Planning protected area networks for surfing resources

A set of indicators was applied to 173 surf breaks in Mexico to help identify priority subregions for surf conservation. The surf conservation index developed consists of pressure, state, and response subindexes, with four scores ranging from very low priority to high priority. Priority surf breaks were defined as the surf breaks where high biodiversity overlaps with high-quality waves, reliance on tourism for income/ economic activity, and low environmental pressure. The highest priority surf breaks for conservation were found in the Gulf of California, followed by the Central-South Pacific coast. Pressure values show that a majority of surf breaks in Mexico are still in an area with low pressure or low population. Most surf breaks have relatively little coastal development and harbors or big cities. The biodiversity subindex, which considers both marine and adjacent terrestrial areas, shows that the highest biodiversity values are found in only 11% of all surf breaks, although 42% of surf breaks have at least half of their marine or terrestrial buffer in biodiversity conservation priority zones, showing a non-negligible presence in critical ecosystems. Overall, the surf break subindex values were generally high and stable, while a majority of surf breaks stand out for having a relatively important proportion of workers employed in tourism. Response analysis shows that only 3.5% of the total listed surf breaks in Mexico are already under a legal protected area framework. A strategy is needed to ensure that surfing, as a recreational activity, and surf breaks, as a natural resource, are considered in present and future management plans. Mexico finds itself at a crossroads as it aims to strengthen surf conservation efforts and preserve these unique coastal socio-ecosystems while also contributing to the sustainable development of local coastal communities.

Legal protection has become essential for managing the world's surf breaks much as it has for other marine and coastal protected areas. This paper presents the first systematic review of global developments in this field. We used a keyword literature search and thematic content analysis to characterise legal protection mechanisms that are designed for surf breaks or have been specifically applied to address surf break protection needs. They are currently found in six countries, protect over 500 surf breaks, and include examples of single-location mechanisms (e.g., Malibu in USA, Punta de Lobos in Chile) and national-level protection mechanisms addressing multiple surf breaks (e.g., New Zealand and Peru). Across all examples we identified 63 discrete themes that can be drawn upon to design and communicate protection measures and present these in a typology that highlights contributing ideas. Thematic analysis identified a major distinction between process and outcome-based requirements. More comprehensive protections can be recognised by attention to a wider range of threat classes and in the detail provided for decision support, with the two ideally working together to identify the minimum assessment requirements for development proposals. Variation in levels of protection is a key topic for consideration as is the process by which locations are identified or qualified for legal protections to apply. There is also a need to evaluate the effectiveness of provisions already in place, carrying with it the need for outcomes-based monitoring which is currently rare.

Non-dune eolian sand in Indian mounds

In open‐access settings, high‐quality resources are lucrative, yet fencing out potential entrants may be very costly. I examine the endogenous creation of property rights, focusing on the incentives that resource quality provides to close the commons. Analytical examples explore the incentives of locals to increase or decrease the strength of property rights conditional on how locals and nonlocals value the quality of the resource. The empirical analysis looks at a unique resource—surf breaks—and estimates the relationship between the exogenous quality of the resource (waves at the surf break) and local attempts to seize the common surf break. Using cross‐sectional data on 86 surf breaks along the southern California coast, this paper finds that a 10 percent increase in quality leads to a 7–17 percent increase in the strength of property rights.

The involvement of surfers in surf break co-management initiatives may assist local authorities in providing for surf breaks and develop community stewardship. This research involved a comparative case study of the Auckland and Otago regions in New Zealand to assess the potential, and identify key ingredients, for successful surf break co-management. An online survey of surf break users (n = 181) and qualitative interviews (n = 16) considered the potential voluntary involvement of surfers, the role of local authorities and types of approach to surf break co-management. Findings indicate a level of support from a proportion of surfers to be involved and stress the need for local authorities to provide a supporting policy response. A local-scale co-management approach, similar to National Surfing Reserves in New South Wales, Australia, is considered more likely to produce positive outcomes compared to the involvement of surf break interests in coastal-wide co-management approaches.

Reviewed by: Surfing the South: The Search for Waves and the People Who Ride Them by Steve Estes Thomas Blake Earle Surfing the South: The Search for Waves and the People Who Ride Them. By Steve Estes. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022. Pp. [xii], 201. Paper, $19.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-6777-5.) Combining history, travelog, and memoir, Steve Estes’s Surfing the South: The Search for Waves and the People Who Ride Them follows the odyssey of Estes and his daughter, Zinnia, as they hunt for surf in an unlikely place: the American South. Stretching from Brownsville to the Chesapeake, the southern coast is hardly known for its waves. The region’s choppy surf is a far cry from the breaks of Waikiki and Malibu that fostered the development of modern surfing. But as Estes shows, the South has incubated a surf culture all its own, one that “reflect[s] many of the major trends that shaped the region and nation since World War II: Cold War militarization, civil rights, the counterculture, the women’s movement, environmentalism, and coastal development” (p. 3). Estes takes an unconventional approach to his subject. In contrast with the staid prose that characterizes much academic writing, Estes weaves together a familiar, and at times humorous, style with the insights and erudition of a professional historian. Surfing the South follows Estes and his daughter as they road-trip along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, leapfrogging from (unheralded) surf breaks in Grand Isle and Pensacola to (unheralded) surf breaks in Daytona Beach and the Outer Banks. Estes is as comfortable musing on the ups and downs of the trip—riding secondhand surfboards, staying in ratty motels, and navigating the father-daughter relationship during the preteen years—as he is analyzing the major currents of twentieth-century southern history that have shaped how surfing has developed in the region. Apart from Estes and his daughter, the other characters who populate this search for the stoke are dozens of southern surfers. At every stop along the way Estes connects with locals intimately familiar with the surf scene. As Estes observes, “anywhere with waves can produce wild surf and even wilder surfers” (p. 3). Through his southern surfari, Estes introduces the reader to characters like a born-again board-rider in Galveston, a Vietnam veteran who found waves to surf wherever Uncle Sam sent him, and a Black surfer in Charleston who rides the waves along a once-segregated beach. These interactions have [End Page 401] produced an invaluable source base that not only provides the foundation for Surfing the South but also is available for future research. Estes conducted more than forty interviews that are now preserved as part of the University of North Carolina’s Southern Oral History Program. Speaking of sources, some readers may be left wanting. The text is free of citations. “Writing without footnotes,” Estes tells us, “felt like performing acrobatics without a net or surfing without a leash” (p. 191). However, if the absence of citations is a trade-off for Estes’s more engaging style, that is a deal this reviewer is more than happy to make. While wave riding may seem far removed from the major currents of southern history, surfing proves to be a valuable opening through which readers can see the South’s modern past. Readers can also see that the region has ties to the maritime world that go beyond cotton shipping, commercial fishing, and oil drilling. In bringing together surfing and the South, Estes has been careful to avoid the kinds of caricaturing that have often been deployed when discussing surfers and southerners alike, identities that Estes himself shares. “I sought a balance,” Estes professes, “between the inherent sympathies of a native southerner and the crucial objectivity of a California outsider. I realized that I was both part of the ‘we’ and the ‘y’all’ of the story” (p. 4). Estes has given historians of surfing and of the South, not to mention historians who are surfers or southerners, a valuable gift. Thomas Blake Earle Texas A&M University at Galveston Copyright © 2023 Southern Historical Association

trialspecies,therelativemeritsofdifferentapproachesto ensure the long-term persistence of those species remain highly contentious. Most would agree, however, that both establishing protected areas and exercising some form of restraint on extraction of forest resources are among the most effective of all viable conservation measures. Deforestation, wildfires, logging, and hunting are among the leading drivers of species losses in tropical forests, and de facto or de jure protection from these threats can be conferred by either effective enforcement of regulations or physical remoteness. Attempts to assess conservation success of protected areasatlargescaleshaverestedprimarilyonconventional use of remote sensing to quantify spatial or temporal differences in rates of change in land cover due to deforestation and wildfires, rather than on empirical demographic or community-level metrics (Gaston et al. 2008). Q2 However, the former approaches fail to detect most types of subcanopy anthropogenic disturbances that also result, directly or indirectly, in species losses (Peres et al. 2006). Moreover, the effects of habitat loss and degradation on population extirpations and declines are nonlinear, so vegetation cover alone is rarely a robust proxy for the viability of terrestrial biotas. Remotesensing data show vast tracts of apparently intact tropical forests, but in reality levels of hunting and other forms of extraction in these areas are often unsustainable (Peres & Lake 2003). Fundamental questions yet to be answered include whether ostensibly intact protected areas retain full complements of forest species and how the extent of cryptic patterns of disturbance is related to human population density in both protected and unprotected areas. I considered the global to regional emergence of sustainable-use reserves, emphasizing the world’s largest tropical forest region, Amazonia. Sustainable-use reserves often have intermediate levels of disturbance, so I examined the degree of use of natural resources by resident communities and used human population density as a proxy for level of extraction. In both protected and unprotected areas, I also estimated responses of game vertebrate assemblages to hunting on the basis of the relative biomassextractedfromasubsetoftheforestfauna.Iused analysesofcovariance(ANCOVA)toexaminetheassociationbetweenhumandensityandgamebiomassharvested across different reserve categories. Finally, I considered the long-term capacity of sustainable-use forest reserves to maintain populations of all resident species.

Summary1. Protected area networks for river ecosystems must account for the highly connected nature of river habitats and the fact that conditions in distant locations can influence downstream habitats and biota. We used Marxan conservation planning software to address the unique constraints of reserve design in river ecosystems and structure a reserve network to overcome key challenges to freshwater conservation.2. The range limits of 63 fish species in Mesoamerica were predicted and used in Marxan to design a network of conservation focal areas that encompasses 15% of the range of each species in areas with low risk of environmental degradation. Upstream risk intensity was estimated by propagating landscape‐based sources of stress downstream along the direction of flow in GIS. We constrained Marxan solutions to account for basin divides, and we defined critical management zones to include important habitats that contribute to species persistence and mitigate threats.3. The proposed reserve network encompassed 11% of the study area, half of which was contained within existing protected areas. Our exercise also identified important gaps in protection. Because terrestrial‐based environmental risks were propagated through the river network and considered in the solution, focal areas were constrained to catchments with low levels of upstream human activity. Addition of critical management zones – riparian buffers and fish migration corridors – expanded the network area by one‐fifth.4. Our application of Marxan allowed longitudinal connectivity and topographic barriers to species movement to be considered. Adding critical management zones expanded the size of the reserve network, but is crucial to the network’s conservation efficacy. We call for an evaluation of the added management capacity needed to conserve critical management zones and suggest ways to further improve the reserve design process.

As November's IUCN World Park Congress approaches, and the IUCN develops a policy on biodiversity offsets, we sense increasing excitement about the potential for biodiversity offsets as an innovative financing mechanism for protected areas. On the face of it, this is a win–win approach. Governments struggling to meet protected area goals could channel compensation for development impacts toward the establishment and management of protected areas. Developers could benefit from high-profile delivery of impact compensation, a clear route to transfer management responsibility, and assurance of the long-term outcomes that stakeholders require of biodiversity offsets. Indeed, conventional offsets are designed very much along the lines of new protected areas. Voluntary biodiversity offsets are thus being planned in protected areas around the world, and new government policy in countries such as Mongolia and Papua New Guinea is being designed to drive offset funds toward protected areas, following examples such as Funbio in Brazil. Win–wins are rarely, however, quite what they first appear. The core biodiversity offset principles of additionality, comparability, and longevity are all at risk when offsets are planned in protected areas. Instead of biodiversity offsets leading to No Net Loss, they could instead simply facilitate ongoing development impacts and erosion of biodiversity, to the ultimate detriment of protected areas. The biggest risk of channeling offset funds toward protected areas is cost-shifting, meaning that these new funds displace—rather than supplement—current or future funding committed to conservation. In such cases, compensation would not be additional—instead of reducing overall impacts of development, offsets would facilitate a continuing decline in biodiversity. Cost-shifting is a real, not a theoretical, phenomenon. For example, at a broader level, some developing countries have been accused of seeking development assistance for attractive sectors such as health, education or environment in order to free up core government funds for military spending. More specifically, we are aware of some developed-country jurisdictions that are actively capping or cutting funding to protected areas in anticipation that offset funding will fill the gap. So, should offsets never be allowed in protected areas, in case governments renege on their responsibilities? Almost 200 governments have adopted Aichi Target 11, committing to expand and effectively manage protected area networks. Perhaps offsets in protected areas should only be considered additional once this target is achieved nationally? This would avoid the risk of cost-shifting, but is a blunt approach—ignoring the severe underfunding of many protected areas and resultant biodiversity loss. This is likely to persist, despite the Aichi Target—governments struggling to fund primary healthcare will also struggle to resource effectively managed and representative protected area networks. A more practical solution to the cost-shifting problem could be to define and accept temporary additionality. Offsets in protected areas could be seen as additional until the stage in a country's economic development when a government could reasonably be expected to fully assume its protected area responsibilities. Such an approach would be familiar to international donors, which use global classifications of national income (e.g., from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) to prioritize aid funds to governments that cannot yet afford to assume core responsibilities. In practical terms, this approach would confine protected area offsets to lower income countries. Companies seeking short-term gains to compensate for short-term impacts would therefore face few challenges. For longer term offsets, a mechanism would be needed to refocus funding as national economies improved and core budgetary resources came on stream. Additionality is not the only concern. Prioritizing offsets in protected areas risks biodiversity in offset sites not being comparable to biodiversity in impact sites—i.e., "like-for-like or better." The global protected areas network is biased toward places that are relatively low in value for both biodiversity and economic activity. This presents a risk of trading the most threatened habitats for those that are already more secure, i.e., "trading down." Such risks could be reduced by large-scale planning combined with aggregated offset approaches, where compensation from multiple sources is pooled together. Landscape- or national-level planning in countries such as South Africa has been integrated into offset guidance, so that specific conservation targets can be met, and impacts on more threatened environments dissuaded, by increasingly onerous offset requirements (e.g., higher multipliers for the offset area needed). National offset frameworks could take this a step further by identifying conservation targets for each ecosystem and prioritizing aggregated offsets to support new (or better managed) protected areas where they are most needed. Overall, this should represent a system of "trading up," in which conservation is focused on the highest biodiversity priorities. Concerns about offset longevity—ensuring that offset gains last as long as development impacts—are particularly acute for offsets in protected areas, since a developer's stewardship responsibilities may be rapidly passed to a protected area authority. The solution remains the same as for other offsets: a solid guarantee of appropriately long-term funding for offset implementation by developers. Financing may best be secured using an independent funding mechanism. This has the added advantage of ensuring that compensation is reserved for offsets rather than entering general treasury funds: governments should not regard offset resources as just another form of taxation. Identifying the conditions for effective protected area offsets is not just an arcane technical discussion. At least 18 countries already have national government policies specifically requiring or guiding offsets, at least 29 others have policies suggesting or enabling the use of offsets, and these numbers are growing rapidly. Moreover, the issues we present here are not restricted to offsets in protected areas, but also apply to many situations in which there are expectations of an existing landowner or government duty of care. Biodiversity offsets hold much promise for helping expand and strengthen the protected area network in the developing world. To fulfil this promise, governments will need to design and implement policies that direct compensation from development projects to temporarily fill the most important protected area funding gaps. Conservation planners can assist governments and companies by refining methods for ensuring additionality, comparability, and longevity of offsets in protected areas, and contributing to science-based plans and policy guiding offset investment. Civil society scrutiny will be key during implementation, particularly for ensuring that protected area responsibilities are adopted by governments in-line with increasing revenues, and that there is sound governance of offset funding schemes. With these pieces all in place—a not inconsiderable challenge—offsets can contribute to saving, rather than sinking, protected areas. We thank Jez Bird, Tom Brooks, Jonathan Ekstrom, Phil Gibbons, David Keith, Suzanne Livingstone, Bruce McKenney, Edward Pollard, Hugo Rainey, Helen Temple, and James Watson for discussions that stimulated this manuscript.

Biosphere Reserves

This study has been carried out with the purpose of coming up with suggestions for designation of domestic protection areas and improvement of their management through a comparative analysis of the systems of management of the protection areas in South Korea, Japan and China. Starting with the designation of natural reserves in 1962, South Korea has prepared legal systems for preserving ecosystems and biodiversity, while continuing to designate protected areas. As the state has so far monopolized the designation and management of all South Korean protection areas that take up 10.8% of its entire land area (as of Dec. 2011), with such persisting issues as multiple designations of one and the same area for protection, overlapping management authorities, and management of privately owned land in the protection areas. In Japan, which has protected area sizes and relevant legal systems similar to those in South Korea, the state provides the basic framework for management, while delegating most of the duties related to direct operation and management to specific municipalities. China, with an integrated administrative management of protected areas, has related government offices and municipalities responsible for the designation and management of individual protected areas. South Korea needs to provide a legally based support system that would further enhance the value of areal protection and contribute to the promotion of local economy and community.

Conservation planning in the Nepal Himalayas: Effectively (re)designing reserves for heterogeneous landscapes

The Northern Biodiversity Paradox predicts that, despite its globally negative effects on biodiversity, climate change will increase biodiversity in northern regions where many species are limited by low temperatures. We assessed the potential impacts of climate change on the biodiversity of a northern network of 1,749 protected areas spread over >600,000 km2 in Quebec, Canada. Using ecological niche modeling, we calculated potential changes in the probability of occurrence of 529 species to evaluate the potential impacts of climate change on (1) species gain, loss, turnover, and richness in protected areas, (2) representativity of protected areas, and (3) extent of species ranges located in protected areas. We predict a major species turnover over time, with 49% of total protected land area potentially experiencing a species turnover >80%. We also predict increases in regional species richness, representativity of protected areas, and species protection provided by protected areas. Although we did not model the likelihood of species colonising habitats that become suitable as a result of climate change, northern protected areas should ultimately become important refuges for species tracking climate northward. This is the first study to examine in such details the potential effects of climate change on a northern protected area network.

This study investigates toponyms in the Nichar-Kalpa region of Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh, India, where the endangered Kinnauri dialect is spoken. Toponyms, or place names, are crucial indicators of cultural heritage, history, geography, and linguistic evolution. Kinnauri belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family and encompasses several dialects, with Standard Kinnauri prevalent in the Nichar-Kalpa area. Despite the significance of toponyms in understanding the interplay between people, places, and cultural histories, existing research on Kinnauri toponyms is scarce. This study aims to fill that gap by analyzing place names in Nichar-Kalpa, while considering the endangered status of the Kinnauri language. The present work employs both primary and secondary data for the classification and analysis of toponyms in the Nichar and Kalpa blocks of Kinnaur, encompassing 382 villages across three tehsils. Data sources include historical records, official documents, maps, and local interviews with elderly residents to gain insights into the linguistic, cultural, historical, and geographical significance of place names. Findings reveal that the region's mountainous terrain significantly shapes local toponyms, with many names reflecting geographical and spiritual attributes. Common generic terms such as Dhar (mountain range) and Rang (skyline) constitute about one-third of the toponyms. Additionally, natural elements like climate, vegetation, water bodies and local spiritual beliefs influence naming conventions. The increasing dominance of Hindi in official records and signage threatens the preservation of Kinnauri toponyms, potentially leading to a loss of cultural and historical significance. This study highlights the complex relationships between language, environment, and cultural identity in the Kinnaur region.

Many models have assessed how marine reserves protect fish populations and—under certain conditions—simultaneously increase yield. Only recently have models considered the effects of fishing-induced habitat damage by assuming reduced population growth in fishing areas. Even though it is understood that fish movement patterns affect the functioning and design of marine reserves, fishing-induced changes in movement patterns, as a response to decreased habitat quality, have not been studied in this context. Our work explores how harvesting-induced movement behaviour of fish can affect optimal yield and size of a marine reserve. Our model is based on reaction-diffusion equations and recent advances in their application to strongly heterogeneous environments with sharp transitions in environmental conditions. We model movement behaviour in response to harvesting and habitat destruction via increased diffusion rates and increased preference for protected areas, and implement reduced reproduction as an effect of habitat degradation. We find an alternative mechanistic explanation for the empirical observation that high fish mobility may not decrease fish density inside a reserve. We also find that movement-behavioural responses of fish to harvesting can decrease the economic value of protected areas and increase their conservation value. For maximum sustainable yield, we find that a low harvesting rate and small protected area are optimal when fish show a strong preference for protected areas as a response to fishing efforts. On the other hand, a high harvesting rate and a large protected area are optimal if fish respond to harvesting by a strong increase in movement rates in fishing areas.