Carel van Schaik is co-director of The Center for Tropical Conservation at Duke University, and professor of biological anthropology in the Nicholas School of the Environment.

Madhu Rao is associate conservation ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society

Lisa Davenport is a graduate student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Contributors include Mario Boza, Katrina Brandon, K. Ullas Karanth, Randall Kramer, Jeff Langholz, John F. Oates, Carlos A. Peres, Herman Rijksen, Nick Salafsky, Thomas T. Struhsaker, Patricia C. Wright, and others.

Why the World Needs Parks

JOHN TERBORGH AND CAREL VAN SCHAIK

Experts estimate that extinctions are occurring at hundreds of times the rate recorded through normal times in fossil history, the so-called "background" extinction rate. An accelerated extinction rate is but one symptom among many, reflecting what Aldo Leopold referred to as the "wounds" humans have inflicted on nature. The abnormally high extinction rates of the present will continue well on into the twenty-first century, but at some distant future date will inevitably return to the background rate. What will be the condition of the earth's biota when that date arrives? Will the humans of that time inhabit a world of weeds, or will they inhabit a healthy planet with intact ecosystems, clean air, clean water, and abundant natural resources? The question is not a facetious one, for if current trends continue for even another fifty years, we shall, like it or not, inhabit a world of weeds.

Those of us who strive to conserve the earth's biodiversity are thus engaged in a race against time. This is not to belittle the progress made to date. Formal protection has been accorded to roughly 5 percent of the earth's terrestrial realm. Moreover, there is broad acceptance of the idea that humans have a moral obligation to share the earth with other forms of life. That moral obligation has been acknowledged by at least 80 percent of the governments on earth in the form of legally constituted protected areas. (Many of the nations still lacking protected area systems are tiny island republics; very few major continental countries have not established parks.)

Certainly, these steps represent a good beginning, but the global conservation system now in place is far from attaining a good end. That is evident in the already high and still rising rate of extinction and is evident in many other ways as well. Five percent of the earth's terrestrial habitat is not even close to being an adequate area in which to conserve the planet's biodiversity. Large numbers of future extinctions are foreordained if that number cannot be increased substantially. Even the 5 percent figure is partly an illusion, for much of the land now included in formally protected areas enshrines monumental scenery, in what is jocularly termed "the rocks and ice syndrome." Unfortunately, biodiversity tends to concentrate in fertile lowlands, lands that humans are reluctant to assign to other species, so protected areas in prime habitats tend to be small and few in number.

If rocks and ice occupy a disproportionate share of humanity's concession to nature (the world's largest park consists of the Greenland icecap), another large fraction of the total, no one knows precisely how large, is contained in so-called "paper parks." The term refers to parks that have not been implemented in any serious way and that enjoy only a virtual existence as lines drawn on official maps. Because they are not being actively protected, many paper parks are being degraded by illegal activities as documented in Last Stand: Protected Areas and the Defense of Tropical Biodiversity and Parks in Peril: People, Politics, and Protected Areas (see Figures 1-1a and 1-1b).

Efforts to conserve biodiversity thus face two major challenges. First, there needs to be more land dedicated to biodiversity—much more than is currently devoted to the purpose. And second, land that is dedicated to biodiversity conservation must be adequately protected from a whole host of erosive forces, many illegal but some legal. This book is directed primarily toward the second of these challenges, that of effectively implementing parks that already legally exist. Continental Conservation: Scientific Foundations of Regional Reserve Networks, recently published by Island Press, lays out the scientific principles that inform the design of comprehensive nature conservation systems. In Making Parks Work, the emphasis is on strategies for managing (including financing) established protected areas, especially in the tropics where 75 percent or more of the earth's biodiversity resides.

Recent experience with protected areas in tropical countries has not been encouraging. A large majority of tropical parks have people living within them, sometimes legally as well as illegally. Poaching of wildlife is a nearly universal problem. Blatantly illegal activities occur in many. The list is a familiar one and includes poaching, logging, agricultural encroachment, mining for gold, diamonds, and other precious materials, grazing, and extraction of natural products for the commercial market (see Figures 1-1a and 11b). In addition, many tropical protected...