An article by Peter S. Goodman, "Assessing Management and Setting Priorities in Protected Areas in KwaZulu-Natal," describes a RAPPAM assessment of 110 protected areas throughout KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. The assessment identified management problems, including poor design and layout of protected areas, inadequate financial resources, and staffing difficulties. The assessment, which has been influential in guiding changes in the management of protected areas in the region, also identified major threats, foremost of which is invasive alien plants.

An article by Jeffrey D. Parrish, David P. Braun, and Robert S. Unnasch, "Are We Conserving What We Say We Are? Measuring Ecological Integrity within Protected Areas," describes a framework developed by The Nature Conservancy for measuring the effectiveness of protected areas. The framework is called "Measures of Success." It entails specifying a limited number of conservation targets, specifying key ecological attributes for the targets and an acceptable range of variation for each, and rating the status of targets on the basis of whether the key attributes are within their acceptable ranges. The authors state that their approach can focus strategy development along ecological, rather than jurisdictional, boundaries.

An additional overview article by Jamison Ervin introduces the other articles in the Special Section. It discusses the scope of assessments of management effectiveness and some of the differences between approaches.

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Contact: Donna Royston
droyston@aibs.org
202-628-1500 ext. 261
American Institute of Biological Sciences
1-Sep-2003