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Together with a better appreciation for the importance of protected areas, efforts for environmental protection have been increasing both at international and national level. However, when changes in policies related to protected areas are evaluated it is observed that in some countries protected areas administrations highlight utilisation rather than conservation. Turkey is also one of those countries which undergo such discussions. Although there has been no significant increase in the number of protected areas whose protection characteristics are highlighted, there has been an extreme increase in the number of recreation areas and newly established nature parks. In addition, it was found out that significant changes have been made with regards to regulations, administrative approaches, and implementation practices to enable opening of protected areas to non-forestry uses. Moreover, regulations such as the “Resolution for Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Law” are brought forward in this period, which will increase the utilisation of protected areas. Current nature protection policies and administrative approaches that highlight utilisation should be radically changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of total area protected as the predominant indicator of progress in building protected area (PA) networks is receiving growing criticism. Documenting the full dynamics of PA networks, both in terms of the gains and losses in protection, provides a much more informative approach to tracking progress. To this end, documentation of PA downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD) has increased. Studies of PADDD events generally fail to place these losses in the context of gains in protection; therefore, they omit important elements of PA network dynamics. To address this limitation, we used a spatially explicit approach to identify every parcel of land added to and excised from the Australian terrestrial PA network and PAs that had their level of protection changed over 17 years (1997-2014). By quantifying changes in the spatial configuration of the PA network with time-series data (spatial layers for nine separate time steps), ours is the first assessment of the dynamics (increases and decreases in area and level of protection) of a PA network and the first comprehensive assessment of PADDD in a developed country. We found that the Australian network was highly dynamic; there were 5233 changes in area or level of protection over 17 years. Against a background of enormous increases in area protected, we identified over 1500 PADDD events, which affected over one-third of the network, which were largely the result of widespread downgrading of protection. We believe our approach provides a mechanism for robust tracking of trends in the world's PAs through the use of data from the World Database on Protected Areas. However, this will require greater transparency and improved data standards in reporting changes to PAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development and management of various protected areas (PAs) in China. Topics discussed include the history of the development of a legislative framework for PAs in China in 1950s as well as the development of PA legislation and the role of protected areas in biodiversity conservation in China. Other topics include the approval of the Forest Law by the National People's Congress in 1984 and the biodiversity conservation policy in China.

An introduction is presented which discusses articles within the issue on topics such as the use of protected areas as a biodiversity conservation tool in China, development of Protected Areas Law and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/Global Environment Facility (GEF) project in China.

The goals of nature conservation have changed over the last decades, but setting aside areas for nature protection is still a major part of environmental efforts globally. Protected areas often include traditional lands of indigenous peoples, and although indigenous rights have been strengthened through international treaties, conflicts over land entitlement are still common. I analyse indigenous peoples' role in nature conservation, focusing on the discursive construction of indigenous subject position in the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and using post-colonial theory to situate the discussion in its historical and political context, discussing what subject positions are made available to indigenous people, and what political agency they can be assumed to entail. The analysis shows that limits to indigenous space for agency are embedded in the Convention on Biological Diversity discourse – the analysed texts present a narrow recognition of indigenous people's role in the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity, with a heavy focus on indigenous subjects as holders of traditional knowledge, and a clear influence from colonial notions and post-colonial power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal innovation is responsible for major transformations in societies. Taking the press as a mediator between the national and local levels, this article addresses the role it plays in the presentation of new laws governing protected areas. A content analysis comparing the representation in the national and the regional presses of both the Natura 2000 laws and the conservation of the Iberian lynx shows two distinct and pragmatic reconstructions of these themes. The national press is more aligned with sustainability goals, while overlooking the difficulties of implementing the law in concrete contexts. The regional press emphasizes the practical difficulties the laws create for the protected areas, using emotionally charged arguments. The conclusions discuss how a social psychology of legal innovation may be relevant to understanding the psychosocial processes involved in the progress of legal innovation and how identity and group processes are involved in the re-signification and contestation of laws. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many consider the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA) to be the workhorse of environmental protection in the United States (US). The 1973 ESA was passed by Congress with nearly unanimous support and was part of President Richard M. Nixon's far-reaching environmental agenda. Much has changed in ESA political and public support. In 2010, the Western Governors Association referred to the “nonsensical policy” in implementing the ESA (Silva, 2010), and Congress delisted a population segment—the western gray wolf (Canis lupus)—by amendment (US House of Representatives, 2011, p. 290). It is nothing short of astonishing to compare how different the discussion was at the genesis of the three ESAs as compared to now (Doremus, 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author aims at identifying under which situations public Administration is compelled to indemnify singular deprivations carried out in application of the Spanish regulatory regime of natural protected areas. To that purpose, starting from an analysis of the concerned regulation, case law and bibliography, as well as the disadvantages of the diverse positions, the research identifes as a typical case of liability the one characterized by the simultaneous concurrence of two requirements: that the administrative action afects uses and activities which are permited over rural land and that it restricts the efective faculties and rights of their owners over the land. However an in-depth analysis of these requirements refects the defciencies of such typical case, which needs to be completed by means of a general clause of administrative responsibility in order to comprehend the remaining singular deprivations that may occur in natural protected areas within the situations of public liability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Coarse and fine scale ecological criteria were derived that represent vital features of protected area networks for biodiversity conservation. The criteria were used as a blueprint to assess the capacity of legislation to create an ecologically functional Algonquin–Adirondack protected area network in Ontario and New York State. International treaties, national laws, and provincial and state laws and their regulations, were analyzed to determine if they contained provisions for incorporating the ecological criteria into conservation networks. In Canada, the Canada National Parks Act and the Species at Risk Act could be used to create protected areas networks, if their regulations were amended appropriately. The Ontario Planning Act was the only provincial act with limited capacity to implement some of the ecological criteria. Neither American federal law nor New York State law showed any capacity to enable protected area network development. However, if the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act were to be enacted, provision for creating large-scale ecological networks would exist. New legislation should reflect, explicitly, the ecological criteria that ensure that networks fulfill their roles over the long term. Any new legislation should be harmonized across the different jurisdictions involved, as in recent western European cases, to promote network creation at large geographic scales. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The author reflects on the challenges of protecting ecosystem across the world. She cites a doubling of the number of protected sites since the 2003 meeting of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN's) World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa, arguing that protected areas are the most effective tool in biodiversity conservation, and discusses how the scientific community's knowledge can help guide environmental policy at the World Parks Congress in Sydney, Australia.