Ecological Monitoring: A Vital Need for Integrated Conservation and Development Programs in the Tropics

The integration of conservation with rural economic development is the latest proposed means of preventing loss of the earth’s biodiversity and of solving the dilemma of “people versus parks.” International development agencies now recognize the need to preserve natural resources and biodiversity in concert with improving human well‐being; likewise, conservation agencies acknowledge that parks cannot be protected over the long term without the consent and support of local inhabitants. Nonetheless, of 36 integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) reviewed by us and others, only 5 demonstrate that they have positively contributed to the conservation of wildlife. In this paper we promote ecological monitoring to (1) evaluate the ICDP paradigm and specific ICDPs, (2) provide feedback to guide the future course of ICDPs, and (3) integrate information relevant to both conservation and development. Few ICDPs have included ecological monitoring programs to date, although several have plans to monitor in the future. We outline a flexible blueprint for ecological monitoring of ICDPs and provide an example from our ongoing work in Madagascar. To establish comprehensive ecological monitoring programs, we recommend that two types of monitoring be carried out at multiple levels of ecological organization and across diverse taxa. First, monitoring programs should assess the total effects of ICDPs on biodiversity and on overall ecosystem health by tracking indicator assemblages across space and through time (biodiversity monitoring). Second, ICDPs should monitor the resources and ecological processes that will be directly affected by changes in human activities due to implementation of ICDPs by comparing target species diversity and abundance in unregulated areas, managed buffer zones, and core protected areas through time (impact monitoring). Comprehensive ecological monitoring is critical in shaping ICDP management plans and in furthering the integration of conservation and development.