The conservation of tigers and other wildlife in oil palm plantations

Table 1 - Limitations of national parks
Limitation Explanation
Size Because they compete with human requirements for land, national parks are
always limited in size which restricts their capacity to support wide-ranging
species e.g. tigers and elephants
Distribution Because of human land requirements, national parks are generally in areas less
favoured by people, such as mountains or swamps. Some habitats, such as
lowland forest in Indonesia, are poorly represented.
Edge effects With limited size comes an increased edge effect, the impact of ‘conservation
unfriendly’ land surrounding national parks, which can suck wildlife out of the
park in a source-sink relationship
Connectivity Due to the limitations on their physical placement and the impacts of surrounding
land, national parks are frequently a chain of isolated ‘islands’ of conservation. This
can have important effects on their capacity for wildlife survival. There may be
several hundred tigers within Indonesia’s national parks, but many of them are
likely to be living in populations of only a few tens of individuals.
Cost National Parks rely heavily on effective management and protection since there
is rarely sufficient incentive for local people to assist in their protection. The costs
of running national parks are therefore a further limitation on their extent.
Conflict Conservation areas are usually gazetted and imposed by a central government,
with benefits often not reaching local people that suffer the disadvantages of
protected areas, leading to resentment and conflict.
Unprotected areas and conservation
As a result of these limitations,
isolated protected areas may not be
sufficient for long-term conservation
of several species. However,
conservation in unprotected areas has
the potential to alleviate or even
resolve many of the limitations
described for core-protected areas.
Firstly, in terms of size, if additional
habitat – even if sub-optimal – can be
provided outside protected areas, it
can have major impacts on expanding
the effective ‘niche’ available to a
species (Pulliam, 1988). This
‘overflow’ area may not be sufficient
on its own to support a species, but
may significantly expand the capacity
for a population beyond what might
be predicted from the resources in the
protected area alone, as well as reducing edge effects. Even more importantly,
conservation success in unprotected areas could resolve the issue of connectivity
between core protected areas.
Despite the potential value in alleviating the restrictions of protected areas,
biodiversity on unprotected lands is under-researched and poorly understood
scientifically (Shafer, 1999) with almost nothing known of the role of unprotected areas
in conservation of mammals (Caro, 1999). In general, human-dominated lands outside
protected areas are highly unsuitable habitats for wildlife with various studies
demonstrating intolerance to disturbance and habitat change for various species. The
limitations of unprotected areas are particularly clear for species with a high economic
value, for example rhinoceros (Leader-Williams, Albon and Berry, 1990) and elephants
(Douglas-Hamilton, 1987), both of which rely heavily upon protected areas for their
Wildlife conservation in oil palm plantations 9