Participatory management of wildlife in protected areas: the experience of the Red Deer census in Foreste Casentinesi National Park.
Full Solution
The Red Deer
Graziano Capaccioli
In Foreste Casentinesi National Park, the annual census of Red Deer, based on the vocal rutting monitoring, has become a very important event involving for three days and nights more than 600 volunteers that arrive from all over Italy and abroad, belonging to different categories: wildlife managers, scientists, rangers, students, hunters, environmentalists and ordinary volunteers. All the involved volunteers are requested to spend many hours in the night outside. They are divided in couples, listening to rutting deer and registering data. During the days, they attend seminars, training lessons and moments of conviviality. The original goal of monitoring the Red Deer population for managing purposes is now accompanied by other important objectives: removal of cultural barriers between people from very different cultural and social backgrounds about nature conservation; nature tourism opportunity; social experience, creating a strong feeling with the Park.
Contexto
Défis à relever
The original challenge of the project was the possibility of monitoring the deer population of the Park in a less expensive way, involving hundreds of volunteers.
The experience shows that this kind of participatory wildlife management is an excellent way to reduce cultural conflicts on wildlife management between different categories of stakeholders like hunters, environmentalists, animal activists, students, rangers and others. This actually is the most important social and cultural goal of the census.
Another important goal is the opportunity for the annual deer census to become a popular event, advertised in local, national and international press and media. The deer census, based on nature conservation, is now a very efficient touristic ambassador of the national park with relevant and sustainable economic effects. It has become an important touristic attraction in the low season of end of September.
Beneficiaries
- The national park and its conservation and scientific activities.
- The local economy, for the economic benefits of this solution, expecially in terms of tourism.
- All the participants, because of the cultural experience offered.
Ubicación
Pratovecchio Stia, Province of Arezzo, Italy
West and South Europe
Procesar
Summary of the process
One of the biggest challenges for National Parks is getting public acceptance.
This result has proved possible by transforming a scientific monitoring activity (the red deer census) into an occasion for social meeting and exchange and at the same time in a tourism and economic event.
The overall success of the Park's action cannot be separated from the connection between these aspects.
The main goal of the Park of managing wildlife through a big deer census is possible to reach only if hundreds of volunteers from all over Italy decide to participate spending their time and their money. These volunteers, looking for a scientific experience, find also a special occasion of meeting people of different background and making new friends. Spending some days in the Park "due to" the deer, the volunteers activate a green tourism economy and the local people have the proof that the National Park protection activities are also an occasion of enhancing economic progress.
All these relationships make the park successful.
Building Blocks
Monitoring nature mixing people and cultures.
One of the most important recipe for the success of the deer census is that each couple of operators has to be composed of people from different categories: beginners with experts, hunters with animal activists, rangers with students, people from different regions, etc.
Every night the couples composition is different, so all the participants have the opportunity to meet different people and different areas of the National Park.
Also the social and scientific events are organized to emphasize the occasions of experience exchange between all different kinds of participants.
Enabling factors
The entire organization is focused on mixing participants of different categories as an important rule for the succes of the project.
The registration and logistics organization software created and managed by the Park agency do not allow the participants to express rigid preferences on accomodation and on pairing with specific persons during the official activities.
All participants are being informed why these rules are so important.
Lesson learned
Combining people of different categories is an important rule for this monitoring activity, mainly for three reasons:
- operators of the same category could have an interest in altering the data on the censed number of deer: if hunters declare more deer they could be called to reduce that number; for the same reason animal activists could have the interest in declaring a reduced number.
- in the past, it happened that couples of operators of the same category (expecially hunters, that are obliged to partecipate to have the hunting permission) decided to rest in the forest instead of counting deer in a proper way. Mixed couples are controlling each others.
- mixed couples are the best opportunity to exchange experiences and to break down cultural barriers.
Transforming a scientific monitoring in a social and touristic event
The management of protected areas through conservation activities is normally separated from tourist use activities. Creating a connection between the two activities can be a tool to solve many problems, showing everybody that the Park's activities are part of a single and complex strategy.
The red deer census in Foreste Casentinesi National Park is at the same time an important action of wildlife monitoring and a big touristic event, based on high quality tourism. It directly involves, during four days in low touristic season, local accomodations like mountain huts and "agriturismi" (farms), environmental guides and interpreters, restaurants and other economic enterprises.
Enabling factors
The volunteers involved in the census are on average young and obviously take this opportunity also as an opportunity for recreation in nature and meeting people with their same passion. The census activities and the presence of hundreds of voluntueers from many Italian and foreign locations are quite visible to all the local population, also through the media.
Thanks to the deer census, the National Park becomes the venue for a major national event of conservation and this is much appreciated by the local communities.
Lesson learned
One of the keys for managing national parks is to use forms of development as conservation tools. The deer census, as organized in the Casentinesi Forests National Park, is an excellent example of this strategy. Thanks to the census, the local people look at the deer and its conservation activities as an opportunity for socio-economic development.
At the same time, the volunteers find a rare opportunity to be protagonists of the park management for a couple of days, feeling themselves being real part of it.
This experience demonstrates how environmental conservation can coincide with opportunities for sustainable socio-economic development.
Impacts
Participatory managing of protected areas is an important way to increase the acceptance of nature conservation and, of course, to save money for monitoring activities. The annual Red Deer census open to every kind of passionate volunteer, in the last eleven years has demonstrated to be an appropriate tool for the Park to:
- give an opportunity to different categories of people to discuss about nature conservation, listening in the wild during the night to the impressive rutting activity of red deer;
- create an occasion of nature tourism in a low season period for very motivated and interested visitors;
- create an occasion of promoting the National Park at national and international level, thanks to all the news and articles about this unusual and fascinating activity.
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG 4 – Quality education
SDG 17 – Partnerships for the goals
Story
Last instructions before leaving to the forest
Emanuele Perez
The annual deer census of Foreste Casentinesi National Park, in a period when the beech forests start to turn coloured in a thousand facets, is a great occasion for hundreds of people to live wildlife management "from inside", sharing an incredible emotional and scientific event with many unknown and culturally different people.
Spending three nights in the protected forests of the park (next to a ranger, a researcher or, why not, to a young and motivated hunter with a different point of view), listening and counting the suggestive rutting of the deer and sharing fear, emotions, chills and scientific knowledge is something unexpected that no one can ever forget.
The social events in the three days program (scientific meetings, social dinners, guided excursions and official "wolf howling monitoring session") complete the experience and create the opportunity to get to know new people both for personal and job reasons.
The hundreds of volunteers coming from all Italian regions and from abroad are hosted in groups by the National Park in private accomodation facilities inside the protected area, and this is another important occasion to have relationships with the local population.
After this experience, a very strong bond is created between each participant and the National Park's atmosphere and that is why more than 60 % of the people return the following year to repeat the experience. All of them become "friends" of the National Park and will defend it for the rest of their life.
Also for the National Park staff, who have to work hard all year long to organize the deer census involving about 650 people, this experience is quite important to better understand the feeling of different categories of stakeholders involved in nature conservation and wildlife management and this is absolutely necessary when you work for nature conservation.
The original goal of monitoring the deer population in a scientific but inexpensive way becomes then secondary. This experience clearly demonstrates that participatory management in nature conservation is definately the best solution.
