Minimizing the inherent conflict between protecting fauna and flora and accommodating the needs of the local communities is one of the greatest challenges facing protected area (PA) management in developing countries of the world. Allowing pastoralists access to PAs and their resources remains a contentious issue in southern Kenya, where retaliatory killing of African lions (Panthera leo) by Maasai pastoralists has caused a steep decline in the lion population, threatening local extinction. Previous studies that have shown that local people often have negative attitudes toward PAs; here PA policy during times of hardship is linked to attitudes toward lions and behavioural intentions. Different access policies to grazing inside Tsavo and Nairobi National Parks during the 2008/2009 drought influenced Maasai attitudes toward lions and their propensity to kill them. A semi-structured questionnaire (n = 206) and a multivariate model examine the relative importance of PA access and 11 additional predictors on individuals’ attitudes and reported inclination to kill lions. Access for livestock to PAs, benefits from wildlife and higher education were associated with positive attitudes toward lions and a lower reported propensity to kill. The success of lion conservation in Maasailand may depend upon recognizing and accommodating pastoralists’ inherent vulnerability to drought-induced livestock mortality.

Establishing effective networks of protected areas (PAs) is one of the major goals of conservation strategies worldwide. However, the success of PAs in promoting biodiversity conservation depends on their integration to local and regional contexts, reducing and mitigating human impacts originating from buffer zones. Community perceptions affect interactions between residents and PAs, and thereby conservation effectiveness. Research at Tocantins state (northern Brazilian Cerrado), aimed to analyse local community perceptions of four PAs, discussing how different factors may influence these. Perceptions were assessed through standardized interviews applied to PA employees and 275 local inhabitants. There was modest community participation in PA establishment and management. Residents were aware of the PAs’ existence, but were unfamiliar with their goals. Length of residency and occupation of inhabitants influenced their PA perceptions, shaping different people-park relations in each of the four studied PAs. Involvement of local residents in PA planning and management represents a central strategy to strengthen local support for PAs over the long term. In those areas that still have settlements inside their boundaries, community relocation should follow a careful participatory process to avoid significant changes in local perceptions and attitudes towards these PAs, crucial for conserving Brazilian biodiversity.

Effective management of anthropogenic threats is key to sustaining biological diversity in protected areas. Types and distribution of threats to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda were investigated to assess the Park's status 12 years after it was upgraded from a forest reserve to a national park. Bwindi, like many tropical forested parks, is surrounded by dense human populations. Threats were quantified in 104 1-km edge-interior transects set around the Park. The distribution of threats was patchy and was most common within 300–350 m of the edge. The commonest threat was harvesting of wood and poles. Other threats included occurrence of exotic species, degradation of adjacent habitat fragments and high impact of problem animals on some of the neighbouring communities. The fact that threats were primarily associated with the edges of the Park, when previously they were widespread throughout the Park, suggests that illegal resource harvesting has been reduced since the forest was upgraded to a national park. Park legislation, enforcement and related conservation efforts have been effective, and there should be increased effort to manage the people-park interface. Edge-based assessments appear to be useful for quantifying threats to protected areas and identifying areas in which they are concentrated.

Protected areas (PAs) represent a central strategy in biodiversity conservation worldwide. Yet many PAs are weakened by people-PA conflicts resulting from the separation of natural resource protection from human considerations. Research at Masoala National Park in Madagascar focused on the following questions: (1) What are the factors that influence residents' perceptions of the Park and restrictions on use of natural resources in the Park area? (2) How do residents of communities on the periphery of the Park perceive and interact with Park staff, and what factors influence interactions and perceptions? A multi-method qualitative research approach was taken, including individual and focus group interviews, participant observation, archival research, and an environmental education and communication workshop. From July to December 2001, 119 semi-structured individual and group interviews were conducted with a total of 181 Masoala National Park staff, employees of non-governmental conservation organizations and community residents, focusing on two villages on the periphery of Masoala National Park. Factors found to influence the perceptions of the Park held by residents living in the Park periphery included the history of Park management, the degree of awareness of Park existence, types of interactions with Park staff and actual or potential benefits received from the Park. Inconsistency in past and present Park management goals has led to community confusion regarding the Park programme. Residents were largely aware of the Park's existence but were unfamiliar with its goals. Pressures on Park natural resources came from a variety of sources and occurred across a range of spatial and temporal scales, some of which were outside the control of Park managers. A conceptual framework represented relations between Park staff and community residents. Understanding people-PA interactions and perceptions can help guide future PA management strategies to increase conservation effectiveness, through efforts such as environmental education and communication programmes.

Given limited budgets to enforce access restrictions, protected area (PA) managers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries employ a range of policy instruments to conserve the area's natural resources. Natural characteristics of the PA combine with the managers' enforcement activities and other policy instruments to create a set of incentives to which local people respond in making decisions about extracting resources from the PA. The different management approaches employed in the Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve (XNR; China) and the Khao Yai National Park (KYNP; Thailand) and the reaction to the incentives which they create are compared. KYNP managers use policing and punishment mechanisms, in conjunction with limited NGO-supported income-generation projects, to deter resource use. In contrast, XNR managers rely on extensive cooperation with local people and trade-offs between current resource degradation and increased rural incomes.

As predicted by the economic enforcement literature, rural people respond to the threat of punishment, and its reduction of the expected benefit of an illegal activity, by reducing that activity, but may undertake socially-costly avoidance activities to avoid punishment. This literature also correctly predicts that XNR managers will concentrate less on pure enforcement than KYNP managers because, as a result of a difference in government mandates, the XNR managers consider the value of the extracted products and the non-PA productivity in their decisions while the KYNP managers do not. In both PAs, rural people's actions affect the quality of resource conservation. In KYNP, natural characteristics and the policing activities deter resource extraction and encroachment in the central core of the Park. Even NGO projects, however, have not controlled extraction, and even agricultural encroachment, in the outer third of the Park, which has caused over-extraction of some resources and has left a ring of highly-degraded land. In contrast, XNR's cooperative management approach has generated more control over the amount and the spatial configuration of resource degradation. XNR's control, however, comes at the cost of reduced area and level of current conservation.