The historical activities and the development of Japanese nature reserves including world natural heritage sites and biosphere reserves since early 1970’s are reviewed. These two types of protected areas have been designed as international co-operative systems of environmental conservation and management under UNESCO. The World natural Heritage is an international system for the preservation of pristine nature by the ratification of a treaty while the Biosphere Reserve is a model site to share the strategic design for sustainable human activities at local societies based on a zoning scheme, which is secured by policies of respective nations. The role of local communities in all decisions and outcomes of the protected areas is the central issue of the 40th Anniversary of the World Heritage Convention. Unfortunately, as the biosphere reserves in Japan at initial stages have been established as research sites by the national government without informed consent among local communities, which means there is little understanding or interest among locals making progress particularly difficult. Bureaucratic policies at world natural heritage sites generally result in intensive conflict between governors and local stakeholders. However, self-governing policies by the local communities and the scientific council in Siretoko have succeeded in the approval of the designation of the world natural heritage and affected the ecosystem conservation by the local communities in Japan. The activities to restore evergreen forest ecosystem by the local communities with co-management by the local governments and the nature conservation society at “Aya” site in Japan have also led to successfully getting an approval from the International Co-ordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere Programme to designate a biosphere reserve in 2012. These two success stories of establishing the Japanese nature reserve sites came about through the use of a participatory approach emphasizing the importance of having a network of local communities and science committees as a base of social cooperation for living with nature in a sustainable way. Both examples should be a model to establish a nature reserve and the sustainable local communities. For that, the traditional community networks and the assessment to evaluate use and reservation of nature will be important from a long-term perspective view, especially at the local areas where the population decrease is evident.

Many forests suffer intensive grazing, browsing and bark stripping by sika deer (Cervus nippon) in Japan. Particularly, intensive bark stripping by sika deer causes lethal damages to trees. It seemed that at first, sika deer ingests palatable species and then ingests others. However, oak (Quercus crispula), non-palatable specie were heavily debarked in winter in the foot of Yatsugatake Mountains. To clarify why non-palatable species were debarked, we established seven study sites in the Southeast areas of Yatsugatake Mountains and examined the intensity of bark stripping, grazing of Sasa nipponica, snow depth, inclination of site slope, and frequency of habitat use by sika deer. At the site with steep slope on the Southwestern side of the Mountains, snow depth was shallower and the frequency of habitat use by sika deer was higher. It was deemed that, with the abundant sunshine falling on the slope, snow depth became shallow and the site offered habitats suitable for deer in winter. The findings suggest that, deer density become high at the slope with less snow accumulation in winter and, deer debarks non-palatable species to attain fodder for its survival.

This study focused on the habitat of the newly discovered species Suaeda japonica on the shore of Kurahashi Island in the Seto Inland Sea. We created a vegetation map using a small unmanned aerial vehicle, and surveyed the distribution of halophyte communities. In addition, we surveyed elevation, wave intensity, electrical conductivity and three-phase distribution of the soil, and distance from training levee top and seawall for 42 quadrats at each community. The S. japonica community distributed in high-salinity soil and the area flooded easily at high tide. Moreover, since the S. japonica community was distributed in an area far away from the training levee, the wave intensity of the habitat was comparatively high. Collectively, our results suggest that the habitat for S. japonica could be characterized by higher salinity stress and soil moisture, and greater disturbance following wave activity than other species.