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Wild harvesting has taken place over millennia in Africa. However urbanization and cash economies have effectively altered harvesting from being cultural, traditional, and subsistence activities that are part of a rural norm, to being a subculture of commonly illicit activities located primarily within the urban, cash-based, informal economy. This paper focuses on Cape Town, South Africa where high levels of poverty and extensive population growth have led to a rapidly growing informal industry based on the cultural, subsistence, and entrepreneurial harvesting and consumption of products obtained from the local natural environment. Through a process of literature reviews, database analysis, and key informant interviews, a compendium of harvested species was developed, illustrating the breadth of illicit harvesting of products from nature reserves, public open space, and other commonage within the City. The compendium records 448 locally occurring species (198 animals and 250 plants) that are extracted for medicinal, energy, ornamental, sustenance, nursery, and other uses. The sustainability of harvesting is questionable; nearly 70% of all harvested flora and 100% of all collected fauna are either killed or reproductively harmed through the harvesting processes. Furthermore, for the 183 indigenous flora species currently recorded on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, 28% (51) hold assessments ranging from Declining through to Critically Endangered. With respect to the more poorly assessed fauna (46 spp.), approximately 24% (11) have Declining or Threatened status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relationships between humans and nature take multiple forms. This is a fundamental issue in conservation but one that is often neglected, leading to poor conservation outcomes. It is thus imperative that we come to understand better the complex relationships between humans and nature. To do so, we need to examine "nature" and the often assumed dichotomy between humans and nature. We conducted a qualitative social research inquiry to explore the societal relationships with nature in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve in Chile. From the results, we developed a framework that illustrates how different "natures" are created in the three-way relationship among the individual, society, and the physical world. We further discuss the implications of the co-existence of various "natures" in one place. Their explicit consideration bears important potential for improving conservation practice. The framework can then serve as a heuristic tool for uncovering and addressing challenges in other conservation contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is consensus that payments for biodiversity services are a promising conservation tool, yet the implementation of applied schemes has been lagging behind. This paper explores some reasons why potential biodiversity buyers may hesitate. It describes the case of an unsuccessful attempt to establish a community conservation concession in the village of Setulang (East Kalimantan, Indonesia) to safeguard a biologically valuable area from predatory logging. Potential biodiversity donors did not engage in this payments-for-environmental-services scheme mainly because of their limited time horizon and uneasiness about the conditionality principle. Other complicating factors included overlapping land claims, and the diagnosis of the externality at hand. We conclude that new investment modalities and attitudes are needed if potential biodiversity buyers are to exploit the advantages of this innovative tool. We also provide some tangible recommendations on factors to consider when designing a compensation scheme for conservation at the community level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]