Habitat Conservation
Habitat conservation refers to the protection, preservation, and management of natural environments to safeguard the species that inhabit them. It involves maintaining and restoring ecosystems, such as forests, wetlands, and grasslands, to ensure the survival of diverse plant and animal species. Conservation efforts aim to balance human activities with the needs of wildlife and the environment.
7 Key excerpts on "Habitat Conservation"
eBook - ePub- Oswald J. Schmitz(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Island Press(Publisher)
...9 Protecting Biological Diversity and Ecosystem Function AN IMPORTANT LESSON FROM CHAPTER 6 IS THAT CONSERVATION OF SPECIES requires preservation of natural habitat. Upsetting the integrity of natural habitats through fragmentation, exploitation, or conversion to other land uses can trigger a cascade of ecological changes that sooner or later lead to species extinctions. Indeed, it is estimated that if the current pace of human-caused global habitat loss continues, many habitats and associated species will be completely eliminated by 2080 (Sinclair et al. 1995). More than ever in the history of the planet, humankind is at a critical juncture in the way it chooses to interact with the natural world. The practical reality is that the need to support a burgeoning global population demands that natural lands be increasingly exploited for their raw materials or converted into living space and agricultural production.The attendant consequence is that there is altogether less space to support the rest of planet’s living diversity, and so humankind is forced to become strategic about what species it actively chooses to protect. Our ability to do this is constrained by limited funding.To reconcile this trade-off, we have to look for ways to conserve the most species per dollar spent. One expedient strategy is to identify areas that support high concentrations of species—“biodiversity hotspots”—and devote efforts at protecting those areas (Myers et al. 2000). The rationale for adopting such a strategy is that biodiversity hot spots contain exceptional numbers of endemic species (species only native to those locations and that have a long evolutionary history there) that are, at the same time, facing rapid loss of their native habitat...
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 - 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...
eBook - ePubEcosystem Services
Key Issues
- Mark Everard(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...3 Conservation of ecosystems and their services DOI: 10.4324/9781003182313-3 Key points: Human perceptions of ‘nature’ have changed throughout recent decades and, with it, perceptions of its conservation. The natural world, including biodiversity, geodiversity and the many functions within it, underlies all ecosystem services, rather than being a discrete product of the system. A former protectionist approach to nature conservation, conceptually separating ‘nature’ from human activities, is manifestly flawed and may ultimately be counterproductive if species and ecosystems constrained in fragmented reserves are unable to respond to changing environmental conditions or maintain genetic diversity. A systemically informed approach to nature conservation recognises that ecosystems and humanity are all part of a fully integrated socioecological system, all dimensions of human interest supported by and also influencing natural systems framing a far broader view of nature conservation. Perceptions of the value of Protected Areas, and their management, need to evolve to recognise and optimise the diverse ecosystem services benefits flowing from them to communities from local to global scales. Early conceptions of conservation tended to address the preservation of desirable species, habitats and landforms. Perceptions of connectivity of ‘nature’ and humanity’ have, however, evolved particularly over the past century to include, for example, how land use and some other human activities are causative in creation or maintenance of some habitat types supporting species that have become. prioritised for conservation. For example, whilst intensification of farming activities unconstrained, for example, by agri-environmental subsidies is generally regarded as damaging to farmland bird populations, the very notion of farmland birds acknowledges that they are beneficiaries of human-modified landscape (Walker et al., 2018)...
eBook - ePub- John Blewitt(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...6 Conservation and sustainable development Aims This chapter explores the relationship between conservation and sustainable development, revisiting issues relating to population, resource use and human beings’ impact on what is often termed the natural world. More specifically, efforts to preserve the natural landscape and, more latterly, a wide range of wildlife habitats brings into focus a range of policies and practices that have seen conflicts, controversies and a considerable degree of debate. The friction induced by the imposition of Western notions of conservation and stewardship on other lands has invariably led many to address and readdress both the rights of indigenous peoples and the very nature of economic development, urbanization and sustainability. This friction is practical and political in nature and although it seems that dialogue is leading to progress and accommodation, we are witnessing, indeed causing, a sixth massive extinction of many of the species with whom we supposedly share the planet. Here, there and everywhere Ecologist Marc Bekoff and conservation social worker Sarah Bexell (2010) perhaps state the obvious when they write that human beings are here, there and everywhere, but importantly they add that because of our short lifespans we seem removed from the nuances of natural evolutionary cycles. We are not here long enough to see what is going on in the long term and, additionally, we can negatively affect ecosystems even when we are not physically present in them. Our penchant for technical fixes also gives us a false sense of security and perhaps of optimism, and we rarely stop to think that ‘we’re a species whom almost all other species could easily live without’ (Bekoff and Bexell, 2010: 70)...
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)...
- Justin Garson, Anya Plutynski, Sahotra Sarkar, Justin Garson, Anya Plutynski, Sahotra Sarkar(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...2014). Whatever one’s “ultimate” reasons for conservation, if we wish conservation efforts to be successful, we cannot ignore the interests of local people, as well as states and other stakeholders, alongside the interests of future generations, in planning and policy-making. Active engagement with the wide spectrum of stakeholders in conservation planning makes for more effective policy. In keeping with this broader perspective, a more inclusive range of options for biodiversity conservation is required. This might include considering issues of mixed sustainable use, rather than strictly protected areas, captive breeding programs, and more active interventions in service of recovery and restoration. Managed ecosystems now dominate the planet; there are few if any places remaining that are completely unaffected by human influence. In light of this basic fact, the permissibility of sustainable use seems less problematic than it did twenty-five years ago. Introduction of endangered species, moving species to deal with climate change, or active reduction of invasive populations, are now part and parcel of conservation policy. There is also greater optimism with respect to recovery processes. The same practices will not work everywhere – generalizations about effective biodiversity management will be limited. Consideration of contingent facts about culture, history, politics, economics, and of the environment itself, are all relevant to conservation planning. This is why “systematic conservation planning” is so important (Margules and Pressey 2000, Margules and Sarkar 2007). Human–environmental interactions are complex systems. Only by an iterated process of adaptive management in light of new information, changing circumstances, and evolving interests can we protect diversity sustainably...
