National parks are important natural reserves of high ecological value, and the visual perception of national park landscapes is closely tied to the degree of protection that the natural resources within national parks receive. Visual cognition has a direct impact on public consciousness and plays an increasingly important role in national park management. Most techniques and methods previously used to study visual behaviors are subjective and qualitative; objective and quantitative studies are rare. Here, we used the eye-tracking method to study the visual behaviors of individuals viewing landscapes within the Qianjiangyuan National Park System Pilot Area to assess the visual and psychological mechanisms underlying public perception of different landscapes. The effect of landscape type on visual behaviors was greater than that of color diversity and degree of spatial confinement and was mainly related to the characteristics of landscape elements. The public preferred recreational and forest landscapes with high ornamental value, whereas rural and wetland landscapes tended to be neglected given that perception of these landscapes required additional information to facilitate interpretation. When landscape colors were uniform and landscape spaces were more confined, the fixation duration was longer, and instant attractiveness was stronger. The effects of subject background on behavioral preferences were examined. Females were more interested in the whole landscape, whereas males focused more on the parts of the landscapes with prominent humanistic architectural features, complex colors, and open space. Art students generally preferred landscapes with strong humanistic attributes, whereas students majoring in forestry preferred landscapes with strong natural attributes.

To achieve the dual goal of poverty alleviation and ecological restoration, the policy of ecological forest rangers (EFRs) was implemented in rural poverty-stricken areas in China, where local residents commonly depend on nearby forest resources for livelihoods. This study aimed to analyze the short-term and long-term effectiveness of the EFRs policy in China mainly in poverty alleviation and income growth, with a brief discussion on the ecological effect of the policy. A questionnaire survey was conducted in four counties in the Karst rocky desertification region in southwest China. By combing through the early literature on REDD+, community forestry, leasehold forestry, etc., this paper summarizes the experience and lessons of similar community forest management models, aiming to explain the unsustainability of EFRs policy from the perspective of forest tenure and governance. The findings of the effectiveness analysis of EFRs policy in the four poverty-stricken counties reflect different degrees of effect in rural households with different income levels. We believe that the EFRs policy has played important roles in short-term regional poverty alleviation while its potential for long-term income growth has not been stimulated. For the amendment of EFRs policy, we put forward the following points: (1) It is necessary to redesign the selection and recruitment mechanism, as well as the exit mechanism of EFRs adapting to the local conditions. (2) It is advisable to further improve the local assessment and monitoring system of forest protection quality of EFRs and optimize the establishment of benefit linkage mechanism between protection effectiveness and EFRs remuneration. (3) The EFRs remuneration standards should be dynamically raised to assure the active participation of EFRs in forest protection. Furthermore, there is a need for one more effective integration model of forest protection and rural livelihoods improvement, which is considered as a potential future research direction.