Protected area staff training : guidelines for planning and management

Qualified, competent and committed staff are central to the success of protected areas. Training of protected area (PA) staff is more and more recognized as a vital component of efficient protected area management. As well as being an essential tool at local, regional and national levels, capacity building for PAs now has a strong international context and is being embedded into major global conventions and PA-related decisions. The principal goal of PA staff training is to raise the capacity of PA managers to adapt to new challenges, using innovative and creative approaches. These Guidelines treat each training course as a project that follows the classic project cycle: from identifying training needs through resourcing, development and delivery of training to assessment of the use of the competences acquired.