Evaluating protected areas selection processes: a case study of land use planning in British Columbia.

A key component of the LRMP process involved implementation of a province-wide Protected Areas Strategy. Its purpose was to protect unique ecosystems and cultural heritage, to provide recreation and to contribute toward the long-term growth of BC's tourism industry and, thus, the diversification of the BC economy. Established in 1992, the strategy had a goal of doubling the total land base allocated to PAs from 6% to 12%.

To help facilitate this PA expansion, the BC Ministry of Parks developed the Parks Plan 90 blueprint for protected area designation. This included the following publications:

* Special Features for BC Parks, an inventory of special geophysical, biological, and cultural features, many of which were not already designated as parks or protected areas (Ministry of Parks 1990a);

* Landscapes for BC Parks (Ministry of Parks 1990b), a description of 59 landscape types, 27 with partial representation and 15 with no representation in the BC Parks system.

The intent of these documents was to recommend candidate sensitive areas that should be considered priorities for designation as PAs within the province's broader LRMP processes. These recommended areas were selected based on their perceived ability to meet specific goals associated with representativeness and inclusion of special features (British Columbia 1993a). A combination of environmental, social, and economic criteria was used to define the extent to which the candidate PAs met each goal. Table 2 summarizes these criteria.

Multistakeholder LRMP planning tables were created for each region of British Columbia to prepare regional land use plans. The planning tables evaluated potential PAs against selection criteria within the context of potential land use scenarios that the planning table developed. After much stakeholder input, the planning table's recommendations for PA designation and other regional land uses were submitted to Cabinet for final approval (British Columbia 1993b). By 2005, LRMPs were completed for 80% of BC regions and 12% of provincial lands were placed under PA status (British Columbia 2004).

Research Methods

The purpose of this research was to determine "What criteria were deemed important in the selection of protected areas?" and, "To what extent were these criteria employed in the designation of protected areas in British Columbia?" The first step in the research was to establish generic PA selection criteria based on a literature review, so that they could be used to frame the ensuing evaluation process. The next step was to evaluate the significance of these PA selection criteria by surveying stakeholders who had participated in a specific subset of the province's LRMP planning tables. The following sections describe these methods in more detail.

Literature Review

The literature review involved several components. First, the history, roles, and definitions associated with PA designation and development in North American and other jurisdictions were examined (Paridaen 2005). Second, a list of generic environmental, social, and economic criteria for PA selection was developed from the literature (Table 4). Particular attention was focused on identifying social and economic factors that might be relevant and important to consider in PA designation processes. These factors were then refined to reflect and complement the Protected Area Strategy designation criteria suggested as guidelines for the province's LRMP processes.

Survey Design

The resulting PA selection criteria formed the foundation for a survey used to probe stakeholder perspectives on the value of these factors in designating protected areas. The questionnaire used Likert-type scaling procedures to examine the perceived importance and utility of 24 criteria in the selection of newly designated protected areas within specific LRMP regions. Respondents were asked to rate the importance of the criteria for PA selection on the following five point scale (Figure 1).

Due to budgetary constraints, the often-isolated locations of targeted respondents, and challenges in establishing direct communication with informants, the questionnaire was designed for use in a standardized, self-administered, mail-back format (Gliner and Morgan 2000).

Case Study Selection

Respondents from four LRMP regions were targeted for participation in the survey. These case study regions were Mackenzie, Cassiar-Iskut-Stikine, Okan-agan-Shuswap, and Kalum South (Figure 2). They were all rural regions with:

* an interest in diversifying their economies into a range of nonextractive resource activities

* candidate PAs possessing the potential to support the development of gateway communities

* stakeholders participating in the most recently completed LRMP processes at the time of the research (i.e. 2003)

* relatively current contact lists of past LRMP stakeholders

* stakeholders who had not participated in previous LRMP assessment survey research (Gunton et al. 2003a, 2003b).

It was felt that these factors would create a research environment in which interested, informed, and motivated respondents could be encouraged to participate in the study.

Surveying Procedures and Response Rates

Contact lists for potential survey respondents were derived from the LRMP coordinators in each of the four case-study regions. In three cases, surveys were sent directly to potential respondents. However, in one case the LRMP coordinator acted as an intermediary in distributing them. Overall, 170 surveys were eventually distributed to the LRMP participants between March and April of 2003. From the initial and a second follow-up mailing, 46 completed questionnaires were returned. This represented an overall 27% response rate. This paper reports on the combined responses of informants. While some variations in responses may occur within each region, the limited sample size within each LRMP area makes it difficult to establish if statistically significant differences in opinion existed between respondents from each region.

Data Analysis

Findings from the analysis of the data are presented using descriptive statistics. In particular, frequency and mean score statistics were used to establish the perceived level of importance and use of specific PA selection criteria. In addition, a systematic assessment procedure was used to determine the level and nature of consensus, or "group think," that existed with respect to specific opinions on PA criteria (de Loe 1995). This approach addressed the problem of interpreting mean scores when the cut-off between important and very important ratings was unclear, or when a high frequency of neutral scores occurred in tandem with high responses to a more polarized category such as interpreting 12 neutral and 14 important responses to the same issue. The overriding principle guiding this approach was that the greater the number of respondents that felt a particular way about a statement, the stronger the consensus that exists. In this research, consensus categories were defined as High, Medium, Low, and None. The calibration of these categories is described in Table 3.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

In combination, these statistical techniques provide the basis for describing the ways in which PA designation criteria were perceived and used in the LRMP processes, as well as how LRMP management objectives impacted the establishment of these special areas.

Findings

The following section describes the key findings emanating from the research. In particular, a profile of respondents, their views on the general importance of specific PA selection criteria, and their perspectives on the role these criteria played in selecting PAs within the LRMP processes are presented.

Profile of Respondents

Respondents represented a broad range of stakeholder groups. Overall, the largest proportions of them were affiliated with conservation (24%), tourism/recreation (22%), government (17%), and forestry (17%) organizations. Other respondents reported affiliations with specific nongovernment organizations, transportation interest groups, and municipal and regional district governments.

For the most part, the respondents were long-term residents of the regions in which they had participated as LRMP stakeholders. Almost two thirds of them (63%) had lived in their LRMP region for over eleven years. Of this group, 37% had lived in the region for over 21 years. About 11% of stakeholders did not live in the region in which the LRMP planning process had occurred, but worked extensively with local interests groups from that area on an ongoing basis.

About two thirds (63%) of the respondents stated that they were PA users. About a third (33%) of them indicated they were relatively heavy users of these areas--using such spaces more than three times annually for work or recreation purposes. The remainder of users were less involved, visiting these places 1-3 times per year.

This profile suggests that the respondents represented a diverse range of stakeholder interests. These informants had several years of exposure to the LRMP areas they had helped plan. For the most part they had also been users of their area's PAs. As such, they and their non-user counterparts represented a valuable cross-section of stakeholders from whom useful insights into the use of specific PA criterion in site designation processes could be gathered.

Generic Protected Area Criteria Ratings