Elephanta Island: World Heritage, Cultural Conservation and Options for Nature Conservation
Elephanta Island lies within a large natural harbour 7 km east of Mumbai, India, and is the site of several cave temples devoted to the Hindu deity Siva dated 4th to 9th century AD. The number, scale and quality of the bas-reliefs and sculptures within the temples, together with their uniqueness and setting, secured inscription as a World Heritage (Cultural) Site in 1987. Otherwise, the silvan nature of the island contrasts vividly with the densely populated city nearby that is largely bereft of urban greenspace. Could conservation measures for the cave temples have incidental benefit for the natural environments of the island, providing an economical means of securing a natural conservation area for Mumbai inhabitants? Exploring this apparently simple question revealed a complex situation necessitating consideration of issues well beyond the techniques of either cultural or nature conservation.
The Rise and Fall (?) of Hội An, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Vietnam
The title of UNESCO “World Heritage Site” is a much desired marker of quality tourism. Yet social scientists rarely discuss the designation’s impact on specific locales, the programme’s effectiveness or its negative effects. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the World Heritage Site of Hội An in Vietnam since 1998 permits exploration of the practices, processes and outcomes of achieving World Heritage Site status, as well as of the impact of that status on the lives of local people. The World Heritage project fails in its approach to cultural heritage in less affluent destinations, hardly protects material heritage and possibly contributes to the destruction of the sites that it aims to protect.
Seedling survivorship, growth, and response to disturbance in Belizean mangal
Species zonation patterns across tidal gradients in mangrove forests are formed by successful seedling establishment and maintained by replacement of adults by conspecific seedlings. These two processes rarely have been examined experimentally in neotropical mangal. We studied survivorship and growth of seedlings of two species of mangrove, Rhizophora mangle L. and Avicennia germinans (L.) Steam, across a tidal gradient in Belize, Central America. Propagules of each species were planted in common gardens at tidal elevations corresponding to lowest low water (LLW), mean water (MW), and highest high water (HHW). Sixty-nine percent of Rhizophora seedlings planted at MW and 56% of those planted at LLW survived 1 year. Forty-seven percent of MW Avicennia seedlings also survived 1 year. No individuals of either species survived at HHW, and neither did any LLW Avicennia seedlings. Among the surviving Rhizophora seedlings, LLW seedlings grew more rapidly in terms of height, diameter, leaf production, and biomass than did MW seedlings. Insect herbivory was twice as high on MW seedlings as on LLW Rhizophora seedlings. We also examined the response of established Rhizophora seedlings to experimental removal of the adult Rhizophora canopy. Seedlings in canopy removal areas had higher survivorship, grew twice as fast, produced more leaves, and had less than half the herbivory of seedlings growing beneath an intact canopy. These results provide insights into underlying causes and maintenance of zonation in Caribbean mangrove forests. Mangrove forests, or mangal, are characterized by one or more species of salt-tolerant trees that form distinct monospecific zones along tropical protected coastlines (Davis, 1940; Lugo and Snedaker, 1974; Chapman, 1976; Tomlinson, 1986). On neotropical coastlines, mature stands of the red mangrove Rhizophora mangle L. (Rhizophoraceae) extend from the lowest reaches of the intertidal to the highest reaches of the tides, with maximum density between lowest low water (LLW) and mean water (MW). Mature Avicennia germinans (L.) Steam (Avicenniaceae), the black mangrove, dominate the regions between MW and high water (HW). The white mangrove (Laguncularia racemosa [L.] Gaertn., Combretaceae) and the buttonwood (Conocarpus erectus L., Combretaceae) predominate from HW to highest high water (HHW) (Da