The Mountain Protected Area Network: a Testimonial

Stan Stevens

Adjunct Associate Professor

Department of Geosciences

University of Massachusetts, Amherst 01003

April 2005

I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the Mountain Protected Area Network and to Larry Hamilton’s efforts in keeping the network active and growing over the past fifteen years. The newsletter and the gatherings associated with this network have created a new level of communication and interaction among mountain protected area managers and experts worldwide.

The network has played an important role in my own career. The initial gathering of mountain protected area experts in 1991 (The International Consultation on Protected Areas in Mountain Environments) that Larry convened in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was pivotal for me. That gathering catalyzed friendships and working relationships that I have drawn on over the years since. At Hawaii Volcanoes National Park I had the opportunity to work closely with Bing Lucas for the first time, and this led directly to his nominating me to membership in IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas, which he was then chairing, and to participation at the IVth World Parks Congress in Caracas, Venezuela the next year. The Parks Congress, in turn, led directly to my writing and editing Conservation Through Cultural Survival: Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas (Washington: Island Press, 1997). Conversations and connections with Bing Lucas and Pat Devlin at the Hawaii Volcanoes meeting, moreover, sparked my interest in New Zealand protected areas and my subsequent research trip there in 1998-1999.

Network connections continue to be useful to me in my research. On several occasions I was able to rely on network members when I needed up-to-date information on innovative park management efforts in diverse parts of the world. When I was recently seeking, for example, to advise Lhakpa Norbu Sherpa, team leader for management planning for Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park, on tourism management issues I was able to obtain contact information from Larry Hamilton for network members with relevant experience in Peru.

The newsletter has also helped inspire one of my current projects. I first heard about Alton Byers’ new research in the alpine areas of Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park from coverage in the newsletter. This led me to get in touch with Byers, and, together with network member Lhakpa Norbu Sherpa, we have now developed a collaborative research proposal to the National Science Foundation for a project that will examine changing alpine land use, alpine environmental change, and local concerns and ideas about alpine conservation and then use this information to inform alpine conservation and development planning and programs by The Mountain Institute, a recently-formed grassroots Sherpa alpine conservation group, and Sagarmatha National Park.