Habitat Management

6 Key excerpts on "Habitat Management"

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  eBook - ePub

  Urban Nature Conservation

  Landscape Management in the Urban Countryside

  • Stephen Forbes, Tony Kendle(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  There is another strategic approach for maintaining diversity in fragmented systems, which is to influence process by direct management. For example the tendency for habitat isolation to increase the risk of localized species extinction can clearly be directly addressed by policies of species re-introduction. Similarly the population carrying capacity of small areas may be increased by provision of additional artificial resources such as nest boxes or even extra food.

  Management control of habitat quality is therefore a key issue in the conservation of habitats, both urban and rural. The growing involvement of the planning professions in strategic conservation policy formulation is to be welcomed, but probably the greatest weakness in contemporary planning is that it is largely dominated by reactive and ultimately passive mechanisms that have little management dimension allied to them.

  Ensuring the necessary management inputs for land quality maintenance is often extremely difficult. For example, when habitat creation is linked with development, it is rare for planners to be able to insist on more than five or ten years aftercare.

  The long-term management viability of sites is therefore another layer of interest that could be addressed by landscape ecologists. New conservation sites will only have a future if they can be placed within a reasonably resilient and plausible land use framework, but this framework must also be diverse. At one time all of the myriad variations in management required to sustain species will have been achieved just by accident and inefficiency in the countryside. The more that habitats shrink in area, the more the precision of management input has to increase.

  Tactical Components of an Urban Conservation Programme

  It is clear that there are many strategic issues to be resolved in development of an optimal urban nature conservation resource. However, there are also tactical level issues to be addressed. It is from this sort of perspective that Johnston (1990) considered how local authorities can improve the provision and management of urban nature areas. Their suggested approaches included the following.

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  Wildlife-Habitat Relationships

  Concepts and Applications

  • Michael L. Morrison, Bruce Marcot, William Mannan(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Island Press

    (Publisher)

  Wildlife habitats, especially those in regions undergoing development, often occur in a landscape largely dominated by human use. Habitat loss in such a landscape is a complex process that typically separates populations into fragments with different kinds and levels of linkage among them. Since the characteristics of these fragments and linkages have a profound effect on the persistence of wildlife, landscape considerations are crucial to any kind of wildlife habitat restoration in such a setting (see chapters 8 and 9). For example, the influence on wildlife of vegetative patch size and edge-to-interior area is poorly understood, even after decades of research by wildlife biologists (see review in Paton 1994). Here again, restoration provides opportunities to test ideas and to deepen our understanding of these complex interactions—another incentive for wildlife and conservation biologists and restorationists to work together more closely.

  The ways in which individual animals adjust their behavior to human influence or manipulation and how these adjustments influence population processes are poorly understood. Wildlife biologists have not worked extensively in this area, and conservation biologists, for their part, have tended to view human influences as a form of disruption that disorganizes systems to the point where studies are unproductive. Neither of these perspectives is appropriate now that virtually all ecosystems are subject to some form of human influence. Though the concept of human influence on wildlife is beginning to receive more attention (see, e.g., Holthuijzen et al. 1990; Griffiths and Van Schaik 1993; Truett et al. 1994), this research still lacks a unified approach or theoretical basis.

  Here again, restorationists clearly have an important contribution to make. Restorationists work extensively in human-dominated landscapes and have a wealth of knowledge concerning the development of plant communities under stress. Wildlife biologists, on the other hand, can contribute detailed knowledge of wildlife resource use based on work in relatively natural areas—essential knowledge for the proper design of habitat restoration projects in impacted areas. Collaboration between these two groups can be extremely fruitful. In southern California, for example, wildlife biologists and restorationists assisted land use planners in developing a proposal to enhance the habitat of many animal species in several urban parks (Morrison et al. 1994a, 1994b). These projects, once implemented, will serve as tests of the ideas about wildlife–habitat relationships on which the plans were based.

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  Sustainable Landscape Management

  Design, Construction, and Maintenance

  • Ann Marie VanDerZanden, Thomas W. Cook(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 5 Ecosystem Development and Management in the Context of Sustainable Landscapes INTRODUCTION

  Ecological landscape design focuses on the development of landscapes as ecosystems. An ecosystem is a complex set of relationships among the living resources, habitats, and residents of an area (U.S. Forest Service 2010). It includes plants and animals, environmental elements such as water and soil, and people. Though ecosystems vary in size, all share the common feature that each element that contributes to the ecosystem is a self-contained, functioning unit. If one part of the ecosystem is damaged or disappears, it has an impact on everything else. Ecosystems are critical to human well-being, including our health, prosperity, security, and social and cultural identity (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2007).

  A healthy ecosystem is sustainable, and all of the system elements live in balance, or in a state of natural equilibrium (U.S. Forest Service 2010). A sustainable ecosystem also includes biodiversity. Ahern, Leduc, and York (2006) suggest the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) definition of biodiversity is inclusive of many concepts agreed on by governmental, nongovernmental, academic, and industry stakeholders. This multidisciplinary organization defines biodiversity as “the sum total of the variety of life and its interactions and can be subdivided into (1) genetic diversity, (2) species diversity, and (3) ecological or ecosystem diversity.”

  By taking into account the complex and interrelated features that constitute an ecosystem, ecological landscape design considers landscapes as ecosystems. This design approach addresses how to establish a new planting as well as what happens to the landscape over time as it matures and how environmental factors affect its growth, development, and function.

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  Basics of Wildlife Health Care and Management

  • Rajesh Jani(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 4 POPULATIONS AND Habitat Management E cological importance of habitat, cover and population dynamics are basic parameters to be considered for wildlife survival in free living area. The objectives of wildlife management for a given area may be achieved either by manipulating or protecting the habitat or by manipulating the population itself. At times it may become necessary to increase a particular endangered species to make the population viable; on the other hand, increase in number of certain species may be necessary for the purpose of harvest also. Stabilizing a wildlife population at an optimum level is important so that the animals do not exceed the carrying capacity of the given habitat. Thus a wildlife manager ‘has to deal with animal populations and this call for understanding some basic principles. Over growth of particular wild species is equally considered as a problematic issue in the ecosystem. Although improvement in the population of wild animal is a good sign. It is unfortunate, that some of the wild herbivores and other species unwantedly increasing in free range as well as in captivity condition, which is creating public menace. For maintaining balance in the food pyramid, population management places an important role. Therefore, population limits depends on the following factors: Habitat and Carrying Capacity The abundance of all wildlife is directly related to the amount, quality, and availability of wildlife habitat. As a wildlife population increases, it uses more resources. No limited-size area of land can provide an inexhaustible supply of habitat for an ever-increasing number of animals. One area can support only a limited number of animals using similar resources. This limit is called carrying capacity. If the number of animals in a habitat exceeds the carrying capacity, they degrade the habitat by eating available food and eliminating cover, reducing the carrying capacity for that species

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  Wildlife Ecology, Conservation, and Management

  • John M. Fryxell, Anthony R. E. Sinclair, Graeme Caughley(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Strix occidentalis). Large areas are required for migrating ungulates moving between summer and winter ranges. Sufficient area is required to produce the mosaic of burns of different ages. This mosaic creates habitat heterogeneity, which provides animal sources and sinks. Sinks are required as holding areas for nonbreeding animals waiting to obtain territories.
• Management of target populations, such as pest species, can result in indirect interactions through hyperpredation, apparent competition, and mesopredator release. These can produce unexpected consequences.
• Slow change can become an irreversible rapid shift into a new state. Thus, management needs to consider that an ecosystem can occur in multiple states. Some of these can be natural but others can be artifacts of human disturbance.
• Ecosystems are not static, so management cannot aim to maintain the status quo, but rather should allow natural change to take place. It is likely that such change is oscillatory, in that previous conditions will be reverted to after a time.
• Within protected areas, management should distinguish between natural change and direct human-induced change. Protected areas can act as ecological baselines where human-induced change is kept to a minimum, and the system can then be compared to areas outside that are influenced by human activity.
• Long-term baseline data are fundamental to conservation management, because they provide the background against which to interpret causes of change and hence determine the course of management.