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11 - Applying landscape-ecological principles to regional conservation: the WildCountry Project in Australia
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- By Brendan G. MacKey, Faculty of Science, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia, Michael E. Soulé, Henry A. Nix, Harry F. Recher, Robert G. Lesslie, Jann E. Williams, John C. Z. Woinarski, Richard J. Hobbs, Hugh P. Possingham
- Edited by Jianguo Wu, Arizona State University, Richard J. Hobbs, Murdoch University, Western Australia
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- Book:
- Key Topics in Landscape Ecology
- Published online:
- 12 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 29 March 2007, pp 192-213
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Summary
Introduction
One of the great challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century is the conservation and restoration of biodiversity (Convention on Biodiversity 1992). In this chapter we present the landscape-ecological underpinnings of a new nongovernment organization (NGO)-driven conservation initiative in Australia, namely the WildCountry Project.
Global and national analyses highlight the extent of environmental degradation and the need for urgent protection and restoration of biodiversity (e.g., SEAC 1996, Environment Australia 2001, World Resources Institute 2001, NLWRA 2002). Such analyses also suggest that existing conservation strategies and plans are insufficient to prevent continuing losses.
The primary question, at the most general level, is: how can a conservation system be designed and implemented for Australia that is likely to maintain biodiversity for centuries to millennia? Dedicated protected areas are a core component of a nation's biodiversity conservation system. By our calculations (Fig. 11.1) only about 6 percent of Australia is in a secure protected area. There is no theoretical or empirical basis to the proposition that this level of reservation, while necessary, is sufficient for securing the conservation of Australia's biodiversity. In any case, protected area networks are largely the result of various historical contingencies rather than the principles of modern reserve design (Margules and Pressey 2000). We suggest that the percentage of Australia reserved in protected areas is unlikely to ever exceed 10–15 percent.
25 - The role of connectivity in Australian conservation
- Edited by Kevin R. Crooks, Colorado State University, M. Sanjayan, The Nature Conservancy, Virginia
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- Book:
- Connectivity Conservation
- Published online:
- 24 May 2010
- Print publication:
- 02 November 2006, pp 649-675
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
In Australia and globally, nature and society face a historically unprecedented wave of extinction and ecological degradation (Wilson 2002). Although large ecological reserves are an essential core component of any biodiversity conservation program, protected areas comprise only about 6–12% of the land globally (IUCN 2003) and nationally (Mackey et al. 2006) and are typically widely dispersed and isolated. This percentage of strictly protected land is too small – by a factor of five or ten, even if the reserves were optimally distributed (Soulé and Sanjayan 1998).
In response, critics of conventional conservation (e.g., Soulé and Terborgh 1999) often suggest that long-term prospects for biodiversity will be enhanced the more the entire landscape, irrespective of tenure, is managed as a conservation (rather than a production) matrix. Such a transformation, however, will demand a bolder and more systematic approach to nature protection. This will require increases in the area protected, enhanced biotic and abiotic connections between core protected habitat areas, and reconsideration of the economic and recreational activities on lands where native ecosystems still dominate.
In North America and elsewhere, it has been recognized that existing conservation initiatives fail to provide sufficient area and ecological connectivity to accommodate the key, large-scale, long-term ecological processes necessary to sustain natural systems (Soulé and Terborgh 1999; this volume). Neither do they allow for evolutionary adaptation to environmental change. The current situation for biodiversity in Australia is similar (Australian Government 2001).