Ex-situ Conservation
Ex-situ conservation involves the preservation of species outside their natural habitats, often in controlled environments such as zoos, botanical gardens, or seed banks. This approach aims to protect biodiversity and prevent species extinction by maintaining populations and genetic diversity. Ex-situ conservation plays a crucial role in safeguarding endangered species and supporting their reintroduction into the wild.
6 Key excerpts on "Ex-situ Conservation"
eBook - ePubBiodiversity and Conservation
Characterization and Utilization of Plants, Microbes and Natural Resources for Sustainable Development and Ecosystem Management
- Jeyabalan Sangeetha, Devarajan Thangadurai, Goh Hong Ching, Saher Islam, Jeyabalan Sangeetha, Devarajan Thangadurai, Goh Hong Ching, Saher Islam(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Apple Academic Press(Publisher)
...Ecosystem functioning and dynamics are regulated by biodiversity, but population growth, unplanned developmental activities and modern cultivation have increasingly threatened biodiversity. Both ex situ and in situ conservations are different conservation strategies which are being used since the ancient times. Except for some conditions ex situ conservation are less effective than in situ and they are extremely costly. In situ measures are the more holistic approach for conservation process than ex situ. An important disadvantage of in situ conservation is that it requires enough space to protect the full component of biotic diversity and human interference completely barred that locality, but it is too complicated for growing human population demand for space. Ex situ conservation methods offer ‘insurance policy’ against extinction and endangered species, thereby supposed to support the in situ conservation. Thus, both conservation strategies are essential and complementary to each other for proper management of biodiversity. For the existence of humans, biodiversity is necessary. No matter people are rich or poor, everyone utilizes the planet and all kind of benefits from biodiversity. Hence it is necessary to work for the conservation of biodiversity so that the future generation could experience the cultural, spiritual, and economic benefits from nature. KEYWORDS • animal translocation • biodiversity • bioresources • biosphere reserve • captive breeding • cryopreservation • ecosystem • environmental pollution • ex situ conservation • gene bank • habitat alteration • in situ conservation • invasive alien species • protected areas • sacred groves • seed bank • spiritual values REFERENCES Adebooye, O. C., & Opabode, J. T., (2005). Status of conservation of the indigenous leaf vegetables and fruits of Africa. Afr. J. Biotechnol., 3 (12), 700–705. Alka, G., (2010). Environmental Geography (pp. 163–164)...
eBook - ePubBiodiversity
An Introduction
- Kevin J. Gaston, John I. Spicer(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...and maintenance of Ex-situ Conservation facilities in developing countries. Fig. 6.5 Relative impacts of factors affecting terrestrial biodiversity in: (a) poor; and (b) rich countries. Shading indicates intensity of impact, from black (highest) to light grey (lowest). (From Soule 1991.) Ex-situ Conservation measures may include seed banks, sperm and ova banks, culture collections (e.g. of plant tissues), artificial propagation of plants and captive breeding of animals. In a growing number of instances, more individuals of given species are held in such facilities than occur in the wild. The relative costs and benefits of Ex-situ Conservation have been much debated (e.g. Tudge 1992; Rahbek 1993; Hurka 1994; Balmford et al. 1995, 1996; Frankel et al. 1995). This is particularly true with regard to large-bodied vertebrates (such as primates, big cats and cetaceans). Key issues here include the ethics of keeping individuals in captivity, whether the resources so used could practically be deployed in other ways (e.g. for in-situ conservation), the short- and long-term viability of both captive and wild populations, the relationship between the two (including the use and efficacy of reintroductions of species into areas in which they have become extinct, and to bolster declining natural populations), and other potential benefits of captive populations (e.g. in education of urban human populations). Whatever one’s position on these matters, ex-situ activities should play only a very secondary role to in-situ conservation, as implied by the opening statement of this Article. 6.7 Sustainable use of components of biological diversity The sustainable use of biological diversity is one of the objectives of the Convention (Article 1)...
eBook - ePub- Richard John Huggett(Author)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...PART IV CONSERVATION BIOGEOGRAPHY 17 CONSERVING SPECIES AND POPULATIONS Biological diversity is plummeting, mainly due to habitat degradation and loss, pollution, overex-ploitation, competition from alien species, disease, and changing climates. There is an urgent need to preserve species and populations. This chapter covers: • justifying species conservation • conservation bodies and categories • conservation strategies Biodiversity responds to changes in the physical and biological environment in a maze of complex ways. Many scientists think the recent steep fall in global biodiversity levels alarming and fear that the human species is single-handedly manufacturing a mass extinction far speedier than any past mass extinctions. Two big worries about current biodiversity decline are that it is an irrevocable process set to undermine the basis of human existence, and that it will deny hosts of species their right to exist. WHY CONSERVE SPECIES? Underpinning conservation biogeography is the assumption that humans should protect species, communities, and ecosystems wherever necessary. The justification for this assumption is that the environment has value and deserves protecting. Conservationists present at least five types of justification: economic, ecological, aesthetic, moral, and cultural (Botkin and Keller 2003, 263–4): 1 Economic or utilitarian justification for conservation stems from a need of individuals or societies for an environmental resource to gain an economic benefit or even to survive. For instance, farmers make their living from the land and need a supply of crops or livestock to do so. A common argument upheld under the economic justification banner is that it is unwise to destroy species that may prove useful to humans, say as anticancer agents (Table 17.1)...
eBook - ePub- Charles Krebs(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- CSIRO PUBLISHING(Publisher)
...It contains almost no ecological theory, but is focused on individual action plans. Only by understanding the population biology of an endangered plant or animal can we provide a rescue plan for a declining population. In some cases, such as the African elephant, the causes of population decline are clear. In other cases we do not have the ecological understanding to recommend action, and we need to develop further insights so we can develop action plans. Extinction is the ultimate conservation focus and four causes are prominent: excessive hunting or harvesting, habitat destruction and fragmentation, introduced species and chains of extinction. The major causes of recent extinctions have been habitat destruction and introduced species. Habitat destruction leads to population reductions that may trigger the extinction vortex, so protecting habitat is a major goal for all conservation efforts. At present about 12–13% of the world’s land areas is protected, but most protected areas are small and enforcement is lax. Existing parks and reserves are seldom large enough to contain viable populations of larger vertebrates, so conservation efforts on private lands are essential to maintaining our flora and fauna. The ecological challenge of conservation biology is to develop specific management plans for individual species, while the political challenge to the broader conservation movement is to protect large natural areas from destruction. Without parks and reserves there can be no conservation, but with them there is no guarantee of success unless conservation biology can solve the challenging ecological problems of endangered species. SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS Caughley G and Gunn A (1996). Conservation Biology in Theory and Practice. Blackwell Science, Oxford, UK. (The clearest analysis of conservation problems yet written.) Dayton PK (2003). The importance of the natural sciences to conservation. American Naturalist 162, 1–13...
eBook - ePubBiogeography
An Integrative Approach of the Evolution of Living
- Eric Guilbert(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Wiley-ISTE(Publisher)
...Future directions Conservation biogeography appears to have made progress since 2005 in its attempt to delineate, conceptually and empirically, a portion of the spatial (and thereby, probably temporal) scale (landscape to geographic) within the vast realm of conservation biology that has not always been of a focal concern among biodiversity researchers. However, to continue to become even more relevant, practitioners would find value in making advances in several ways. First, it appears that conservation biogeography has, to date, concentrated focus on a subset of the very large research themes that are conceivably nested within its purview. An array of very general research themes demonstrates a respectable frequency of topics “hits” in the subdiscipline’s flagship journal (Table 14.5); however, there is a broad range of usage frequency of different topics embedded within each of these themes (Table 14.4). This result might indicate scope for a “fleshing out” of some concepts as researchers seek greater explanatory power in approaches to biodiversity conservation. Second, as with all progressive disciplines in science, conservation biogeography will be well-served by continuing to incorporate advances in methods, theory and large datasets. Genomics, for example, is poised to make large and rapid strides in sequencing whole genomes for entire groups of major radiations (e.g. Earth BioGenome Project; https://www.earthbiogenome.org/). The wealth of data that could result from such endeavors was unimaginable in 2005 when conservation biogeography was conceived. Likewise, species distribution models continue to become more powerful and useful tools to predict biotic responses across geographic regions to, for example, global and climate change, and biotic invasions (Zurell et al., 2020)...
eBook - ePubUrban Nature Conservation
Landscape Management in the Urban Countryside
- Stephen Forbes, Tony Kendle(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
...5 Biogeography and Conservation Planning in the Urban Countryside It is becoming increasingly apparent that many of the assumptions underlying conservation planning have been too simplistic to guide management accurately, or to explain adequately all of the relationships seen between species and reserves. Slowly ecologists are developing an understanding of the ways in which broader habitat patterns, comprising shapes, sizes, internal structure and the spatial relationship between all of these and between the habitats and the surrounding landscape influence the diversity of species found within a reserve or wildlife area. The discipline of landscape ecology has been defined by the UK branch of the International Association of Landscape Ecology as the interactions between the temporal and spatial aspects of a landscape and its flora, fauna and cultural components (Griffith, 1995). In many ways it is a direct extension of the subject of biogeography. The subject grew largely out of the interests of central European biogeographers in the regional and local scale patterns and processes in the landscape (Naveh and Liebermann, 1994), although the terminology inevitably has become entangled and confused with those aspects of work of the landscape professions which have an ecological orientation, such as have been discussed in earlier chapters regardless of their scale. For the purposes of this chapter, the term landscape ecology is used in keeping with the above definition – the objective is to review the interaction between the pattern and distribution of habitats and sites within the urban fabric and to consider how the relationships between them may affect their function. The significance of such a study lies in its potential contribution towards strategic planning and the identification of areas where green space creation, protection and management strategies may be targeted towards regional benefits...
