Across Africa, national policies that established protected areas (PAs) typically limited local use of wildlife and other resources. Over time, these policies have raised tensions with rural communities and today threaten to undermine conservation goals. This article examines community-PA relationships at four important sites in Ethiopia-a country of rich tradition with an unusual colonial past. Using focus groups and household surveys, we found that despite local tensions, most respondents held positive views toward wildlife and nearby PAs. Factors influencing positive views included receiving PA benefits, good relations with PA staff, higher education levels, being older, having a large family, diversified income sources, owning fewer livestock, and fewer incidents of wildlife conflicts. In contrast, the devolved control of PAs from federal to regional levels has not influenced community-PA relations as intended. Our results suggest that relations could be improved through involving communities in co-management arrangements, honoring resource tenure and use rights, providing benefits, and implementing conservation education programs.

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a b s t r a c tExperts with different land use interests often use differing definitions of land suitability that can result in competing land use decisions. We use Bayesian belief networks linked to GIS data layers to integrate empirical data and expert knowledge from two different land use interests (development and conservation) in Maine's Lower Penobscot River Watershed. Using ground locations and digital orthoquads, we determined the overall accuracy of the resulting development and conservation suitability maps to be 82% and 89%, respectively. Overlay of the two maps show large areas of land suitable for both conservation protection and economic development and provide multiple options for mitigating potential conflict among these competing land users. The modeling process can be adapted to help prioritize and choose among different alternatives as new information becomes available, or as land use and land-use policies change. The current model structure provides a maximal coverage strategy that allows decision makers to target and prioritize several areas for protection or development and to set specific strategies in the face of changing ecological, social, or economic processes. Having multiple options can generate new hypotheses and decisions at more local scales or for more specific conservation purposes not yet identified by stakeholders and decision makers in the region. Subsequently, new models can be developed using the same process, but with higher resolution data, thereby helping a community evaluate the impacts of alternative land uses between different prioritized areas at finer scales.

The Vernal Pool Mapping and Assessment Program (VPMAP) was initiated in 2007 to create a vernal pool database as a planning tool to foster local compliance with new state vernal pool regulations. In the northeastern United States, vernal pools are seasonal wetlands that provide critical breeding habitat for a number of amphibians and invertebrates and provide important resting and foraging habitat for some rare and endangered state-listed species. Using participant observation, interviews, and focus groups, we examined the engagement of municipal officials and private landowners in VPMAP. Important outcomes of municipal and landowner engagement included mobilization of town support for proactive planning, improved awareness and understanding of vernal pools, and increased interactions between program coordinators, municipal officials, and private landowners. Challenges to municipal and landowner engagement included an inconsistency in expectations between coordinators and municipal officials and a lack of time and sufficient information for follow-up with landowners participating in VPMAP. Our study highlights the importance of developing relationships among coordinators, municipal officials, and private landowners in facilitating positive outcomes for all stakeholders and for effective resource management. We suggest an expanded citizen science model that focuses on improving two-way communication among project coordinators, municipal officials, and local citizens and places communication with private landowners on par with volunteer citizen scientist recruitment and field training. Lessons learned from this research can inform the design and implementation of citizen science projects on private land.