The Pennines are a chain of low mountains, which are often called the 'backbone of England', stretching 300 km from Ashbourne in Derbyshire almost to the Scottish border. Much of the land is over 250 m in altitude, with the highest peak, Cross Fell (893 m), being the highest peak in England outside of the Lake District National Park.

Dearden et al . (1998) have suggested that my arguments for backing away from zealously pursuing the expansion of protected areas in Thailand (Vandergeest 1996) means giving benefits to local people with no consideration for the wider community or future generations. Let me begin my response by reminding readers of my central argument: that the driving force behind the rapid expansion of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in Thailand was primarily the forest department's need to find new ways of controlling territory and legitimizing budget allocations, rather than nature protection per se. This bureaucratic need was the outcome of widespread occupation of reserve forests, due to both reservation of occupied areas and new migration into demarcated reserved forests, as well as the 1989 ban on legal logging in Thailand. In its rush to convert reserve forest to protected area status, the forest department demarcated as national parks and wildlife sanctuaries many areas occupied and used by local people, producing a situation in which most protected areas in Thailand are surrounded or partially occupied by an alienated local population who feel that their legitimate property rights have been appropriated. The rapid expansion of protected areas in Thailand is thus hardly something that the international conservation community should be celebrating. Nor will ongoing problems with local people be fundamentally resolved through development projects, buffer zones, and participatory conservation alone, although these kinds of projects often have important benefits. I suggested that a more appropriate direction would be to degazette and allocate to households land clearly claimed and occupied by rural households, which I estimate to be about 20% of protected areas. I also suggested that some land gazetted as protected area could be managed as common property, and that conservation could be much more aggressively pursued outside of protected areas.

Rock outcrop communities usually receive very little attention from scientists and environmentalists. We examined the vegetation occurring in eight gneiss-granite rock outcrops at Rio de Janeiro State (Brazilian Atlantic coast) which exists in natural associations on soil islands. A total of 86 vascular plant species, belonging to 30 families, was found on 347 soil islands. Bromeliaceae, Asteraceae and Velloziaceae species were the most frequent plants, many of them endemic to these habitats. Ordination and cluster analyses using species frequency on each site made evident some major distinctions related to local influences, most probably the proximity to the sea. Each outcrop presented high values of the Shannon-Wiener index of species diversity. Species richness was very dependent on the total area, and high beta diversity was observed amongst sites. Similarities with the South American and African rock-outcrop communities were found. Despite their uniqueness as habitats, their possession of several endemic species and the fragility of the ecosystem involved, Brazilian rock outcrops are not protected by specific environmental legislation and we propose urgent actions for their protection.

The modern era of wildlife and protected area conservation in Nepal began in 1973 with the passage of comprehensive legislation, and has evolved very quickly as new priorities and problems have emerged. Here we explore the legal and managerial development of conservation areas, a recently-defined category of protected area designed to promote conservation through local-level participation and development. A review of the Conservation Area Management Regulations of 1996 shows that there are several potential problems inherent in this designation. As written, the regulations move power from the government to organizations under governmental contract. Thus, management authority largely remains top-down from the standpoint of local users. We also question how well the designation will protect some sensitive wildlife species, since organizations do not have law enforcement authority under Nepalese legislation.

Despite these concerns, there have been several successful conservation area programmes in existence in Nepal since the 1980s and most of the issues addressed are surmountable with the current regulations, providing that several criteria are met. We propose that His Majesty's Government and organizations under contract develop more definitive methods of disbursing funds for local-level projects, and institute social impact assessments. In addition, more attention must be paid to wildlife law enforcement; independent assessments of important wild populations and unique habitats are needed. Finally, we discuss some broader issues that should be better addressed in Nepal and elsewhere, including cross-sectoral coordination within the government.

There have been few studies of trace elements in cetaceans from Chinese waters despite considerable potential for contamination by this class of pollutant. Between 1993 and 1996, blubber, liver and/or kidney tissues were collected from 11 Indo-Pacific hump-backed dolphins (Sousa chinensis) and 20 finless porpoises (Neophocaena phocaenoides) stranded in Hong Kong. These tissues were analysed for 12 trace elements (As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Hg, Mo, Ni, Pb, Se, Sn and Zn). In general, concentrations of trace elements were similar to those of other cetacean populations and were deemed not to be of any toxicological significance. However, concentrations of mercury in the liver tissues of certain individuals were at levels which could constitute a health risk to the animals (up to 906 mg g-1 dry weight). Cadmium, mercury and selenium were observed to bio-accumulate with age, whereas concentrations of copper were highest in neonatal animals.

Development of management plans collaboratively with local people (e.g. co-management) is now an important means of protected area conservation. Yet formal protected area managers often need more specific information about the local people with whom they want to co-manage resources. We propose wider use of a method, which we describe, for studying time allocation, as an early step in the co-management of conservation areas. Use of time allocation data in co-management is illustrated from a conservation project in Danau Sentarum Wildlife Reserve (DSWR) in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Data from spot observations were analysed at three levels, namely those of 'macro-categories' (production, reproduction and leisure), an intermediate level (e.g. agriculture and food preparation), and that of individual activities (such as fishing, collection of forest foods and hunting).

In the DSWR, the allocation of time differed according to gender, ethnicity and seasonality, throughout the year of the study. Our experience suggests that knowledge of such patterns of behaviour can help conservation area managers to understand local people's needs and desires better, improve managers' rapport with local people, and make better cooperative plans with local people.

Wilderness designation continues to be a contentious effort and must be fully justified even in wealthy countries such as the USA. An important consideration in setting priorities for additional designations of Wilderness is to ensure that under-represented ecosystems are protected. The utility of Geographic Information Systems in performing this task is illustrated using data on ecoregions and areas in the National Wilderness Preservation System to determine the relative protection currently afforded to different ecoregions in the continental USA. We find that 23 of the 35 ecoregions have less than 1% of their land area protected as Wilderness, and 7 of the 35 have no land protected as Wilderness whatsoever. While much of the land with little protection is in areas dominated by private land ownership in the mid-west and southeast, a surprisingly large amount of land in the Intermountain states of Nevada and Utah, which is in public ownership, is substantially under-represented in the National Wilderness Preservation System as well. The implications of this analysis for wilderness allocation strategies are detailed. The technique illustrated in this paper is a useful aid in designing protected area strategies in countries throughout the world.

Pocket gophers have long suppressed forest regeneration in clearcuts in western North America, despite the application of intensive and costly, large-scale abatement practices, which also kill non-target wildlife and may increase soil erosion. At four national forests in northern California, gophers (Thomomys bottae and T. monticola) on 50 clearcuts were baited with a 0.5% strychnine concentration on wheat or oat groats, which were presented as loose grains or in 1 × 2 cm paraffin pellets for added durability. The various baits and baiting regimes usually reduced gopher abundance by 50-100% within one month. However, gopher populations recovered too quickly to protect seedlings planted for forest regeneration, especially on plots baited with a mechanical burrow-builder. In some plots where abatement was most successful initially, gopher densities increased to levels exceeding those in control plots by 7-13 months later. As gopher populations recovered following abatement, active burrows first appeared at the plot peripheries and advanced toward the plot centres, suggesting that abated territorial residents were replaced by immigrants dispersing from the surrounding landscape.

Whereas conventional abatement practices can reduce gopher abundance in clearcuts, the small spatial and temporal scales of application encourage reinvasion of vacated ecological space. These population responses defeat the goal of forest management by increasing gopher density in clearcuts; at the same time the conifer seedlings are vulnerable to gopher predation. Predation of conifer seedlings might be reduced by not abating gophers or by using alternative harvest regimes. These alternative strategies would avoid creating the conditions under which gophers contribute to slowing forest regeneration following timber harvests, and they would avoid the widespread and possibly long-term environmental damage caused by applying acute poisons and by using the burrow-builder.

A clear understanding of human population growth, consumption patterns, and their effects on the environment, particularly amongst our future leaders, is essential for proper allocation of conservation efforts. We report on the results of a written questionnaire assessing the knowledge and attitudes of undergraduate university students majoring in a range of disciplines in the United States of America (USA) and in Costa Rica (CR) regarding population- and environment-related issues. Our results indicated limited knowledge about human population growth and the environment, with USA students and male students more often responding correctly to factual questions on demography and global environmental change than CR students, who nonetheless were generally more pessimistic about environmental quality and the carrying capacity of the planet. USA students, however, more often recognized the link between human population size and environmental quality. Education on population and environmental issues will be improved if: (1) linkages between population size, consumption, and environmental quality are taught; (2) the effects of individual actions on environmental quality are emphasized; and (3) environmental education is tailored to local issues.