analyzed in a tropical deciduous forest at Chamela, Mexico. Trees with DBH ≥5 cm were sampled in 21 0.24 ha plots (5.04 ha in total) distributed among six different morpho-pedological land units. Average density was 1,385 individuals ha-1, basal area 15.9 m2 ha-1, and canopy height 6.8 m. Trunks with DBH ≤14 cm accounted for 90% of the entire set. A total of 148 species, 102 genera, and 43 families were recorded. Seventy percent of all species were poorly represented (< 10 individuals ha-1). A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) based on structure and diversity variables showed that plots from the same morpho-pedological land unit were not always located close to each other along the two first axes, but a further PCA based on dominant species clearly divided two groups of plots. Although canopy structure and tree species diversity varied continuously across the landscape, -diversity (evaluated through species similarity between plot pairs) and the identities of dominant species exhibited the clearest distinction. The dichotomy between granitic vs. non-granitic lithology was the condition most clearly related with a lower similarity in species composition and the strongest contrast in the dominant species group.
We examined the presence of the jaguar Panthera onca, and human–jaguar interactions, in a community-dominated montane tropical forest landscape with formally recognized indigenous/community conserved areas in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca state, Mexico. We used camera traps to detect jaguars, and social data were collected through informal interviews and 46 semi-structured and 106 structured interviews with community leaders and members. During June 2007–June 2008 camera traps registered two jaguars in the four study communities after 1,164 trap nights, with a photo-capture rate of 7.8 jaguar captures per 1,000 trap nights. Interviews documented 86 jaguar sightings since 1990. Despite some history of livestock predation, 68% of the interviewed farmers indicated jaguar presence was positive, 20% that jaguar presence was both positive and negative, and 12% thought jaguars were a negative presence. All of the respondents with negative attitudes had either owned cattle previously or lost cattle to predation. Despite ongoing risks to jaguars the emergence of community-conserved areas, local conservation initiatives, and a community-imposed hunting ban are supported by 93% of community members. An emerging culture of conservation in the study communities suggests there is an opportunity for jaguar conservation on community lands that should be explored elsewhere in jaguar range countries.
Some important elements of common property theory include a focus on individual communities or user groups, local level adjudication of conflicts, local autonomy in rule making, physical harvests, and low levels of articulation with markets. We present a case study of multi-scale collective action around indigenous/community conserved areas (ICCAs) in Oaxaca, Mexico that suggests a modification of these components of common property theory. A multi-community ICCA in Oaxaca demonstrates the importance of inter-community collective action as key link in multi-scale governance, that conflicts are often negotiated in multiple arenas, that rules emerge at multiple scales, and that management for conservation and environmental services implies no physical harvests. Realizing economic gains from ICCAs for strict conservation may require something very different than traditional natural resource management. It requires intense engagement with extensive networks of government and civil society actors and new forms of community and intercommunity collection action, or multi-scale governance. Multi-scale governance is built on trust and social capital at multiple scales and also constitutes collective action at multiple scales. However, processes of multi-scale governance are also 152David Bray et al.necessarily "turbulent" with actors frequently having conflicting values and goals to be negotiated. We present an analytic history of the process of emergence of community and inter-community collective action around strict conservation and examples of internal and external turbulence. We argue that this case study and other literature requires an extensions of the constitutive elements of common property theory.
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