Connectivity and Conservation: Bridging Gaps between Research, Policy, and Practice

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About this Research Topic

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Background

One major challenge for land managers and planners is to devise land-use strategies that balance biodiversity conservation with competing anthropic land-use demands. One of the earliest, and still best, strategies is the establishment of linkages (corridors) creating an interconnected network of natural landscape fragments within a matrix of human-modified land. Two schools of thought arose with regards to linkage ecology and management. The first investigates the scientific merit and efficacy of corridors at mitigating the threats to the biodiversity of habitat degradation, loss, fragmentation, and climate change. This school focuses on metapopulation dynamics, local demographic responses to fragmentation, and landscape genetic measures of how landscape configuration promotes or impedes dispersal. Scholastic endeavors in this first school seek to understand how wide or constricted a corridor can be to still function, the role of species ecology and natural history on corridor functionality, and the impacts of habitat fragmentation relative to habitat loss has on biodiversity conservation. The second school of thought looks at corridor ecology more pragmatically, in terms of how to balance human land uses with biodiversity needs to create corridors spanning anthropic landscape with a high potential for functionality. Here scholars look at human-wildlife conflict, urban planning, landscape architecture, how policy initiatives and stakeholder engagement enhances or hinders corridor development, landscape restoration and rewilding to achieve connectivity, and how to pay for corridors.

To date, most research and work on corridor ecology focuses on one of the two aforementioned research magesteria, with little or no attention being paid to the other. This has resulted in two distinct sets of best practices in corridor development and management being developed in tandem to each other. The first focuses on the ecological factors associated with developing corridors and making them ecologically relevant and functional, and the second focusing on cultural and political factors that influence corridor planning, implementation, and management. What is needed, is an interdisciplinary handbook that covers best practices in both social and ecological aspects of corridor design, implementation, and management. The Goal of this special edition is to provide that handbook and an associated set of case studies in best practices in corridor planning, implementation, and management.

We organize our special edition into three sections. In the first section, we present research findings from top ecologists studying the efficacy and value of conservation corridors. This group of papers will form a synthesis of current scientific findings related to best theoretical practices in corridor design to maximize the potential for success. In the second section, we will focus on a set of researchers looking at practicalities of how to implement and build conservation corridors on the landscape. This second set of papers will form a compendium on best practices in corridor development with a focus on rewilding within corridors versus managed restoration, best practices in stakeholder engagement to ensure fidelity and adherence in corridor policy implementation, and how to pay for corridor development. Our third and final set of papers will unite the research foci of sections one and two, to form the basis of a best practices guide for corridors with sound scientific justifications for their potential efficacy.

Keywords: Conservation Corridors, Rewilding, Urban Ecology, Wildlife Management, Climate Change, Biocultural, Conservation, Conservation Practice, Restoration Ecology

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