Perceived impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on protected area management and conservation outcomes in Mexico

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605322001478. This is version 2 of this Preprint.

This Preprint has no visible version.

Download Preprint
Add a Comment

You must log in to post a comment.


Comments

There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.

Downloads

Download Preprint

Supplementary Files
Authors

Kathryn Ann Powlen, Kelly Jones, Elva Ivonne Bustamante Moreno, Maira Abigail Ortíz Cordero, Jennifer N. Solomon, Michael C. Gavin

Abstract

Protected areas (PAs) are under immense pressure to safeguard much of the world’s remaining biodiversity and can be strained by unpredicted events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the extent of the pandemic’s effect on PA management, activities, and conservation outcomes is critical for recovery and future planning to buffer against these types of events. We use survey and focus group data to measure the perceived impact of the pandemic on Mexico’s PA network and outline the pathways that led to conservation outcomes. On average, across 62 PAs, we find substantial changes in management capacity, monitoring, and tourism, and a slight increase in non-compliant activities. Our findings highlight the need to integrate short-term relief plans to support communities dependent on tourism, who were particularly vulnerable during the pandemic, and to increase access to technology and technical capacity to better sustain management activities during future crises.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/osf.io/vcs6r

Subjects

Geography, Human Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

COVID-19 pandemic, Management capacity, Mexico, Non-compliance, Protected areas

Dates

Published: 2021-11-02 22:56

Last Updated: 2022-02-02 21:13

Older Versions
License

CC-By Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Data and Code Availability Statement:
Upon request