From parachuting to partnership: Fostering collaborative research in protected areas

Research in protected areas (PAs) is often dominated by scientists from outside the conservation agencies managing them. This can potentially lead to misalignment with local needs, insensitivity to the local context, and a lack of investment in and use of local expertise. These issues often arise when international researchers work in another country without local engagement (known as “parachute science”). Despite PAs being key end-users of actionable science, there is limited understanding of the prevalence and impact of parachute science in these areas.

Here, we investigate parachute versus collaborative research in two national parks in the Global South (Kruger National Park, South Africa; Nahuel Huapi National Park, Argentina), and one park from a developed economy (Kakadu National Park, Australia). To explore the prevalence, risks, benefits, and complexities of research practices, we analyse patterns of authorship, funding, and acknowledgment in a random sample of peer-reviewed papers from research conducted in these parks.

Our findings show a higher incidence of potential parachute science in Kruger National Park (18% of papers with only out-of-country authors) compared to Nahuel Huapi (4%) and Kakadu (2%) National Parks. However, the occurrence of internationally collaborative research (national and international authors) was double in Global South parks (35-38%) than in the Australian park (18%).

The study illustrates the potential benefits of international collaboration for PAs, including increased research productivity, expanded funding sources, and possibly higher impact and visibility of published studies. PAs in developed countries may have fewer opportunities to obtain those benefits.

Most papers, even those with in-country authors, lacked authors affiliated with the agency managing the PA, and often failed to even acknowledge these agencies. This suggests the potential for a different form of parachute science (which we term “park parachuting”) in which lack of local involvement may hamper integration of research with management.

Synthesis and applications: Establishing conditions that foster collaboration between national and international researchers, and between PA agency staff and external researchers (regardless of their nationality), would enable parks to better serve as catalysts for research collaboration. This collaborative approach can facilitate access to additional funding, enhance research capacity, increase research productivity, and amplify research impact.

Methods
Literature search strategy and inclusion criteria

Literature searches were conducted via the Clarivate Web of Science search facility using the “all databases” (which includes the Web of Science Core Collection, SciELO, BIOSIS Previews and others) and “all editions” options. The search strings consisted of the name of the park [(“Kruger National Park”); (“Nahuel Huapi National Park” OR “Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi” OR “Lake Nahuel Huapi” OR “Lago Nahuel Huapi”); (“Kakadu National Park”)] and we selected the “topic” as search field. According to Clarivate, the “topic” field searches for the specified search terms in the title, abstract, or keywords, and therefore will miss papers using the park name in the main text only. We restricted the search to journal articles published between 2010 and 2020. Each article was assigned a random number. We then assessed the relevant papers in ascending order until we reached a maximum of 100 relevant papers. Although parachute science practices appear to be more prevalent in publications in English than in those in other languages (Miller et al., 2023), there is a growing awareness of the detrimental effects of ignoring non-English publications (Amano et al., 2021). Therefore, we included papers for Nahuel Huapi published in Spanish (13% of our random sample).

To be included, studies needed to be based on research within the park, have made use of data or specimens collected from the park, or have used the park as a case study in descriptive studies. Articles were also included if the park formed a central component in social-ecological studies (e.g., community relationships, human-wildlife conflict or livestock/wildlife diseases around parks). Articles making a passing reference to a park, or referencing research or other papers from a park, were excluded. 

Data extraction and analysis

Metadata for all authors was extracted, including author rank (primary or co-author) and their primary institutional affiliation. Author affiliations were coded based on (i) nationality (country of all authors’ primary affiliation) and (ii) managing agency (whether or not an author was affiliated with the respective national park agency).

In addition, the funding sources for the research were extracted; funding sources were most commonly listed within the acknowledgements section (Cronin, 2001; Mejia, & Kajikawa, 2018), or as a separate funding statement. We classified the funding as originating from the country where the national park was located (“national funding”), or from another country (“international funding”). References to non-financial contributions to the research by the park agency, such as logistical support or field assistance, mentioned in the acknowledgements section were also extracted. We did not consider a mention of a park-issued permit as reflecting genuine acknowledgement of engagement, but rather as an acknowledgement of compliance with conditions required to gain access to the parks.

To estimate the academic ranking of the journal where research was published and thus the potential academic visibility and reach of a study, we used the Clarivate journal impact factor (2021). In cases where no impact factor was assigned, we recorded a zero. We also calculated the average number of citations per year as a metric of the paper’s uptake and impact in the literature. We calculated this by dividing the total number of citations recorded in Clarivate Web of Science by the number of years since publication up to 2023.

References

Amano, T., Rios Rojas, C., Boum II, Y., Calvo, M., & Misra, B.B. (2021). Ten tips for overcoming language barriers in science. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(9), 1119-1122.
Cronin, B. (2001). Acknowledgement trends in the research literature of information science. Journal of Documentation, 57(3), 427–433.
Mejia, C. & Kajikawa, Y. (2018). Using acknowledgement data to characterize funding organizations by the types of research sponsored: The case of robotics research. Scientometrics, 114 (3), 883–904.