The success of participatory conservation projects depends greatly on the interest shown by the local population and on the strategies used to incorporate all stakeholders from the initial stages. In the highly diverse region of the tropical Andean páramos, threats to ecosystem integrity come mainly from agriculture and cattle grazing. Approaches to biodiversity conservation have often been based on top-down regulations imposed by government agencies. The implementation of an alternative approach, incorporating local communities in the design of action plans for conservation, was the central objective during the design phase of the Andean Páramo Project. These plans will be executed in a network of key pilot sites along the South American páramos. Here we report on experience at the two Venezuelan sites, where the design process involved a series of participatory workshops. The multidisciplinary nature of the facilitation team was essential in addressing the complex links between biodiversity conservation, land use strategies, and human welfare. The success of the approach was associated with the local population's great interest in and detailed knowledge of the ecosystem, as well as with our emphasis on empowerment through incorporating local knowledge and views as the basis for planning.

One of the most important reasons for the degradation of biodiversity, in mountain areas and elsewhere, is that the people who make land use decisions often receive few or no benefits from biodiversity conservation. Understandably, therefore, they generally ignore potential biodiversity benefits when choosing land use practices. The end result is that biodiversity is often lost, as are many other off-site benefits such as the regulation of hydrological flows. Efforts to enhance biodiversity conservation need to take account of the constraints faced by individual land users, who decide what practices to adopt on their land. Over the years, a variety of efforts have been made to boost the profitability of biodiversity-friendly practices for land users, with mixed results. A further approach, which has received increasing attention in recent years, is to provide direct payments for the provision of environmental services such as biodiversity conservation. The simple logic of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) is that compensating land users for the environmental services a given land use provides, makes them more likely to choose that land use rather than another. The Regional Integrated Silvopastoral Ecosystem Management Project, which is being implemented by the World Bank with financing from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), is piloting the use of PES as a means of generating biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration services in watersheds at three sites in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua.

The appropriateness of targeting conservation landscapes that include biodiversity sanctuaries within a matrix of agricultural and other land uses is being increasingly recognized as a method for achieving both biodiversity conservation and livelihood improvement. An assessment of on-farm tree diversity in the Kigezi Highlands in a transect from Kabale town to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in southwestern Uganda reveals the current contribution of farming systems to landscape tree diversity and raises questions about various constraints and opportunities for enhancing the role of agroforestry in landscape-based biodiversity conservation.

Tanzania, with many mountain ranges, has outstanding biodiversity due to diverse ecosystems. It is one of 14 biodiversity hotspot countries in the world. The majority of Tanzanian men and women depend directly on natural resources, biodiversity, and knowledge and experience of how to ensure their family's food security. Women and local communities have possessed specialized knowledge and skills relating to selection and conservation of genetic resources and biodiversity for centuries. However, this knowledge is being eroded by modernization, underestimation, and lack of awareness. The FAO LinKS project (Gender, Biodiversity and Local Knowledge Systems for Food Security), which started in 1998, has worked mainly in the agricultural sector, aiming to raise awareness of men's and women's knowledge about the use and management of the agro-biodiversity systems that they depend on for food security. The project has strengthened the capacity of agricultural institutions to apply approaches that recognize the knowledge of men and women farmers in their programs and policies, and has assisted in the creation of a Trust Fund to propagate local knowledge issues in the country.

The importance of montane regions for biological diversity is well known. We also know that mountains contain a great deal of cultural diversity, despite the relatively small number of people living in mountains compared to other regions. What has been less explored is the interrelationship between mountains, biological diversity, and cultural diversity. The study of biocultural diversity involves a search for patterns across landscapes. As an inherently spatial phenomenon, biocultural diversity can readily be explored through the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Our research has resulted in the development of a global database and map noting the linkage between high linguistic diversity and high plant diversity in montane regions throughout the world. In the present paper we focus mainly on the island of New Guinea to illustrate how important mountains are for biocultural diversity. The implications of this research for identifying areas in need of conservation and development strategies aimed at both biological and cultural diversity are briefly discussed.

Despite its importance for tourism and rural development, the biogeographic status of semi-desert and savanna transition inselbergs and mountains in central Namibia is poorly known. This study therefore investigates 11 inselbergs and their mountain flora in the central Namib Desert with regard to biogeographic patterns. Variation between seasons in variable environments is one of the most critical factors biasing global biodiversity analyses, and often results in lack of biogeographic analysis in these areas altogether. This study shows that patterns in floristic measures were largely maintained when a subset of the data was analyzed that contained only perennial plants (which are visible at these sites also during a poor rainy reason). This approach may hence be adapted in other areas that experience similar problems in data coverage related to seasonal differences.

To assess the impact of habitat disturbance on birds in the Yuksom–Dzongri trekking corridor in western Sikkim, India, the relationships between bird community attributes—including migratory groups and feeding guilds—and vegetation variables were examined. Birds were observed in 19 100-m-long transects, 3 times per season per transect, for 2 seasons from 1997 to 1998 and 1998 to 1999, in an area where forests are subject to various degrees of pressure from human disturbances. Closed canopy forests with relatively undisturbed habitat showed significant variation in habitat attributes, suggesting complexity of habitat structure. Bird species richness and diversity were significantly related to moderately disturbed habitats represented by Principal Component Analysis (PCA), where vegetation heterogeneity (vertical stratification and species composition) was greater. Analysis by migratory groups did not show an interpretable relationship with the habitats, except for the seasonal movements of migratory groups when correlated with altitudinal gradient along the corridor. However, feeding guilds showed significant relationships when correlated with different habitat types. Guilds such as insectivores showed a significant positive relationship with relatively undisturbed habitat, whereas nectarivores and granivores were associated with disturbed habitat. Such relationships have the potential to help assess bird communities and their habitat preferences. Long-term monitoring at landscape level is necessary to understand the dynamics of habitat use patterns by bird communities in relation to spatial and temporal changes.

The impact of livestock grazing on soil nutrients and vegetation parameters was studied in dry montane steppes of southern Mongolia in order to assess the risk of habitat degradation. Data were collected along transects radiating away from permanent water sources. Dung unit density counts revealed gradients of livestock activity, but utilization belts around water sources overlapped, indicating that pastoral land use affects the entire landscape. Dung unit counts corresponded to gradients in soil nutrient parameters (C, N, P), which significantly decreased with distance from the wells. However, no significant correlation was observed for plant species richness and vegetation composition with distance from water source. This indicates that soil parameters and livestock grazing exert a relatively smaller influence on the vegetation than the high inter-annual variability in precipitation. Therefore, the ecosystem at the study site was found to react in a non-equilibrium way, which suggests that the risk of degradation is low, at least insofar as plant community composition is concerned.

In the mid-20th century, the southern parts of the Madres and Mont Coronat massif (Eastern Pyrenees, France) were characterized by a Mediterranean landscape shaped by human activity. Long-term use of these mountains for crops, livestock, and forestry led to an increase in grassland areas at the expense of forest. However, socioeconomic transformation (abandonment of agriculture and a decrease in the rural population) in recent decades has caused profound changes in this massif. Interpretation of aerial photographs (1953, 1969, 1988, and 2000) made it possible to detect and analyze the changes produced in the study area (6787 ha) during this period. In 1953 most of the massif landscape consisted of grasslands (38%) and open forests (18%), with some areas of dense forest (15%). By 2000, dense forest cover had doubled in size (31%), and grassland had decreased considerably (by 73% of the initial area). Since 1953, the study area has become more homogeneous, with a few local exceptions. The results of this study suggest that socioeconomic factors might be the main cause of landscape transformations in this period of approximately 50 years.

The relationship between vegetation and water budgets in mountain catchments has been the subject of intense debate from an ecological as well as a hydrological point of view. In the present article, we evaluate forest landscape patterns and their hydrological effects on the Qilian Mountains of northwest China, using GIS and 15 years (1987 to 2001) of hydrological databases to illustrate the cases of 2 catchments, Dayekou (DYK) and Haichaoba (HCB). Landsat ETM remote sensing satellite data (1:50,000) taken in May 2001 and topographic maps (1:50,000) were used to produce the landscape maps. The results showed that the main landscape elements affecting hydrological processes were grassland and Picea crassifolia forest in the lower areas in DYK, while the main landscape elements affecting hydrological processes in the higher areas in HCB were shrub-land and barren land. Observations over many years indicate that the water retention capacity of Picea crassifolia forest makes it the best of all vegetation types for hydrological purposes in the area. In DYK, evapotranspiration was 61%, and runoff was 39% of rainfall, whereas in HCB, evapotranspiration was 41%, and runoff was 59% of rainfall. However, dry season runoff in DYK (25.2%) was higher than in HCB (17.7%). Our results show that the various forest landscapes cause different hydrological processes in arid mountain areas in northwest China.

The main forest management strategy of Nepal, community forestry, is based on people's participation and was formally introduced in 1978. Under the community forestry structure, local people make decisions regarding forest management, utilization, and distribution of benefits from a forest; they are organized as a Community Forest User Group (CFUG). Presently, about 1 million ha of forest are under the control of about 13,000 CFUGs. The present article gives an overview of the status of community forestry and its features in Nepal and analyzes the institutional arrangements of 3 CFUGs from different parts of the country. The collective institutional arrangement is a legally supported approach in community forestry. It was found that the CFUGs have developed alternative institutional arrangements to this approach, ie private and centralized systems. As the case studies show, the practice of allocating limited use rights and protection responsibility to individual users as private property is decisive for the successful rehabilitation of degraded forests in the Churiya region. In the Terai region, centralized institutional arrangements are found to be the most appropriate option for the implementation of community forestry. In the Mid Hill region, from where community forestry originates, collective institutional arrangements are successful. These different forms of arrangement appear to be the best alternatives in the prevailing local situation. The findings suggest that various contextual factors in a community and their interaction affect the formulation of institutional arrangements. Successful groups are able to craft innovative arrangements well suited to local conditions. But common property resource models based on linear relations are not always sufficient to explain the dynamism of the interfaces between people's innovations and forest resources.

This article uses a case study to describe the human ecological crisis among Thailand's former opium-producing hill-tribe minorities. Development projects in the country's northern highlands replaced opium with alternative cash crops and reduced opium production to a trickle during the final decades of the 20th century. When they were cultivating the illicit drug, Thailand's hill tribes were a focus of strong interest by the international news media and foreign governments. The spotlight on the hill tribes dimmed quickly after opium production virtually ended and the various replacement projects closed. Now, the news media will occasionally report in glowing terms about hill-tribe farmers' successful cultivation of opium replacement crops. Nevertheless, to an informed observer visiting a hill-tribe village, it is clear that the new “opium-free” economy is barely functioning in Thailand's northern highlands. Additionally, hidden largely from view are poverty-related social problems such as drug trafficking, heroin addiction, prostitution, and AIDS.