Introduction

Natural resources are important for the development of rural and urban communities, through the production of environmental goods and services, the supply of raw materials and the generation of jobs, so innovation in the development of integral systems, works, actions and sustainable practices that help to conserve genetic resources, induce a new productive structure, and take advantage of soil and water sustainably is necessary (^{Cadena-Iñiguez et al., 2016}). For this purpose, it has been sought for communities to become aware about the importance of the conservation of ecosystems, the interaction between their components and their interdependency, as well as to recognize our intervention within them (^{Corraliza, 1996}).

Sustainable use and protection of wildlife are used as conservation strategies, complex activities where the efforts operate at different scales in time and space (The Nature Conservancy et al., 2003). Some of these strategies are framed by the creation of natural reserves, national parks, natural monuments, wildlife sanctuaries, protected landscapes, resource reserves, natural biotic areas or anthropological reserves, multiple management areas, biosphere reserves, in agreement with the General Law of Ecological Equilibrium and Environmental Protection (Ley General de Equilibrio Ecológico y Protección al Ambiente, ^{LGEEPA, 2016}) and world heritage sites, according to UNESCO.

In the global context, the objective of these conservation strategies is to contribute to the sustained development of living beings (^{UICN, 1980}), and to maintain diversity based on the heterogeneity of chemical structures, which are the molecular base of inheritance, to the variation in ecological processes and niches in the ecosystems (^{CONABIO, 2000}). In order to fulfill this, international agreements, conventions and treaties have been signed, whose main objective consists in conserving biodiversity, applying political instruments such as those mentioned previously; however, they have not fulfilled satisfactorily their objectives and goals. This is due to the lack of involvement of all the actors, such as land owners, decision makers (government-administrations), technicians responsible, researchers, experts in the matter, and the population in general (^{CONABIO, 2012}).

Therefore, the conservation actions could only be successful with the active participation of the local communities and the others involved in the subject (^{Ortega-Rubio et al., 1995}). In this sense, a successful case of such strategies should have as indicators the actions in different sectors of the population, which contribute to the development of processes and innovations in the techniques and exploitation of local natural resources, based on reorientation and revaluation, and promoting the transfer of technologies that facilitate reaching the objectives (^{Cadena-Iñiguez et al., 2016}).

Recently it has been identified that there is no follow-up or evaluation of the commitments and agreements; there are also no mechanisms to evaluate the performance of the different initiatives of conservation that allow verifying the efficacy of the programs and their possible success or failure (^{Clark, 1996}). In this sense, the evaluation of environmental policies should be a legal requirement for an adequate public management and institutional learning (^{SHCP, 2008}). ^{Brooks et al. (2006)} establish that the evaluation of conservation strategies at the international level is recent, so it is considered that a greater effort is needed in this area.

At the global level, natural protected areas are considered the main tool to conserve the heterogeneity of ecosystems (^{Sánchez-Cordero et al., 2007}). However, there are other policy instruments that contribute to the conservation of biodiversity. They involve the exploitation of wildlife; wildlife management areas (WMA) are considered among them, as well as game preserves and management units for the conservation of wildlife (unidades de manejo para la conservación de la vida silvestre, UMA) (^{LGVS, 2016}).

The differences in resource conservation between developed countries and developing countries in Latin America are their conservation policies, their ways of integrating interdisciplinary working teams, the conformation of natural protected areas, the active involvement of the population, and the implementation of community projects (^{Miteva et al., 2012}; ^{Davies et al., 2013}).

The objective of this study was to carry out a literature review about wildlife conservation strategies, under an international context during 1970-2010. For this purpose, the information was analyzed by thematic groups and classified by developed and developing countries.

Materials and Methods

A review of publications (articles, legal framework and electronic books elaborated by international organizations) during the 1970-2010 period was performed; these written works were organized, analyzed and classified using key words based on their title and abstract.

To determine and classify the literature related to international conservation strategies in developed and developing countries, a literature review was carried out in search engines and electronic databases, using words and keywords to make more efficient the search for studies published in relation to the themes of interest.

The articles were downloaded from the EBSCOhost provider of the Academic Search Complete Database, the legal framework from the webpage Jurídica FAOLEX that contains laws and acts included in the FAO mandate. The electronic books (publications by international institutions) were obtained from the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), IUCN (International Union for Nature Conservation, Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza), OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), and CIC (International Council on hunting and for the Conservation of wildlife) webpages, among others.

Once the information was gathered, it was ordered and classified through the Microsoft Word End Note application; likewise, it was backed up and organized by bibliographic references and by type of country: developed countries (Australia, Canada, Spain, United States, England, New Zealand and Taiwan) and developing countries (Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, India, Kenya, México and Mozambique).

In addition, it was organized based on its geographic coverage: national context (in those cases where the study refers to a country in particular), regional (when the publication considered study cases of nations from the same continent and/or region), and international (when the publication involved countries from different continents). Finally, it was classified in two thematic groups: 1) Conservation Strategies; and 2) Evaluation of Strategies. In the first, publications were included that made reference essentially to conservation programs; the keywords that were used were: “Áreas protegidas”, “Protected Areas”, “Ambiente”, “Environment”, “Conservación”, “Conservation”, “Estrategias”, “Strategy”, “Vida Silvestre” and “Wildlife”. In the second one, only publications that referred to the Evaluation of Conservation Strategies, and the keywords used were “Evaluación” and “Evaluation”.

Results and Discussion

One hundred and thirteen (113) publications from the 1970-2010 period were gathered: 56 articles, 19 laws and acts, and 38 electronic books (Table 1). Of these (N=113), only 5 % defines some way of evaluating the conservation strategies.

Scientific articles. The developed countries published more than the developing countries, with 62.5 % and 37.5 %, respectively (Table 1). This is because in the developed countries scientific knowledge is related to the production of goods, services and technologies, in addition to there being more sources of financing. As a result, there is more interest and priority in the generation of basic and applied science in the different social sectors. On the contrary, in the developing countries the research was performed mostly with subsidies from government or international institutions, where access to them depends on the current state of the economy of each country and globally.

The lack of vision at the global level when integrating research and on some occasions also the scarce recognition given to the studies carried out by developing countries are a limitation for the countries as such; as mentioned, the scarce access to updated scientific knowledge and the diffusion of scientific results toward productive sectors induces a vicious cycle that limits the development in the axes that allow the economic growth of society.

Legal framework. The developed countries had more legal instruments (57.9 %) compared to the developing countries (42.1 %) (Table 1). This is because the developed countries had a higher level of advancement in matters of environmental legislation and because society participates in decision making. In this sense, public policies are the government actions that seek to respond to various demands from society with the strategic use of political instruments to mitigate the national problems in environmental issues (^{Cadena-Iñiguez et al., 2016}).

Electronic books. The results indicate that organizations such as FAO and UICN publish more about case studies in developing countries (52.6 %), in contrast with developed countries (47.4 %) (Table 1). The main reason of this trend is because in these countries is where more biodiversity is found. In addition, to these, natural resources are an important source of income for their economy through the sale of inputs or goods where they have developing countries as main consumers. For this reason, the institutions intend to promote the reasonable use of natural resources.

Commonly, scientific articles are elaborated by scholars and researchers; the legal instruments are regularly structured without there being a public consult and electronic books are mostly made up by researchers with an integral vision, with local reach, and without considering objective and practical monitoring and evaluation methods (^{Stem et al., 2005}).

In terms of geographic coverage, the developed countries published more at the international level, while the developing countries did it regionally in the area of electronic books. Concerning the legal framework, both categories only publish at the national level. Likewise, the international coverage of scientific articles stands out in general (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Geographic coverage of the publications per type of country. 

In the developed countries, more was published about conservation strategies at the international and national level. Likewise, in the developing countries the publications referred to the international and regional context. Concerning the evaluation of strategies, in the developed countries they centered around the international scope and in the developing countries in the national scope (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Geographic coverage and themes of the publications per type of country. 

Although the evaluation of strategies is reported in the international and national scope, it is only done in a descriptive way and regarding the way of operating, neglecting the evaluation of their success or application. In this regard, ^{Brooks et al. (2006)} mention that the evaluations of these programs are recent and that some countries have generated information of their own based on their experiences and with the generation of reports about the status of their natural ecosystems (^{Stem et al., 2005}).

^{Brooks et al. (2006)} mention that without better in situ monitoring schemes, it is impossible to evaluate systematically how the different strategies respond to the challenges in conservation and that evaluation should be more integral and avoid monitoring only biological variables, since this turns out to be insufficient (^{Stem et al., 2005}). In turn, ^{Strange et al. (2007)} indicate that in developing countries it is possible to plan more systematically the conservation actions through the participation of experts in data generation, and the creation and implementation of new models. ^{García-Marmolejo et al. (2008)} point out that the contribution of the UMA system in México for conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity can be improved, including the development of educational wildlife management programs with a solid environmental legislation component, with the correct application of wildlife laws and the creation of connections in the countries between academic and governmental institutions with the aim of promoting work with wildlife experts at the regional and national level.

The study of each level in the hierarchical system contributes essentially to filling the void of new knowledge and to suggesting improvements in the conservation strategies (^{Ferraro et al., 2006}). This coincides with what ^{Cadena-Iñiguez et al. (2016)} propose, regarding correlation; they consider that actions should be taken into account that allow identifying the research and development priorities, integrating professional inter- and trans- disciplinary groups, designing mechanisms for transference of results, analyzing public policy impact, prospective planning, technological support, evaluating transference programs, applying the development of new products, processes and services. In turn, ^{Kleiman et al. (2000)} mention that too many conservation programs fail in educating the public or when facing sociopolitical obstacles, which affects the conservation of biodiversity in general.

^{Eigenbrod et al. (2010)} conclude that the future evaluations of the efficiency of conservation strategies should consider the degree of overlap of the different strategies to fully identify the most effective. Based on this, to solve the problematic in the evaluation of conservation programs, actions of research, training and dissemination of technologies that induce innovation should be promoted, as well as designing and developing participative methodologies, promoting processes of development of capacities to increase productivity, and driving the development of learning networks. Later, dissemination is an important process that makes public the reach of results where the problem that originated the research should be detailed, and that establishes the association between users, the solution suggested, indicators of public policies, impacts, innovations and evidences (^{Cadena-Íñiguez et al., 2016}). Therefore, these proposals are important and it is suggested that they form the basis for evaluating the success of conservation strategies of natural resources from different spatial scales and, particularly, where a holistic approach is promoted (^{Ortega-Argueta et al., 2016}).

In the design of the evaluation instruments to measure the success of conservation strategies, all the actors should be involved, including those who own the resources (land owners), decision makers (government-administrative institutions), experts in the matter (researchers and educational institutions), and the population at large. It is important to take into account the work of inter- and multi- disciplinary groups for the development of conservation projects in the long term, taking into account the empirical knowledge of communities ^{Landry et al. (2003)} and participative research (^{Rosas-Rosas et al., 2015}). Scientific research should focus on the solution of problems (^{Choi et al., 2005}), relying on public policies and simple and attainable procedures, so that the fulfillment of the conservation goals can be quantified more objectively (^{Susskind et al., 2001}). Likewise, the steps and practices should be defined clearly to measure the success of the conservation strategies, as well as to implement the knowledge and skills created by researchers and organizations with the aim of using adaptive management and thus make more efficient the conservation strategies (^{Salafsky et al., 2002}).

Conclusions

Based on the information reviewed and analyzed in this study, it was found that there are very few publications both in developed countries and in developing countries whose objective is to evaluate their efficacy and functioning. To generate new knowledge that helps with this process of evaluation and effectiveness, the studies should be focused on understanding the current state of each one of the conservation programs, because the problematic is unique and multi-causal for each type of strategy. These should be based on principles, criteria, indicators, verifiers and reference values, which take into account social, economic, political, and ecological variables, as well as connect and generate state legal instruments, and programs or digital platforms, which contribute to making the process of systematization and evaluation more dynamic.