Evaluation Subjects and Methods Required for Managing Protected Areas

Abstract

Protected areas are a landuse and sea use of immense importance to the conservation and survival of many species on Earth and the well-being of humans. In 2005, there were more than 113,000 protected areas worldwide and all needed active and effective management if they were to achieve the purposes for which they were reserved. Evaluation is a critical part of determining the effectiveness of management and consequently protected area practitioners need the best systems available to assess the effectiveness of their conservation management. Protected area practitioners, however, have been frustrated by gaps in knowledge supporting such evaluation. Despite important new developments in this field in the last 10 years such as the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) evaluation framework, practitioners still do not know the most important subjects of evaluation to use. In addition there was no guidance about what evaluation methods were commonly used. Nevertheless, people were still conducting evaluations and saw the need to do this, but there were many different subjects being evaluated. The evaluation workload was very large. These real world issues, corroborated by the literature and needing a research response, became the focus for this thesis. The thesis aims were to identify both the most important subjects that were required for evaluation and the evaluation methods that were commonly used. The research would be a direct contribution to more effectively managed protected areas. The need for this research was confirmed by 14 practitioners through three focus groups conducted in Durban in conjunction with the 2003 Vth World Parks Congress. They highlighted a need to be effective in what evaluation information was collected and to standardise what methods were used since many people were feeling the impact of evaluation work overload. Data for this research needed to be collected in an ordered and systematic way. However the language of evaluation was a mess, with a single subject such as the evaluation of flora, being discussed at a range of specificity levels from general (discussing the vegetation of an entire park) to quite specific (the distribution of a single plant species). A categorisation method was required. This research developed such a method based on the WCPA protected area effectiveness evaluation framework. The framework was expanded horizontally, to be comprehensive in the data that it could collect, and vertically to provide opportunities to categorise very specific subjects of evaluation. Insights obtained from the focus groups, an extensive review of park management literature, general evaluation theory and my 34 years of personal experience in park management all contributed to the development of an expanded-WCPA framework. Using the expanded-WCPA framework and guided by questionnaire theory and insights from the focus groups, a questionnaire was developed to collect data. A purposeful sampling method was used and protected area senior executive, senior manager and external stakeholders were targeted as these personnel had the highest potential to provide data of greatest relevance. The scope of data collection included many protected area management organisations in many countries (an international survey), many organisations in one country (an Australian survey), and many people in one organisation in one park (Kosciuszko National Park survey) to ensure that comprehensive data was available for analysis. The three data sets were analysed to identify the most common evaluation subjects-required and commonly used evaluation methods. All respondents considered evaluation to be an essential part of management. Data from 97 international practitioners (from 38 countries and Taiwan) was analysed and identified 35 common subjects that were required (from a range of 246) and 21 different types of evaluation methods from 298 evaluation report titles. The data from 46 Australian practitioners identified 39 common subjects (from a range of 225) and 14 different types of evaluation methods from 208 titles. For the third survey (Kosciuszko National Park), data from 35 practitioners identified 36 common subjects (from a range of 208) and nine evaluation method types from 98 titles. All three surveys identified science technical, and administration- New Public Management evaluation method types as being the most commonly used, and that protected area organisations used at least one to nine different evaluation methods for any 12 month period. The research information serves as a baseline data set for commonly required evaluation subjects and methods for the world in 2005. The most important finding of this research, 30 core subjects (Figure 10.1), were identified by combining the ‘most common’ evaluation subject lists from three surveys and further analysis of the 56 subjects identified. The core subjects can be used to assist global evaluation information collection for the Biodiversity Convention; the institutional improvement of evaluation management; the establishment of evaluation management for new protected areas; and, the creation of personal computer evaluation software. It can assist practitioners to determine ‘what’ should be evaluated; develop a situational suite of evaluation subjects needed; develop evaluation indicators; and improve their management of evaluation. Twelve evaluation method types that were commonly used were identified from 21 different types of evaluation methods sourced from 601 examples of report titles from the three surveys. Information collected by these methods was predominantly for accountability, impact (outcome) and status assessment purposes and there was a predominance of long duration science technical evaluation methods. Specialist evaluation methods (such as those used by NGOs) were not commonly used. Knowing what evaluation methods were commonly used will help practitioners worldwide, and in conjunction with core subjects, could be used to improve how the management of evaluation is conducted thus leading to more effectively managed protected areas and improved conservation of the planet.