School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
Conserv Biol. 2013 Feb;27(1):155-65. doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2012.01930.x. Epub 2012 Sep 25.
Management-effectiveness scores are used widely by donors and implementers of conservation projects to prioritize, track, and evaluate investments in protected areas. However, there is little evidence that these scores actually reflect the capacity of protected areas to deliver conservation outcomes. We examined the relation between indicators of management effectiveness in protected areas and the effectiveness of protected areas in reducing fire occurrence in the Amazon rainforest. We used data collected with the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) scorecard, adopted by some of the world's largest conservation organizations to track management characteristics believed to be crucial for protected-area effectiveness. We used the occurrence of forest fires from 2000 through 2010 as a measure of the effect of protected areas on undesired land-cover change in the Amazon basin. We used matching to compare the estimated effect of protected areas with low versus high METT scores on fire occurrence. We also estimated effects of individual protected areas on fire occurrence and explored the relation between these effects and METT scores. The relations between METT scores and effects of protected areas on fire occurrence were weak. Protected areas with higher METT scores in 2005 did not seem to have performed better than protected areas with lower METT scores at reducing fire occurrence over the last 10 years. Further research into the relations between management-effectiveness indicators and conservation outcomes in protected areas seems necessary, and our results show that the careful application of matching methods can be a suitable method for that purpose.
管理效能评分被保护项目的捐赠者和执行者广泛用于优先考虑、跟踪和评估保护区的投资。然而，几乎没有证据表明这些评分实际上反映了保护区实现保护成果的能力。我们研究了保护区管理效能指标与保护区在减少亚马逊雨林火灾发生方面的效能之间的关系。我们使用了管理效能跟踪工具（METT）记分卡收集的数据，该记分卡被世界上一些最大的保护组织采用，用于跟踪被认为对保护区效能至关重要的管理特征。我们使用 2000 年至 2010 年森林火灾的发生情况来衡量保护区对亚马逊流域不良土地覆盖变化的影响。我们使用匹配来比较保护区的低 METT 评分与高 METT 评分对火灾发生的估计影响。我们还估计了个别保护区对火灾发生的影响，并探讨了这些影响与 METT 评分之间的关系。METT 评分与保护区对火灾发生的影响之间的关系很弱。2005 年 METT 评分较高的保护区在过去 10 年中似乎并没有比 METT 评分较低的保护区在减少火灾发生方面表现得更好。需要进一步研究保护区管理效能指标与保护成果之间的关系，我们的结果表明，仔细应用匹配方法可能是一种合适的方法。
