Protected area coverage has been increasing, but at the same time, there is growing recognition that designation alone is insufficient to deliver biodiversity outcomes and that effective and equitable management is required to achieve conservation success. Focusing on Madagascar, one of the world’s most threatened biodiversity hotspots, and a country that has rapidly expanded its protected area network in the last decade, Dr Eklund will explore the role of this network in mitigating deforestation pressures and how this relates to management inputs and the challenges facing protected area managers. She will explore the extent to which COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in increased illegal burning inside the country’s protected areas and estimate monthly excess fire anomalies by creating a baseline based on historical fire data and weather conditions from 2012-2020. Through to 2019, excess fire anomalies in protected areas were few, short in duration and, in some years, coincident with social disruption linked to national elections. By contrast, in 2020, COVID-19 meant on-site management of Madagascar’s protected areas was suspended to different extents from March to July. This period was associated with 76–248% more fires than predicted, after which burning returned to normal. Overall, the results illustrate how important it is that site-level support is maintained for those managing protected areas under challenging conditions and Dr Eklund will discuss the implications this has for international conservation agendas.

About the speaker

Dr Johanna Eklund has a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Helsinki, Finland. Since her PhD, she has strengthened her interdisciplinary skills by being a postdoctoral researcher at both Global Development Studies, Department of Geosciences and Geography, and the Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki. She currently holds an Academy of Finland grant and is a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge. Johanna is the chair of the Impact Evaluation Working Group of the Society for Conservation Biology. You might have seen her hosting the monthly #TuesdaysWithTeamcounterfactual virtual seminar series: https://conbio.org/groups/working-groups/impact-evaluation/virtual-seminar-series/

Joining the event

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Online

The event will be live-streamed online. You will receive an email closer to the date with the Zoom link.

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