It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
A special section of WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment & Rehabilitation highlights the varying physical elements, requirements, and applications of Physical Employment Standards frameworks for a range of physically demanding occupations
IOS PRESS
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THE PHYSICAL EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS (PES) SEEK TO MOVE BEYOND THE PUSH-UPS TO INCLUDE OCCUPATIONAL-RELEVANT PHYSICAL ASSESSMENTS
Amsterdam, July 25, 2024 – A standard methodology for the development of Physical Employment Standards (PES) in tactical settings like the military and first responder agencies is being used internationally. PES are now being developed for other physically active occupations to support personnel undertaking physically demanding tasks. A special section of an issue of WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment & Rehabilitation, published by IOS Press (now part of Sage), highlights the varying physical elements and requirements for different occupations and the subsequent applications of PES frameworks.
Guest editor Professor Rob Orr, from the Tactical Research Unit and Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine at Bond University in Australia, explains, "Organizations face challenges in the development and implementation of PES. How can they bridge the gap between science and organizational practices? How can they sustain recruitment amid declining fitness levels? And how can they measure success? Another challenge lies in effectively balancing the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial demands in the workplace to ensure that individuals and teams can fulfill all aspects of their job roles, not just the physical requirements."
The physical elements and requirements for different occupations, and even within occupational subgroups, can vary and as such, job tasks analysis and subsequent PES need to be developed specifically for a given occupation. PES are being used to assess physical capacity in order to ensure that individuals can perform necessary physical tasks safely and effectively. PES can help:
Establish a baseline level of physical fitness or capabilities required for specific roles
Mitigate the risk of employing physically unfit individuals in physically demanding jobs, which can be costly, both in human and economic terms
Ensure that an employee is physically capable of completing the tasks of a job to at least the minimum acceptable standard, and provide employees and potential employees with a target to reach and sustain
Decrease the potential for injury, thereby providing a “duty of care” to all employees
Base retirement or transition to a less physical role on capacity rather than an arbitrary age
Provide feedback on rehabilitation and return to work
Encourage self-training, self-evaluation and a healthier lifestyle
Increase confidence of individuals and teams
Dr. Gemma Milligan, the Chair of the PES committee, notes, "Going forward, we envision the expansion of the PES methodology to aid in physical conditioning and return-to-work planning for personnel. Another benefit of the application of PES is that it can support the recording of data to enable the subsequent review and success of PES. Finally, we see the exploration of female/age-inclusive versus female/age-specific solutions as a promising future avenue."
Editor-in-Chief of WORK Karen Jacobs, OT, EdD, OTR, CPE, FAOTA, Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Boston University, adds, “I am delighted to publish a special issue that spotlights the diverse physical elements, requirements, and applications of PES frameworks across a spectrum of physically demanding occupations. This issue represents a significant milestone in our understanding of occupational fitness, and it's incredibly exciting to be at the forefront of such pivotal discussions.”
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR FLORIS VAN BREUGEL AND POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER DAVID STUPSKI HAVE UNCOVERED AN AUTOMATIC BEHAVIOR IN FLIES, SINK AND CIRCLE, WHICH INVOLVES LOWERING ALTITUDE AND REPETITIVE, RAPID TURNS IN A CONSISTENT DIRECTION. IT SHOWS THAT FLYING FLIES ARE ABLE TO ASSESS THE CONDITIONS OF THE WIND BEFORE DEPLOYING A STRATEGY TO FIND A ODOR (WHICH LEADS TO A FOOD SOURCE) USING A STRATEGY THAT WILL WORK WELL UNDER THOSE CONDITIONS. FLIES AREN'T JUST REACTING TO AN ODOR WITH A PREPROGRAMMED RESPONSE: THEY ARE RESPONDING IN CONTEXT-APPROPRIATE MANNER. THIS KNOWLEDGE POTENTIALLY COULD BE APPLIED TO TRAIN MORE SOPHISTICATED ALGORITHMS FOR SCENT-DETECTING DRONES TO FIND CHEMICAL LEAKS.
RENO, Nevada — Why do flies buzz around in circles when the air is still? And why does it matter?
In a paper published online July 26, 2024 by the scientific journal Current Biology, University of Nevada, Reno Assistant Professor Floris van Breugel and Postdoctoral Researcher S. David Stupski respond to this up-until-now unanswered question. And that answer could hold a key to public safety — specifically, how to better train robotic systems to track chemical leaks.
“We don’t currently have robotic systems to track odor or chemical plumes,” van Breugel said. “We don’t know how to efficiently find the source of a wind-borne chemical. But insects are remarkably good at tracking chemical plumes, and if we really understood how they do it, maybe we could train inexpensive drones to use a similar process to find the source of chemicals and chemical leaks.”
A fundamental challenge in understanding how insects track chemical plumes — basically, how does the fly find the banana in your kitchen? — is that wind and odors can’t be independently manipulated.
To address this challenge, van Breugel and Stupski used a new approach that makes it possible to remotely control neurons—specifically the “smell” neurons— on the antennae of flying fruit flies by genetically introducing light-sensitive proteins, an approach called optogenetics. These experiments, part of a $450,000 project funded through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, made it possible to give flies identical virtual smell experiences in different wind conditions.
What van Breugel and Stupski wanted to know: how do flies find an odor when there’s no wind to carry it? This is, after all, likely the wind experience of a fly looking for a banana in your kitchen. The answer is in the Current Biology article, “Wind Gates Olfaction Driven Search States in Free Flight.” The print version will appear in the Sept. 9 issue.
Flies use environmental cues to detect and respond to air currents and wind direction to find their food sources, according to van Breugel. In the presence of wind, those cues trigger an automatic “cast and surge” behavior, in which the fly surges into the wind after encountering a chemical plume (indicating food) and then casts — moves side to side — when it loses the scent. Cast-and-surge behavior long has been understood by scientists but, according to van Breugel, it was fundamentally unknown how insects searched for a scent in still air.
Through their work, van Breugel and Stupski uncovered another automatic behavior, sink and circle, which involves lowering altitude and repetitive, rapid turns in a consistent direction. Flies perform this innate movement consistently and repetitively, even more so than cast-and-surge behavior.
According to van Breugel, the most exciting aspect of this discovery is that it shows flying flies are clearly able to assess the conditions of the wind—its presence, and direction—before deploying a strategy that works well under these conditions. The fact that they can do this is actually quite surprising—can you tell if there is a gentle breeze if you stick your head out of the window of a moving car? Flies aren’t just reacting to an odor with the same preprogrammed response every time like a simple robot, they are responding in context-appropriate manner. This knowledge potentially could be applied to train more sophisticated algorithms for scent-detecting drones to find the source of chemical leaks.
So, the next time you try to swat a fly in your home, consider the fact that flies might actually be a little more aware of some of their natural surroundings than you are. And maybe just open a window to let it out.
New understanding of fly behavior has potential application in robotics, public safety
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
26-Jul-2024
Climate is most important factor in where mammals choose to live, study finds
WE ARE MAMMALS
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY
While human activity has had a massive effect on the natural world, a new study from North Carolina State University finds that climate is still the most influential factor in determining where mammals can thrive. The work sheds light on how climate change will affect wildlife populations.
Roland Kays, lead author of a paper on the work, said the study’s goal was to compare the importance of climate versus human factors in where mammals chose to live. To do so, researchers collected data on 25 mammal species from 6,645 locations across the United States. The study is one of the largest camera trap data analyses ever done. The data came largely from Snapshot USA, which is a national mammal camera trap survey conducted with collaborators across the country.
“One of our ideas was that humans may have changed our landscape so much that we have become the primary determinants of which animals live where,” said Kays, who is a research professor at NC State and scientist at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. “What we found was that in fact humans were not the most important. Climate, including temperature and the amount of rainfall, was the most important factor across most of the species we observed.”
However, human activity in the form of large population centers and agriculture was still a significant factor in where mammals chose to live. Some species struggled in the presence of cities and farms, Kays said, but many thrived.
“There are a lot of species that do well when humans are around. The Eastern gray squirrel for instance is the most common squirrel in Raleigh, and it does great around people. But there’s another species called the Eastern fox squirrel, and that one does well around agriculture but not as well around people,” he said. “We can see those differences in many other species. The snowshoe hare does poorly around both people and around agriculture. This study allows us to see the species that are sensitive to our impacts, and which ones benefit.”
This information helped researchers create maps which predict how common various mammals are across the contiguous U.S., which allowed them to separate the country into regions based on what kinds of mammals were common in each. These regions, known as ecoregions, are commonly used when studying plants but have never before been applied to mammal populations.
“When you look at something like the Eastern deciduous forest, that is an ecoregion classified by how common a type of tree is,” Kays said. “We’re now able to do that with mammal species and then compare that to the plant ecoregions. What we found was a striking similarity between the two. For instance, in the east where there is more rainfall, you have more plants growing. That lined up with a greater abundance of mammals that we saw in that region as well, because more plants mean more food for those animals to eat.”
The open access paper, “Climate, food and humans predict communities of mammals in the United States” is available to read in Diversity and Distributions. In identifying climate as the number one influence on mammal habitat choice, the study presents a new tool for predicting the impacts of climate change on mammal populations. Rising global temperatures will cause shifts in where animals are able to live, as well as influence precipitation levels and plant growth. Understanding these factors will be important to making sustainable decisions about mammal population management in the future.
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Note to Editors: The study abstract follows.
“Climate, food and humans predict communities of mammals in the United States”
Authors: Kays, R., Snider, M. H., Hess, G., Cove, M. V., Jensen, A., Shamon, H., McShea, W. J., Rooney, B., Allen, M. L., Pekins, C. E., Wilmers, C. C., Pendergast, M. E., Green, A. M., Suraci, J., Leslie, M. S., Nasrallah, S., Farkas, D., Jordan, M., Grigione, M., Parsons, A.
Published: June 27, 2024
DOI: 10.1111/ddi.13900
Abstract:
The assembly of species into communities and ecoregions is the result of interacting factors that affect plant and animal distribution and abundance at biogeographic scales. Here, we empirically derive ecoregions for mammals to test whether human disturbance has become more important than climate and habitat resources in structuring communities.
We analyzed data from 25 mammal species recorded by camera traps at 6645 locations across the conterminous United States in a joint modelling framework to estimate relative abundance of each species. We then used a clustering analysis to describe 8 broad and 16 narrow mammal communities.
Climate was the most important predictor of mammal abundance overall, while human population density and agriculture were less important, with mixed effects across species. Seed production by forests also predicted mammal abundance, especially hard-mast tree species. The mammal community maps are similar to those of plants, with an east–west split driven by different dominant species of deer and squirrels. Communities vary along gradients of temperature in the east and precipitation in the west. Most fine-scale mammal community boundaries aligned with established plant ecoregions and were distinguished by the presence of regional specialists or shifts in relative abundance of widespread species. Maps of potential ecosystem services provided by these communities suggest high herbivory in the Rocky Mountains and eastern forests, high invertebrate predation in the subtropical south and greater predation pressure on large vertebrates in the west.
Our results highlight the importance of climate to modern mammals and suggest that climate change will have strong impacts on these communities. Our new empirical approach to recognizing ecoregions has potential to be applied to expanded communities of mammals or other taxa.
Climate, food and humans predict communities of mammals in the United States
Montana State scientists publish evidence for new groups of methane-producing organisms
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY
A team of scientists from Montana State University has provided the first experimental evidence that two new groups of microbes thriving in thermal features in Yellowstone National Park produce methane – a discovery that could one day contribute to the development of methods to mitigate climate change and provide insight into potential life elsewhere in our solar system.
The journal Nature this week published the findings from the laboratory of Roland Hatzenpichler, associate professor in MSU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Letters and Science and associate director of the university’s Thermal Biology Institute. The two scientific papers describe the MSU researchers’ verification of the first known examples of single-celled organisms that produce methane to exist outside the lineage Euryarchaeota, which is part of the larger branch of the tree of life called Archaea.
Alison Harmon, MSU’s vice president for research and economic development, said she is excited that the findings with such far-reaching potential impact are receiving the attention they deserve.
“It’s a significant achievement for Montana State University to have not one but two papers published in one of the world’s leading scientific journals,” Harmon said.
The methane-producing single-celled organisms are called methanogens. While humans and other animals eat food, breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide to survive, methanogens eat small molecules like carbon dioxide or methanol and exhale methane. Most methanogens are strict anaerobes, meaning they cannot survive in the presence of oxygen.
Scientists have known since the 1930s that many anaerobic organisms within the archaea are methanogens, and for decades they believed that all methanogens were in a single phylum: the Euryarchaeota.
But about 10 years ago, microbes with genes for methanogenesis began to be discovered in other phyla, including one called Thermoproteota. That phylum contains two microbial groups called Methanomethylicia and Methanodesulfokora.
“All we knew about these organisms was their DNA,” Hatzenpichler said. “No one had ever seen a cell of these supposed methanogens; no one knew if they actually used their methanogenesis genes or if they were growing by some other means.
Hatzenpichler and his researchers set out to test whether the organisms were living by methanogenesis, basing their work on the results of a study published last year by one of his former graduate students at MSU, Mackenzie Lynes.
Samples were harvested from sediments in Yellowstone National Park hot springs ranging in temperature from 141 to 161 degrees Fahrenheit (61–72 degrees Celsius).
Through what Hatzenpichler described as “painstaking work,” MSU doctoral student Anthony Kohtz and postdoctoral researcher Viola Krukenberg grew the Yellowstone microbes in the lab. The microbes not only survived but thrived – and they produced methane. The team then worked to characterize the biology of the new microbes, involving staff scientist Zackary Jay and others at ETH Zurich.
At the same time, a research group led by Lei Cheng from China’s Biogas Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and Diana Sousa from Wageningen University in the Netherlands successfully grew another one of these novel methanogens, a project they had worked on for six years.
“Until our studies, no experimental work had been done on these microbes, aside from DNA sequencing,” said Hatzenpichler.
He said Cheng and Sousa offered to submit the studies together for publication, and Cheng’s paperreporting the isolation of another member of Methanomethylicia was published jointly with the two Hatzenpichler lab studies.
While one of the newly identified group of methanogens, Methanodesulfokora, seems to be confined to hot springs and deep-sea hydrothermal vents, Methanomethylicia, are widespread, Hatzenpichler said. They are sometimes found in wastewater treatment plants and the digestive tracts of ruminant animals, and in marine sediments, soils and wetlands. Hatzenpichler said that’s significant because methanogens produce 70% of the world’s methane, a gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“Methane levels are increasing at a much higher rate than carbon dioxide, and humans are pumping methane at a higher rate into the atmosphere than ever before,” he said.
Hatzenpichler said that while the experiments answered an important question, they generated many more that will fuel future work. For example, scientists don’t yet know whether Methanomethylicia that live in non-extreme environments rely on methanogenesis to grow or if they grow by other means.
“My best bet is that they sometimes grow by making methane, and sometimes they do something else entirely, but we don’t know when they grow, or how, or why.” Hatzenpichler said. “We now need to find out when they contribute to methane cycling and when not.”
Whereas most methanogens within the Euryarchaeota use CO2 or acetate to make methane, Methanomethylicia and Methanodesulfokora use compounds such as methanol. This property could help scientists learn how to alter conditions in the different environments where they are found so that less methane is emitted into the atmosphere, Hatzenpichler said.
His lab will begin collaborating this fall with MSU’s Bozeman Agricultural Research and Teaching Farm, which will provide samples for further research into the methanogens found in cattle. In addition, new graduate students joining Hatzenpichler’s lab in the fall will determine whether the newly found archaea produce methane in wastewater, soils and wetlands.
Methanomethylicia also have a fascinating cell architecture, Hatzenpichler said. He collaborated with two scientists at ETH Zurich, Martin Pilhofer and graduate student Nickolai Petrosian, to show that the microbe forms previously unknown cell-to-cell tubes that connect two or three cells with each other.
“We have no idea why they are forming them. Structures like these have rarely been seen in microbes. Maybe they exchange DNA; maybe they exchange chemicals. We don't know yet,” said Hatzenpichler.
The newly published research was funded by NASA’s exobiology program. NASA is interested in methanogens because they may give insights into life on Earth more than 3 billion years ago and the potential for life on other planets and moons where methane has been detected, he said.
Cultivation and visualization of a methanogen of the phylum Thermoproteota
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
24-Jul-2024
Svalbard: Non-native species are threatening vulnerable plant life
Authorities need to act more aggressively to prevent the accidental introduction of non-native plant species to arctic ecosystems
NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
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THE ALKHORNET BIRD CLIFFS. NATURALLY OCCURRING NUTRIENT-RICH SOIL CAN BE FOUND DIRECTLY BELOW THE BIRD CLIFFS, AND RESEARCHERS ARE MONITORING WHETHER NON-NATIVE PLANTS HAVE SPREAD THERE.
New, non-native plant species are constantly being discovered in Svalbard, and researchers are working to ascertain what threat these species pose to the native plants.
So far, the Arctic has managed to avoid one of the most serious threats to biodiversity on Earth. This is also true for Svalbard, but things could change very quickly, and researchers want to find out how to counteract this threat.
“Increased human activity heightens the risk of new plant species being introduced. And climate change increases the risk of invasive species establishing themselves,” says Kristine Bakke Westergaard.
She is an associate professor at the Department of Natural History, which is part of the University Museum at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
No checks on arrival to Svalbard
New species can outcompete the plants already present in Svalbard. Non-native species are spreading across large parts of the globe and can disrupt the established balance between species in a certain area.
Human activity is to blame for the spread of new, non-native species to new areas. Svalbard is particularly at risk because of its popularity as a destination for cruises and other tourist activities. However, upon arrival in Svalbard, visitors are not checked to see if they are carrying any biological stowaways. For example, no one checks whether air passengers or cruise tourists have contaminated shoes, or whether imported soil contains seeds.
On the other side of the globe in Antarctica, there are much stricter requirements and checks to prevent these types of introductions. The lack of biosecurity routines in Svalbard worries researchers.
The warmer climate supports new species
Currently, only the hardiest species are able to survive in Svalbard. However, the archipelago has become much warmer in recent years, enabling more species to establish themselves.
“We have developed models to map 27 non-native plant species and their potential to find new habitats and suitable climates in Svalbard,” says James Speed, a professor at NTNU’s Department of Natural History.
Currently, all of these species are only found in the inhabited parts of Svalbard. The researchers mapped out which areas of Svalbard have the optimal combination of temperature and precipitation for these species, both now and in the future.
“In relation to the current climate, we have identified three species that have particularly high potential to find new habitats in Svalbard. If they manage to spread to these areas, they could pose a threat,” says James Speed.
The three species that could spread the most are:
Tufted hairgrass (Deschampsia cespitosa)
A species of meadow buttercup (Ranunculus subborealis subsp. villosus)
Alpine saw-wort (Saussurea alpina)
All areas of Svalbard could be at risk
The models show that almost all areas of Svalbard will develop a suitable climate for many of these non-native plants. The uninhabited islands of Edgeøya and Barentsøya to the east, as well as the island of Bjørnøya with its manned meteorological station to the south, are most at risk. However, things can change quickly.
“In the future, as the climate warms, most of the non-native species we investigated have the potential to spread throughout Svalbard. Many of the species that do not belong in Svalbard may be able to spread over a much wider area than they are currently able to do,” says Westergaard.
Factors other than temperature and climate also play a role in preventing new species from spreading. Among other things, limited access to nutrient-rich soil has kept their prevalence to a minimum. This, however, also seems to be changing.
Urgent intervention required
The researchers are of the opinion that the environmental authorities must act quickly if they are to limit and prevent these invasive non-native species from spreading beyond the areas where they already exist.
In addition, the researchers say society must prioritize preventing new non-native species from spreading to Svalbard before the threat to the Arctic ecosystem becomes too great and unmanageable.
This study is part of the Biodiversa project ASICS (ASsessing and mitigating the effects of climate change and biological Invasions on the spatial redistribution of biodiversity in Cold environmentS). The Norwegian team is funded by the Research Council of Norway. Other contributors include the South African National Research Foundation and the Millennium BASE Institute.
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — There’s an experiment going on in conservation in Africa. With biodiversity imperiled, and nations facing financial and political crises, some governments are transferring the management of protected areas to private, non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
This strategy seems to be paying off. NGOs can better manage corruption, making them attractive to large donors like the World Bank and European Union. Their capital can fund personnel, research and technology to more effectively manage protected areas and species. While these management changes appear to be working anecdotally, few if any studies have rigorously evaluated the results.
A team of researchers from institutions including UC Santa Barbara wanted to know how this trend affects wildlife and people. Surveying parks throughout the continent under private and government administration, they discovered that NGO management improves measures for wildlife, including by reducing elephant poaching, and increases tourism. Overall, management appears to improve under NGO control. However, they also discovered that in landscapes experiencing armed conflict, outsourcing park management also raises the risk of armed groups targeting civilians in and around protected areas. The team published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Protected areas, and conservation generally, do not exist in isolation from humans,” said lead author Sean Denny, a doctoral candidate at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. “In fact, conservation is, at its heart, about humans — it's about finding ways for humans and other species to coexist. This includes preventing extinctions caused by human activities like hunting and deforestation.” As a result, conservation often impacts people’s lives and livelihoods, outcomes that need to be taken into consideration.
African Parks as a case study
Denny and his two co-authors focused on the organization African Parks (AP) as a case study. AP is the largest NGO partnering with governments in Africa to administer protected areas. The South Africa-based non-profit is given complete authority to manage, staff and fund the parks.
AP’s primary mission is to conserve and restore wildlife populations in Africa, but they also seek to make protected areas benefit people through tourism and development projects, like building schools and hospitals for local communities. Due to their focus on restoration, they sometimes work in areas experiencing armed conflict, where wildlife is especially prone to being over-hunted and faces extreme pressure from hunting. But protecting wildlife in these landscapes can require high levels of security and enforcement, which could have unintended impacts on people and result in tradeoffs between wildlife conservation and human well-being. The authors were interested in exploring these trade-offs; and, because AP operates in conflict zones, they suspected AP’s activities might capture them.
But running a study at such a large scale presented a challenge: The authors had to compare outcomes in areas under AP’s management to what would have happened if AP were never given the reins. To do so, they ran a quasi-experiment in which researchers make use of real-world events to create treatment and control groups. In real experiments, researchers randomly assign subjects to one of these groups to ensure that their findings are due to the treatment and not simply down to prior differences. But Denny and company didn’t have this luxury.
Fortunately, AP published a map of protected areas in Africa that they believe are key to safeguarding the continent’s biodiversity and ultimately meet their criteria for future management. These “anchor sites” share key characteristics like a large size, strong legal status, limited agricultural activity and the potential to sustain large wildlife populations. Twenty-two of these anchor sites are already managed by AP, but the rest are managed by governments and in very few cases, by other NGOs.
The research team formed a treatment group from anchor sites that AP already administers. Their control group consisted of anchor sites not managed by AP or another NGO. “African Parks essentially created our control group for us,” Denny said.
Deciding what to look for
The team used a variety of metrics to measure the effects of private management on wildlife and people. They needed metrics for which data was available at a continental scale. For wildlife, they focused on elephant poaching and bird abundances. On the human side, they looked at tourism, wealth and armed conflict. To measure these outcomes, they drew on diverse datasets and platforms, including a dataset called MIKE that monitors elephant poaching; the citizen science platforms eBird and iNaturalist; Atlas AI, which measures wealth; and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which measures incidences of armed conflict.
The researchers also used the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) to look under the hood at how AP affects management practices themselves. Developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, this standardized questionnaire quantifies how well protected areas are managed. It reports data on planning, financial resources, law enforcement and stakeholder involvement. The METT can shed light on the mechanisms behind the outcomes observed in the other datasets.
Following the results
Denny and his co-authors were impressed by the results private management had for wildlife. It reduced elephant poaching by 35%, and increased bird abundance by 37%. “African Parks really appears to work for wildlife,” Denny said. “The fact that they can reduce elephant poaching in protected areas that are threatened by armed groups is really quite extraordinary.” NGO administration also increased tourism, but the effects on wealth were less conclusive.
The authors also found some important drawbacks, though. In areas already experiencing armed conflict, these changes can increase the probability that armed groups target civilians living in areas bordering those overseen by AP. They think this could be a result of armed groups redirecting their activity toward exploiting civilians when AP prevents them from operating in or extracting resources from protected areas.
“While the outcomes for wildlife were even stronger than we expected,” Denny said, “we were concerned by the conflict results, especially when combined with the potential decrease in decision-making inclusiveness that comes with private management.”
Looking under the hood
The Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool provided insights on the mechanisms behind these outcomes. African Parks is a juggernaut compared to many cash-strapped national governments. Results from the METT revealed that AP increased capacity and resources (in terms of budget and staffing), as well as design and planning. “In some management criteria, they really do seem to manage more effectively,” Denny said.
The authors also found that monitoring and enforcement within parks rose under AP. The organization uses sophisticated equipment — like aircraft, drones and remote sensing — to monitor illegal activity in their parks and enforce wildlife protection. This likely contributes to the benefits of AP management for wildlife, as well as the rise in likelihood that armed groups target civilians.
Notably, only one of the four categories measured by the METT appeared to fall under private park management: decision-making inclusiveness. The slight drop in this category didn’t surprise Denny and his colleagues since AP maintains tight control over its work. It does, however, point to an opportunity for improvement.
Managing more effectively
African wildlife is threatened, and NGOs are offering a potential solution. But it’s crucial to investigate the impacts of private conservation management to understand its strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. Outsourcing conservation appears to provide a path for protecting wildlife, but the accompanying increased enforcement can lead to problems for people.
One way to ensure that protected areas work for people, according to the researchers, is to include local communities in stewardship. In Denny’s opinion, ethical conservation requires compensating local communities for the costs they bear and including them in policy decisions.
“If, in conflict regions, civilians are bearing some unexpected costs of private protected area management, then it is especially important that they are involved in decision making,” he said. Another avenue is to make sure that conservationists, park managers and governments monitor the impacts of private management, not just on wildlife but also on people, and adapt when necessary.
Additionally, many national parks in Africa were created by colonial administrations, so they have deep colonial histories and legacies. Denny and his co-authors are eager to partner with African researchers to explore how this history affects local people’s perceptions of parks, and their preferences for how they’re managed and by whom. “By elevating local voices, perspectives and experiences, we can develop more meaningful research and support management practices that benefit both wildlife and local communities,” he said.
An elephant ambles through the savannas of Tarangire National Park, one of AP’s anchor sites currently managed Tanzanian government.
