External ills imperil tropical reserves

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http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/342521/title/External_ills_imperil_tropical_reserves

One of the first broad looks at how well tropical reserves protect biodiversity has found that while some are relatively stable, others are in decline due to conditions just beyond their borders.

Logging, deforestation and fires just outside a park had strong effects on a reserve’s health, whereas factors such as air and water pollution were less significant, new research finds. “These parks are like imperfect mirrors,” says team leader William Laurance, an ecologist at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. “They’re partially reflecting what’s going on around them.”

Laurance and nearly 200 coauthors report the findings online July 25 in Nature. Their study, which surveyed 60 reserves across 36 nations, “is shining some of the first light on something that we’ve talked about for quite a while,” says Lucas Joppa, a conservation biologist at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England, who was not involved in the work. “It’s the first crack at an extremely important problem.”

Park managers and other officials may now be able to use the information to help figure out where to deploy their limited time and money, Laurance says. “Protected areas are our best bet for conserving nature into the future,” he says, “and we have to find ways to make them work as well as we possibly can.”