Resource information
To highlight and examine apparent paradoxes in assessing the effectiveness of different forms of land-use for biodiversity conservation. Tanzania. We compare and contrast the findings of two recent and seemingly conflicting studies on the effectiveness of conservation protection strategies in Tanzania. We evaluate these studies in the context of a wider body of evidence relating to the problem of determining protected area performance. We highlight the importance of landscape-scale management approaches for biodiversity conservation; establishing clear management and monitoring objectives in advance; the interrelation between the choice of target species and the appropriate spatial scale over which to measure their fate; and differences between snapshot and longitudinal scales in assessing the effectiveness of conservation strategies. Protected area assessments should not promote an isolated focus on particular conservation targets or methods of monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of conservation strategies. Instead we argue for a more pluralistic approach to evaluating conservation performance that can help to reveal where potential synergies in tackling different objectives exist, and clarifying the trade-offs when they do not.
