Forest resource management has undergone profound changes in the last decades, including a tendency to apply participatory approach that seeks involve local communities. However, success of tends remain dependent on historical and societal context question. To understand how participation forest communities been changing as result enforcement or non-enforcement practices, we carried out study C...

The paper uses the experiences of selected rural communities in the Offinso Forest District of Ghana to demonstrate how the Modified Taungya System (MTS) as a decentralized forest governance strategy enhances the resilience of local people to escape poverty through enhanced livelihoods and simultaneously restores degraded forest resources. The underpinning objective of the study was to ascertai...

Birds in U.S. national parks find strong protection from many longstanding and pervasive threats, but remain highly exposed to effects of ongoing climate change. To understand how climate change is likely to alter bird communities in parks, we used species distribution models relating North American Breeding Bird Survey (summer) and Audubon Christmas Bird Count (winter) observations to climate ...

Ecological change is often hard to document because of a lack of reliable baseline data. Several recent then-versus-now surveys of temperate forest and grassland communities demonstrate losses of local plant species, but most are based on data from a single site. We resurveyed understory communities in 62 upland forest stands in northern Wisconsin (U.S.A.) for which quantitative baseline data e...

Socioeconomic and ecological analyses of eleven coral reef conservation efforts make clear that marine protected areas are not the answer, and that in fact support of local communities is far more important than some government mandated 'fishing closure'. Apparently there are marine 'paper parks' just as there are terrestrial 'paper parks'.

Article history: Received 17 July 2015 Received in revised form 17 March 2016 Accepted 24 March 2016 Available online xxxx Sacred forest groves are often located in some of the world's hottest hotspots of biodiversity, and consequently have high potential conservation value. Recent efforts to quantify their value have focused nearly exclusively on a single component of diversity, species divers...

Community-based physical activity (PA) programs in Latin America have been recognized because of the use of available environmental resources to offer PA classes. Yet, the evaluation of programs focused on PA classes involving dancing in public spaces is limited. The aim of this study was to assess the physical activity levels, park use, and the contextual characteristics of public parks with a...

We evaluated the impact of outdoor exercise equipment (FZ, Fitness Zones) in 12 parks serving diverse populations. We used the System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC) to assess use and estimate energy expenditure prior to and twice after FZ installation. Park use increased more in FZ parks than in 10 control parks that did not get equipment, but the difference was not s...

Collective action by local communities has increasingly been recognised as crucial for effective management of natural resources, particularly the management of forests in the rural settings. This recognition is principally based on the universal and often unquestioned assumption that the involvement of local communities in the management of forests can improve the forest condition and utilisat...