journal article Open Access Oct 12, 2016

Community-based management induces rapid recovery of a high-value tropical freshwater fishery

View at Publisher Save 10.1038/srep34745
Abstract
AbstractTropical wetlands are highly threatened socio-ecological systems, where local communities rely heavily on aquatic animal protein, such as fish, to meet food security. Here, we quantify how a ‘win-win’ community-based resource management program induced stock recovery of the world’s largest scaled freshwater fish (Arapaima gigas), providing both food and income. We analyzed stock assessment data over eight years and examined the effects of protected areas, community-based management, and landscape and limnological variables across 83 oxbow lakes monitored along a ~500-km section of the Juruá River of Western Brazilian Amazonia. Patterns of community management explained 71.8% of the variation in arapaima population sizes. Annual population counts showed that protected lakes on average contained 304.8 (±332.5) arapaimas, compared to only 9.2 (±9.8) in open-access lakes. Protected lakes have become analogous to a high-interest savings account, ensuring an average annual revenue of US$10,601 per community and US$1046.6 per household, greatly improving socioeconomic welfare. Arapaima management is a superb window of opportunity in harmonizing the co-delivery of sustainable resource management and poverty alleviation. We show that arapaima management deserves greater attention from policy makers across Amazonian countries, and highlight the need to include local stakeholders in conservation planning of Amazonian floodplains.
Topics

No keywords indexed for this article. Browse by subject →

References
60
[1]
Watkins, K. Human Development Report 2006-Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis. UNDP Human Development Reports (2006) (2006).
[2]
Butchart, S. H. et al. Global biodiversity: indicators of recent declines. Science 328, 1164–1168 (2010). 10.1126/science.1187512
[3]
Dudgeon, D. et al. Freshwater biodiversity: importance, threats, status and conservation challenges. Biological reviews 81, 163–182 (2006). 10.1017/s1464793105006950
[4]
Liu, J. et al. Complexity of coupled human and natural systems. Science 317, 1513–1516 (2007). 10.1126/science.1144004
[5]
Darimont, C. T., Fox, C. H., Bryan, H. M. & Reimchen, T. E. The unique ecology of human predators. Science 349, 858–860 (2015). 10.1126/science.aac4249
[6]
Sachs, J. D. et al. Biodiversity conservation and the millennium development goals. Science 325, 1502–1503 (2009). 10.1126/science.1175035
[7]
Attrill, M. J. & Power, M. Climatic influence on a marine fish assemblage. Nature 417, 275–278 (2002). 10.1038/417275a
[8]
Richards, C., Johnson, L. B. & Host, G. E. Landscape-scale influences on stream habitats and biota. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and aquatic sciences 53, 295–311 (1996). 10.1139/f96-006
[9]
Dodson, S. I., Arnott, S. E. & Cottingham, K. L. The relationship in lake communities between primary productivity and species richness. Ecology 81, 2662–2679 (2000). 10.1890/0012-9658(2000)081[2662:trilcb]2.0.co;2
[10]
Assessment, M. E. Ecosystems and human well-being. Vol. 5 (Island Press Washington, DC, 2005).
[11]
Gell, F. R. & Roberts, C. M. Benefits beyond boundaries: the fishery effects of marine reserves. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 18, 448–455 (2003). 10.1016/s0169-5347(03)00189-7
[12]
Gurney, G. G. et al. Poverty and protected areas: an evaluation of a marine integrated conservation and development project in Indonesia. Global Environmental Change 26, 98–107 (2014). 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.04.003
[13]
Peres, C. A. & Terborgh, J. W. Amazonian nature reserves: an analysis of the defensibility status of existing conservation units and design criteria for the future. Conservation Biology 9, 34–46 (1995). 10.1046/j.1523-1739.1995.09010034.x
[14]
Somanathan, E., Prabhakar, R. & Mehta, B. S. Decentralization for cost-effective conservation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, 4143–4147 (2009). 10.1073/pnas.0810049106
[15]
Wells, M. P. & McShane, T. O. Integrating protected area management with local needs and aspirations. AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 33, 513–519 (2004). 10.1579/0044-7447-33.8.513
[16]
Peres, C. A. Conservation in Sustainable‐Use Tropical Forest Reserves. Conservation Biology 25, 1124–1129 (2011). 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2011.01770.x
[17]
Brosius, J. P., Tsing, A. L. & Zerner, C. Representing communities: Histories and politics of community‐based natural resource management. Society & Natural resources: An international Journal 11, 157–168 (1998). 10.1080/08941929809381069
[18]
Cinner, J. et al. Transitions toward co-management: The process of marine resource management devolution in three east African countries. Global Environmental Change 22, 651–658 (2012). 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.03.002
[19]
Gibson, C. C. & Marks, S. A. Transforming rural hunters into conservationists: an assessment of community-based wildlife management programs in Africa. World Development 23, 941–957 (1995). 10.1016/0305-750x(95)00025-8
[20]
Evans, L., Cherrett, N. & Pemsl, D. Assessing the impact of fisheries co-management interventions in developing countries: A meta-analysis. Journal of Environmental Management 92, 1938–1949 (2011). 10.1016/j.jenvman.2011.03.010
[21]
Castello, L., Viana, J. P., Watkins, G., Pinedo-Vasquez, M. & Luzadis, V. A. Lessons from integrating fishers of arapaima in small-scale fisheries management at the Mamirauá Reserve, Amazon. Environmental management 43, 197–209 (2009). 10.1007/s00267-008-9220-5
[22]
McGrath, D. G., De Castro, F., Futemma, C., de Amaral, B. D. & Calabria, J. Fisheries and the evolution of resource management on the lower Amazon floodplain. Human ecology 21, 167–195 (1993). 10.1007/bf00889358
[23]
De Castro, F. Fishing accords: The political ecology of fishing intensification in the Amazon. (Indiana University, 2000).
[24]
McGrath, D. G. Avoiding a tragedy of the commons: recent developments in the management of Amazonian fisheries. Amazonia at the Crossroads. Institute of Latin American Studies: London 171–197 (2000).
[25]
Stewart, D. J. A New Species of Arapaima (Osteoglossomorpha: Osteoglossidae) from the Solimões River, Amazonas State, Brazil. Copeia 2013, 470–476 (2013). 10.1643/ci-12-017
[26]
Godinho, H. P., Santos, J. E., Formagio, P. S. & Guimarães‐Cruz, R. J. Gonadal morphology and reproductive traits of the Amazonian fish Arapaima gigas (Schinz, 1822). Acta Zoologica 86, 289–294 (2005). 10.1111/j.1463-6395.2005.00213.x
[27]
Parker, B. H. Arapaima: An Amazonian fish species of immense proportions. Biodiversity 3, 21–24 (2002). 10.1080/14888386.2002.9712574
[28]
Castello, L., Arantes, C. C., Mcgrath, D. G., Stewart, D. J. & Sousa, F. S. D. Understanding fishing‐induced extinctions in the Amazon. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 25, 587–598 (2015). 10.1002/aqc.2491
[29]
Hawes, J. E., Peres, C. A., Riley, L. B. & Hess, L. L. Landscape-scale variation in structure and biomass of Amazonian seasonally flooded and unflooded forests. Forest Ecology and Management 281, 163–176 (2012). 10.1016/j.foreco.2012.06.023
[30]
Hawes, J. E. & Peres, C. A. Patterns of Plant Phenology in Amazonia Seasonally Flooded and Unflooded Forests. Biotropica, doi: 10.1111/btp.12315 (2016). 10.1111/btp.12315
[31]
Fearnside, P. M. Extractive reserves in Brazilian Amazonia: An opportunity to maintain tropical rain forest under sustainable use. BioScience 39, 387–393 (1989). 10.2307/1311068
[32]
Castello, L. A method to count pirarucu Arapaima gigas: fishers, assessment, and management. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 24, 379–389 (2004). 10.1577/m02-024.1
[33]
Ver Hoef, J. M. & Boveng, P. L. Quasi-Poisson vs. negative binomial regression: how should we model overdispersed count data? Ecology 88, 2766–2772 (2007). 10.1890/07-0043.1
[34]
Zuur, A., Ieno, E. N., Walker, N., Saveliev, A. A. & Smith, G. M. Mixed Effects Models and Extensions in Ecology with R. (Springer-Verlag, 2009). 10.1007/978-0-387-87458-6
[35]
Burnham, K. P. & Anderson, D. R. Model selection and multimodel inference: a practical information-theoretic approach. (Springer Science & Business Media, 2003).
[36]
Bartoń, K. MuMIn: multi-model inference. R package version 1 (2013).
[37]
Bruner, A. G., Gullison, R. E., Rice, R. E. & Da Fonseca, G. A. Effectiveness of parks in protecting tropical biodiversity. Science 291, 125–128 (2001). 10.1126/science.291.5501.125
[38]
Castello, L. et al. The vulnerability of Amazon freshwater ecosystems. Conservation Letters 6, 217–229 (2013). 10.1111/conl.12008
[39]
Campos-Silva, J. V., da Fonseca Junior, S. F. & da Silva Peres, C. A. Policy reversals do not bode well for conservation in Brazilian Amazonia. Natureza & Conservação (2015). 10.1016/j.ncon.2015.11.006
[40]
Mascia, M. B. et al. Protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD) in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, 1900–2010. Biological Conservation 169, 355–361 (2014). 10.1016/j.biocon.2013.11.021
[41]
Pinheiro, H. T. et al. Brazilian aquatic biodiversity in peril. Science (New York, NY) 350, 1043 (2015). 10.1126/science.350.6264.1043-a
[42]
Petersen, T. A., Brum, S. M., Rossoni, F., Silveira, G. F. V. & Castello, L. Recovery of Arapaima sp. populations by community-based management in floodplains of the Purus River, Amazon. Journal of Fish Biology (2016). 10.1111/jfb.12968
[43]
Miorando, P. S., Rebêlo, G. H., Pignati, M. T. & Brito Pezzuti, J. C. Effects of community-based management on Amazon river turtles: a case study of Podocnemis sextuberculata in the lower Amazon floodplain, Pará, Brazil. Chelonian Conservation and Biology 12, 143–150 (2013). 10.2744/ccb-1011.1
[44]
Pollnac, R. B., Crawford, B. R. & Gorospe, M. L. Discovering factors that influence the success of community-based marine protected areas in the Visayas, Philippines. Ocean & Coastal Management 44, 683–710 (2001). 10.1016/s0964-5691(01)00075-8
[45]
Arantes, C. C., Castello, L., Cetra, M. & Schilling, A. Environmental influences on the distribution of arapaima in Amazon floodplains. Environmental biology of fishes 96, 1257–1267 (2013). 10.1007/s10641-011-9917-9
[46]
Maire, E. et al. How accessible are coral reefs to people? A global assessment based on travel time. Ecology letters 19(4), 351–360 (2016). 10.1111/ele.12577
[47]
Hercos, A., Sobansky, M., Queiroz, H. & Magurran, A. Local and regional rarity in a diverse tropical fish assemblage. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 280, 20122076 (2013). 10.1098/rspb.2012.2076
[48]
Junk, W. J., Bayley, P. B. & Sparks, R. E. The flood pulse concept in river-floodplain systems. Special Publication of the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 106, 110–127 (1989).
[49]
Affonso, A. G., Queiroz, H. & Novo, E. M. L. M. In Biologia, conservação e manejo participativo de pirarucus na Pan-Amazônia (ed Ellen Silvia Amaral Figueiredo ) 278 (IDSM, 2013).
[50]
The Tragedy of the Commons

Garrett Hardin

Science 1968 10.1126/science.162.3859.1243

Showing 50 of 60 references

Cited By
140
Society & Natural Resources
AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Envir...
Metrics
140
Citations
60
References
Details
Published
Oct 12, 2016
Vol/Issue
6(1)
License
View
Cite This Article
João Vitor Campos-Silva, Carlos A. Peres (2016). Community-based management induces rapid recovery of a high-value tropical freshwater fishery. Scientific Reports, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep34745