Abstract
Garnering support from local people is critical for maintaining ecologically viable and functional protected areas. However, empirical data illustrating local people’s awareness of the importance of nature’s services is limited; hence possibly impeding effective ecosystem (environmental)-services based conservation efforts. Using data from five protected forests in four developing Southeast Asian countries, we provide evidence that local people living near parks value a wide range of environmental services, including cultural, provisioning, and regulating services, provided by the forests. Local people with longer residency valued environmental services more. Educated as well as poor people valued forest ecosystem services more. Conservation education has some influence on people’s environmental awareness. For conservation endeavors to be successful, large-scale transmigration programs should be avoided and local people must be provided with alternative sustenance opportunities and basic education in addition to environmental outreach to reduce their reliance on protected forests and to enhance conservation support.
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Acknowledgements
NSS thanks Sarah and Daniel Hrdy Fellowship for support. TML thanks W. Jetz for his support. CHS thanks the Christensen Fund for support. DJL was supported by grant R-154-000-270-112 from the Singapore Ministry of Education. Surveys in Thailand were supported by a grant from the Asia Center of Harvard University. MR would like to acknowledge the support of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Asia Program and is grateful to U Than Zaw for data collection.
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T. M. Lee is joint first author.
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Sodhi, N.S., Lee, T.M., Sekercioglu, C.H. et al. Local people value environmental services provided by forested parks. Biodivers Conserv 19, 1175–1188 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-009-9745-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-009-9745-9