Conservation Planning for Regional Scale Projects in the Yellowstone to Yukon
Regional-scale habitat connectivity models help to focus large-scale conservation planning and address issues of metapopulation and species persistence, dispersal, gene flow, and evolution. In general, large areas of secure core habitat need to be maintained along with movement habitat. Wildlife needs to move to meet seasonal and lifetime needs, often at a regional scale. Habitat that allows movement over long distances from one area of secure habitat to another can be critical for healthy populations. A detailed explanation of the biological function of wildlife movement is shown on this page.
Forest carnivores and other wide-ranging species such as grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), wolf (Canis lupus), wolverine (Gulo gulo), lynx (Lynx canadensis), cougar (Felis concolor), and woodland or mountain caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) all need large landscapes to maintain viable populations. Other wildlife species need less space overall, but they need to move across the landscape as well to survive and reproduce. A major problem facing conservation efforts is to accurately identify critical habitat, and to maintain or restore it, in order to ensure that wildlife populations can persist as human activities and developments continue to destroy and fragment natural habitat. Most current conservation planning efforts do not prioritize sufficient habitat necessary to maintain viable populations and metapopulations, and they do not address or identify adequate habitat for wildlife movement; or connectivity. Once completed, conservation plans are seldom validated. CERI conservation plans specifically address these needs.
Using appropriate techniques, computer habitat suitability model results can be an effective first step to identify core and connectivity habitats in order to direct land development, highway construction, and mitigation so that wildlife are protected as they move across the landscape to meet their daily, seasonal, and lifetime needs.
Areas which are identified as core and connectivity habitat, are the focus of restrictive management practices on public lands, and are the focus of land acquisition and conservation easements on private lands. The costs of maintaining large areas of habitat will increase as the amount of land thus identified increases; for economic reasons alone it is important that such lands be accurately identified. The ecological costs, if habitat patches and/or linkages prove to be ineffective or improperly located, can be severe. Small populations in isolated habitat are at a higher risk of extinction. It is extremely important for the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem function that habitat connections be maintained and that resources to maintain them be effectively allocated. In the Yukon-to-Yellowstone region conserving and maintaining habitat connections is critical for a high quality of life: for human communities, plant communities and animal communities.
Forest carnivores and other wide-ranging species such as grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), wolf (Canis lupus), wolverine (Gulo gulo), lynx (Lynx canadensis), cougar (Felis concolor), and woodland or mountain caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) all need large landscapes to maintain viable populations. Other wildlife species need less space overall, but they need to move across the landscape as well to survive and reproduce. A major problem facing conservation efforts is to accurately identify critical habitat, and to maintain or restore it, in order to ensure that wildlife populations can persist as human activities and developments continue to destroy and fragment natural habitat. Most current conservation planning efforts do not prioritize sufficient habitat necessary to maintain viable populations and metapopulations, and they do not address or identify adequate habitat for wildlife movement; or connectivity. Once completed, conservation plans are seldom validated. CERI conservation plans specifically address these needs.
Using appropriate techniques, computer habitat suitability model results can be an effective first step to identify core and connectivity habitats in order to direct land development, highway construction, and mitigation so that wildlife are protected as they move across the landscape to meet their daily, seasonal, and lifetime needs.
Areas which are identified as core and connectivity habitat, are the focus of restrictive management practices on public lands, and are the focus of land acquisition and conservation easements on private lands. The costs of maintaining large areas of habitat will increase as the amount of land thus identified increases; for economic reasons alone it is important that such lands be accurately identified. The ecological costs, if habitat patches and/or linkages prove to be ineffective or improperly located, can be severe. Small populations in isolated habitat are at a higher risk of extinction. It is extremely important for the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem function that habitat connections be maintained and that resources to maintain them be effectively allocated. In the Yukon-to-Yellowstone region conserving and maintaining habitat connections is critical for a high quality of life: for human communities, plant communities and animal communities.
