The recovery of wild tigers in India and Nepal is a remarkable conservation achievement, but it sets the stage for increased human-wildlife conflict where parks are limited in size and where tigers reside outside reserves. We deployed an innovative technology, the TrailGuard AI camera-alert system, which runs on-the-edge artificial intelligence algorithms to detect tigers and poachers and transmit real-time images to designated authorities responsible for managing prominent tiger landscapes in India. We successfully captured and transmitted the first images of tigers using cameras with embedded AI and detected poachers. Notifications of tiger images were received in real time, approximately 30 seconds from camera trigger to appearing in a smart phone app. We review use cases of this AI-based real-time alert system for managers and local communities and suggest how the system could help monitor tigers and other endangered species, detect poaching, and provide early warnings for human-wildlife conflict.

The community conservation enterprises (CCEs) approach is used for advancing integrated conservation and development goals in Sub-Saharan Africa. CCEs aim to enhance resident livelihoods and reduce dependency on park resources. However, the impacts of CCEs are rarely demonstrable. This exploratory study of residents living adjacent to the Greater Virunga Landscape (GVL) in Rwanda and Uganda helps to address this gap by examining the household livelihood strategy of CCEs among GVL residents. Face-to-face interviews with 571 residents were conducted to assess satisfaction with their household livelihood security (food, education, health, financial). Results indicated that investment in CCEs has led to significant improvements in the livelihoods of residents in Rwanda. However, residents of Uganda reported marginal improvements. This study demonstrates the potential of CCEs for improving food and financial security in areas where tourism growth is substantial. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Clearly, establishing protected areas is a critical element of protecting and preserving our global biodiversity but the effective management of these protected areas to meet conservation goals is equally critical to this success. Many protected area management effectiveness (PAME) methodologies have evolved over the last several decades, and these efforts have been very important for determining resource adequacy and effectiveness of organizational level management practices. However, there remains much needed discussion of how protected area managers can improve management effectiveness since several meta-analyses have estimated that “only 20–50

Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement have changed the social and political landscape in which environmental educators work. To meet these challenges and to assess current training needs, we invited members of three national U.S. organizations to rate 28 different professional competencies in terms of importance and preparedness to perform. Our results showed that educators have the greatest need for training in diversity, equity, and inclusion; and communicating about complex and controversial issues. Additionally, environmental educators prefer training that is delivered through in-person exercises, online courses, and participation in learning communities. This information can help prioritize future professional development.

Illegal activities pose challenges to the conservation of mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) across the Virunga Landscape (VL). This paper investigates the relationship between household livelihood security (HLS) and the perceived prevalence of illegal activities across the VL. Results from a survey of 223 residents of areas adjacent to the VL in Uganda and Rwanda reveal varied links between human livelihoods and illegal activities threatening wildlife. For example, while poaching appears to be negatively associated with health and financial security among residents, it is positively associated with education security, indicating that education may be contributing to illegal activities threatening wildlife. Food security constraints were also found to be significantly associated with poaching. Finally, findings suggest that although HLS investments are essential in improving local community livelihoods, only food and financial security are the most effective means of reducing illegal activities in Virunga.

Higher education increasingly requires teamwork to get the job done. Yet, turning a faculty of independent-minded operators into a team of cooperators and collaborators is a daunting challenge. A reward system that encourages competition for scarce resources makes it even more difficult to motivate faculty to rally around a common cause. In this paper, we draw from historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, to discuss what it takes for leaders to get rivals to work together for the good of the order. First, we propose that academic leaders do a better job of emphasizing the mutually reinforcing nature of teaching, scholarship, and service in carrying out the University's purpose, as well as better rewarding different kinds of faculty contributions to that purpose. We reason further that the best way to do this is by cultivating an academic environment that promotes and rewards teamwork. By shifting the administrative focus from an individual orientation to a team orientation, we believe the environment within which faculty members live and work can be made more engaging, rewarding, and productive. We then apply four of Lincoln's leadership qualities: (a) acknowledging when failed policies demand a change in direction, (b) leading by example, (c) understanding the emotional needs of the team, and (d) establishing trust and keeping your word to the challenge of transforming a highly individualistic faculty into an academic team. This requires a clear vision and having all team members understand the bigger picture and their roles and responsibilities in bringing the bigger picture into focus. Finally, we discuss the power of teams to accomplish what cannot be accomplished individually, and take the discussion beyond the college campus to include implications for the larger park and recreation profession. What we learn from studying Lincoln is that the key to success rests in a self-assurance that allows leaders to surround themselves with highly competent contrarians while simultaneously persuading them to embrace a unifying vision that serves the best interests of all.

In this paper, we discuss the role of public parks in telling the nation’s story via statues, memorials, and monuments. We ground our discussion in affect theory, which addresses the affective responses statues, memorials, and monuments elicit in visitors. Of particular note is affective dissonance, which suggests that a statue, memorial, or monument may evoke a variety of conflicting affective responses. The way in which visitors reconcile these conflicting affective responses shapes their public memory of significant events in our nation’s history. As more is learned about the checkered past of individuals venerated in statues, memorials, and monuments, how should public park administrators respond? We provide several examples of statues, memorials, and monuments that are controversial in nature, and discuss how public park administrators have responded to the challenge of telling the nation’s story through the reinterpretation of events. We also consider the complexity of the management implications, focusing in particular on who should be driving the decisions made. We then discuss the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, as a good object lesson in how to deal with the affective dissonance involved in recasting public spaces. In so doing, we underscore the importance of frame theory in educating visitors about the preservation, modification, or removal of existing statues, memorials, or monuments.

The recent social upheaval in the wake of George Floyd’s death is reminiscent of the country’s turmoil in the late 1960s. In response to that social upheaval, President Lyndon Johnson charged what came to be known as the Kerner Commission with investigating the riots’ causes across 20 major American cities and recommending what could be done to prevent their reoccurrence. Among the most prominently mentioned causes of the riots was “inadequate recreation areas and facilities” in impoverished urban areas (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968, p. 104). In its recommendations, however, the Kerner Commission largely ignored the importance of recreation areas and facilities. Our commentary discusses why that was the case then, and why that should not be the case now.

The recent social upheaval in the wake of George Floyd’s death is reminiscent of the country’s turmoil in the late 1960s. In response to that social upheaval, President Lyndon Johnson charged what came to be known as the Kerner Commission with investigating the riots’ causes across 20 major American cities and recommending what could be done to prevent their reoccurrence. Among the most prominently mentioned causes of the riots was “inadequate recreation areas and facilities” in impoverished urban areas (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968, p. 104). In its recommendations, however, the Kerner Commission largely ignored the importance of recreation areas and facilities. Our commentary discusses why that was the case then, and why that should not be the case now.

Illegal activities and use of park resources are the main challenges facing mountain gorilla ( Gorilla beringei beringei ) conservation and the protection of their habitats in the East Africa’s Greater Virunga Transboundary Landscape (GVTL). Indigenous residents around GVTL are considered the primary illegal users of park resources. Despite this, there is limited understanding of the current and past perceptions of indigenous residents living in communities adjacent to two GVTL parks; Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda. Equally, there is also limited understanding regarding the actual incidences of illegal activities inside both parks. This paper addresses these gaps. Perception data were collected from indigenous residents living adjacent to both parks. Further, Ranger-based Monitoring (RbM) data from both parks were analyzed to determine actual numbers and types of illegal activities over the 9-year period. Interestingly, findings indicated that residents perceived the prevalence of illegal activities to be decreasing across GVTL. To the contrary, RbM findings indicated that the number of actual illegal activities was increasing significantly, particularly in Volcanoes National Park. The discrepancy found between the two perspectives provides for a discussion of the social biases potentially present in these data, and their implications for management. Results also illuminated the subsistence-related nature of most illegal behaviors and suggest that to reduce illegal activities and local dependency on park resources, park management must work with communities and support them in tapping into alternative livelihoods and finding ways to address community household subsistence needs.

The coronavirus pandemic, for all of its damage to human health and well-being, has brought to light the wisdom underlying the idea of One Health, whose advocates reason that health is a reciprocal relationship between our species and the environment that sustains us. What is good for people should also be good for the environment, and what is good for the environment should also be good for people. Their preferred future is one in the same. As the recent days, weeks, and months have also shown, leisure is not necessarily a cure for what ails us. Indeed, leisure pursuits may have contributed to the pandemic's spread. What, then, are we to make of leisure in the time of the coronavirus? We believe it is a fundamental lesson in ecology.

To travel hopefully is to have faith that an investment today will pay dividends tomorrow. In this article, the authors discuss several different kinds of professional investments that have paid off for them throughout their academic careers. Some of these dividends are obvious. They can be measured in dollars and cents earned as a result of sustained professional involvement. Other dividends are less obvious. They can be measured in a wealth of relationships and experiences that contribute to a full and satisfying life. While acknowledging the importance of financial dividends, especially early in one’s career, the authors emphasize the importance of social/relational dividends that enrich later life.

We believe the education of future park, recreation, and tourism professionals is incomplete if it does not prepare them for moral leadership in a participatory democracy. We anchor our thinking in Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture and build our case by revisiting Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, in which he admonished higher education for not preparing students, regardless of major, for assuming responsibility for their country's moral character based upon conscientious consideration of civilization's major philosophical ideas. We then apply Bloom's criticism to the education of park, recreation, and tourism students. Based on our analysis, we implore educators in our field to live up to their educational promise by embracing service learning and community-engaged learning as critical components of our students' professional preparation to ready them for civic engagement as well as a career in parks, recreation, and tourism.

In this article, we discuss the role of administrators in contributing toward a more perfect academic world through differentiated workloads. We begin by envisioning what a perfect academic world might look like and then describe ways in which the academic world professors inhabit falls short of that ideal. We then explain how differentiated workloads might help close the gap between the perfect academic world we envision and the imperfect academic world professors inhabit. Finally, we suggest how intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional barriers to differentiated workloads can be negotiated, as well as calling on academic administrators to implement differentiated workloads to make institutions of higher learning more accommodating.

Understanding the development of pro-environmental behavioral intentions and behaviors remains one of the greatest challenges for environmental educators worldwide. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model as a theoretical foundation, we developed surveys to evaluate the influence of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Junior Ranger program on youths' (ages 8-13) elaboration (comprised of awareness, interest, and cognitive engagement) and stewardship behaviors. Results suggest that these programs had significant immediate influences on both elaboration as well as stewardship intentions and behaviors. We then investigated whether elaboration was predictive of children's behavioral intentions and self-reported behaviors associated with stewardship using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results suggest that elaboration accounted for 88% of the variance in participants' stewardship behaviors/intentions.

The history of parks and recreation is deeply rooted in child's play. From Joseph Lee's writings about the developmental benefits of child's play at the beginning of the 20th century to the establishment of the University of Illinois's Motor Performance and Play Research Laboratory in the 1960s and 1970s, child's play has been a central focus of our field's leading philosophers, scholars, and practitioners. However, of late, the topic of child's play has all but disappeared from our literature. The question we ask in this paper is “why?” What we conclude from our questioning is both good and bad news for parks and recreation. The good news is that our field was clearly ahead of its time in appreciating the critical contributions of child's play to human growth and development. The bad news is that, somewhere along the line, we seem to have lost interest in the subject. Meanwhile, academicians in other fields are now beginning to appreciate, research, and write about the significance of child's play, and they are replacing park and recreation professionals as leading advocates for the importance of child's play in human growth and development. We conclude our paper by discussing what we can and should learn from this turn of events.

To identify critical training needs in the Interpretation and Education (I&E) Division within the National Park Service (NPS), a team of experts and practitioners, including six academic institutions, the National Association for Interpretation, and the NPS, developed a comprehensive list of knowledge, skills, and abilities thought to be relevant for providing and managing interpretation in the 21st century. Using this list of 80 competencies, we received over 1,000 NPS I&E employees’ responses regarding their beliefs about the importance and their level of preparation performing these tasks. The results identified not only the most important competencies, but also three broad training needs: skills related to research-evaluation literacy, engaging new and diverse audiences, and using emerging and existing social media technologies. Preparing interpreters to perform these skills at the highest level appears imperative if the NPS is to maintain relevance and continue to meet the demands of 21st-century audiences.

In this paper we examine the responsibility of professors and park and recreation professionals in public discourse. Working from a basic understanding of the American Association of University Professors' "Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure," we begin by discussing the special responsibility professors have to be accurate, restrained, and respectful of differing points of view, even as they advocate for their own points of view. In making our case, we describe three "hats" professors commonly wear: that of educator, researcher, and private citizen, and the opportunities and obligations pinned to each hat. We pay special attention to "extramural utterances," those occasions when professors go beyond their roles as educators and researchers to speak up and out in public life as private citizens. We then apply the lessons learned about the responsibility of professors in public discourse to park and recreation professionals who may also be inspired to speak up and out publicly about contemporary events. Finally, we conclude by offering some general rules of thumb for professors and park and recreation professionals who wish to make their voices heard in public without jeopardizing their job security or doing damage to the integrity of their profession.

This investigation examines the development of two scales that measure elaboration and behaviors associated with stewardship in children. The scales were developed using confirmatory factor analysis to investigate their construct validity, reliability, and psychometric properties. Results suggest that a second-order factor model structure provides the best fit. This model produced: (1) a stewardship elaboration scale measuring interest and cognitive engagement in stewardship issues, and (2) a stewardship behavior scale measuring in-park, community, and home behaviors. These scales will be useful for evaluating environmental educational programs focused on environmental and park stewardship. The scales may also help researchers assess whether environmental education results in participants elaborating on persuasive messaging, thereby increasing the likelihood that behavioral intentions leading to behavior change will occur.

Mountain gorilla tourism has played an important role in the conservation of mountain gorillas in Rwanda. Significant revenue from mountain gorilla tourism has motivated the government of Rwanda to protect wildlife using strict protectionism measures to conservation. This approach however, amidst high human-wildlife conflicts among local residents' neighboring parks, has not led to reduced wildlife threats such as poaching. The purpose of this study finds out whether mountain gorilla tourism has benefited communities around the park and generated the support needed for conservation. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with both open-ended and closed-ended questions. Research findings revealed that mountain gorilla tourism through the tourism revenue sharing scheme has not directly benefited local communities and therefore has not addressed human-induced conservation threats. The limitations of mountain gorilla tourism opportunities at Volcanoes National Park to reduce wildlife threats and generate support for conservation were attributed to limited access to tourism benefits including the revenue sharing, high costs of living adjacent to the park, lack of community involvement and participation in the park management and decision-making process.