Critical success factors and challenges for Landscape-Scale wildlife corridor governance and management: Ideas to inform good practice

Brawn, David (2018) Critical success factors and challenges for Landscape-Scale wildlife corridor governance and management: Ideas to inform good practice. Masters by Coursework thesis, Murdoch University.

Abstract

This research project aimed to identify challenges and critical success factors (success factors) that impact on the successful governance and management of landscape-scale wildlife corridor developments around the World. Corridors aim to provide habitat connectivity over large geographies to preserve and enhance flora and fauna biodiversity under threat particularly from anthropogenic actions. Key stakeholder relationships and how Corridors are managed are considered to play an important role in achieving Corridor aims.

Semi structured interviews and a quantitative literature review were used to identify challenges and success factors. UNESCO guidelines, a framework of 4 governance themes (network; planning; stakeholder relations; and community relations) and 6 management themes (resources; government; private property; fundraising; scientific research; and media and communications) informed the research methods. Semi structured interviews were conducted, by skype or phone, with 18 Corridor managers from 4 Australasian Corridors including the Great Eastern Ranges Initiative, Gondwana Link, Habitat 1410 and Reconnecting Northland (NZ). A systematic quantitative literature review identified challenges and success factors in 70 relevant scholarly papers accessed using reputable online databases. The two studies collected many ideas from experts grouped into 49 challenges and 47 success factors and segmented by the ten governance or management themes.

Important challenges were stakeholder relations; social network structure and management; private property conservation; fundraising and government relations/funding. Significant success factors included stakeholder collaboration and cooperation; direction and planning; community support; core entity direction and support; private property conservation and resources.

The findings highlight that governance and management processes are important drivers of Corridor performance. The research findings also point to a gap between academic and practitioner priorities highlighting issues with knowledge exchange.

The findings identify opportunities for improvement in corridor governance and management that provide guidance for practitioners, researchers, and other interested parties.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters by Coursework)
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Veterinary and Life Sciences
Supervisor(s):	Hughes, Michael
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/41602

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