Habitat Management

9 Key excerpts on "Habitat Management"

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  Shorebird Ecology, Conservation, and Management

  • Dr. Mark A. Colwell(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  part three Management and Conservation This page intentionally left blank 241 abundance of desirable species and decreased populations of others considered to be pests (Leopold 1933). From an ecological perspective, Habitat Management attempts to manipulate the factors that limit a population (Caughley and Gunn 1996). For example, a principal under-lying assumption of efforts to protect and en-hance wetlands in wintering areas is that food is in short supply. In principle, increasing the amount and quality of habitat would increase the availability of food, which has positive con-sequences for survival and reproduction. Alter-natively, enhanced cover may act to decrease the thermal demands on birds during inclem-ent winter weather. For shorebirds, the absence of obstructive cover enhances vigilance and al-lows individuals to evade predators more effec-tively. In either case, enhanced habitat acts to decrease the effects of limiting factors and in-crease productivity or survival, which positively affects population growth. Wetlands are among the most threatened habitats worldwide, and they are some of the most productive ecosystems (Mitsch and Gos-selink 2007). The principal means by which land managers alter wetland habitats to benefit CONTENTS Decision Making in Wildlife Management Wetland Conservation Ramsar Convention Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network Conservation Planning and Implementation Prioritization of Protected Areas Landscape Management Wetland Management A Primer in Wetland Ecology Shorebird Use of Managed Wetlands Moist-Soil Management Agricultural Lands Rice Row Crops Pastures Salt Ponds Sandy, Ocean-Fronting Beaches Conservation Implications F or centuries, humans have sought to manipulate wildlife populations by protecting, altering, and managing habitats. In this way, we have increased or sustained the 11 Habitat Conservation and Management

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  Forest Wildlife Ecology and Habitat Management

  • David R. Patton(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  163 4 Management Strategies 4.1 INTRODUCTION What wildlife habitat can a healthy ecosystem produce over time that can be used by the current generation and still meet the requirements of forest sustainability (Figure 1.1)? This question is more philosophical than real, with the expectation that reality will occur as a result of new information to set direction and policy. Long-term sustainability of forest habitats can be accomplished by adopting the position of ecosystem management and wisely using adaptive resource management to accom-plish goals and objectives. Ecosystem management is more relevant and acceptable to solving problems now than in the past because of new information from research and experience that make it possible to apply. Ecosystem management is a concept directed to examining the whole instead of individual parts. This “holistic” approach proposes that some entities, such as a unit of forest wildlife habitat, have a value inde-pendent of and greater than the sum of its parts. The concept is similar to the idea of holistic medicine, which is to treat the whole person instead of separate body organs. 4.2 ECOSYSTEMS Ecosystem management considers a unit of land as a system, for example, a watershed. The parts of the system are the plants, animals (including insects), soil, climate, water, air, topography, and human influences comprising the whole. Any given factor in the system can be out of balance, which in turn affects other factors in a cycle of events. The cycle of events over time is the core of ecosystem management that must be under-stood; in most cases, the cycle of events transcends our own ecological longevity. Ecosystem management is adaptive in character because our knowledge is limited and vague, and uncertainty is the normal result when trying to project future out-comes.

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  Bioregional Planning

  Resource Management Beyond the New Millennium

  • D J Brunckhorst(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  While this definition is very broad, it does suggest we must act on current knowledge while gathering more information, and that strategic planning is required for good management. The committee went on to emphasise eight operational principles that must be elements of ecosystem management (after ESA 1995):

  1. Actions must aim to be sustainable over the long term (the intergenerational principle).
  2. Strategic planning for management requires clear operational goals.
  3. Incorporate the best available ecological models and understanding.
  4. Develop an understanding and strategies to incorporate issues of complexity and interconnectedness of systems.
  5. Consider the dynamic nature of ecological systems.
  6. Incorporate and develop strategies for context and scale considerations.
  7. Acknowledge the presence of humans as elements of ecological systems.
  8. Be flexible and adaptable in implementation and, accountable (through monitoring).

  While progress to implement these goals and principles is difficult, ecosystem management is now considered to be at the leading edge of multi-disciplinary efforts for holistic management, restoration, and sustainable use of natural resources (ESA 1995). It is generally understood to consider a broader scale than site-based research and management applications and includes management of human activities across ecosystems (and urban areas). Ecosystem management includes elements of landscape ecology which consider the spatial relationships between structural and functional components, including human elements. Landscape traits are emphasised, such as connectivity, avoidance of fragmentation, protection of catchments and identification and protection of critical habitat components. Greater understanding of patch dynamics (in four dimensions) and the multiple scales of interaction and connectivity across terrestrial, aquatic and marine systems, coupled with landscape ecology and hierarchy theory has contributed to the current expansion of interest in the potential of ecosystem management as a tool for protecting and sustaining biodiversity and natural resources (see Grumbine 1994). Changes in the mosaic of landscape ecological pattern can adversely effect biodiversity, ecological processes and services and productivity (see Forman 1995, Daily 1997). Sustaining and restoring landscape patterns that will conserve most, if not all, natural processes and functions across a region is integral to ecosystem management and a sustainable future. Nonetheless, it is becoming more and more evident that people are the key factor — spatially distributed as they are in urban areas and local regional communities (e.g., McBeth and Foster 1994, Holmes and Day 1995, Tisdell 1995, Steinitz et al.

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  Crop Protection

  From Agrochemistry to Agroecology

  • Jean-Philippe Deguine(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Habitat Management: The Factor Uniting Agronomy and Ecology In the preface to a work by F. Burel and J. Baudry dedicated to landscape ecology, R. Forman (1), Professor at Harvard University, reviewed the structural conditions needed to ensure the ecological integrity of an agroecosystem without compromising its ability to produce food resources: the fields, the network of hedgerows, some larger plots of natural vegetation, small pieces of natural habitat, watersheds with their diversified riverine corridors, lanes and roads, farms and their buildings, housing areas, etc. Elsewhere, Forman drew attention to the organisation of agricultural landscape structures, based on the logic of a scientific discipline dating from the early 1980s — landscape ecology. Situated at the interface of ecology and biogeography, landscape ecology studies the flux of living things in a specified area, with its connections, its corridors, and the genetic exchange between populations. J-C. Lefeuvre (1), Professor at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, pointed out that this discipline has had the great merit of assisting the reunification of natural sciences and social sciences, in considering man as an integral component of the ecosystems that make up the biosphere C H A P T E R 7 128 Crop Protection: From Agrochemistry to Agroecology (translated from the French). Addressing the research community, B. Chevassus-au-Louis (2), the French Inspector General for Agriculture, described the necessary conditions: the challenge of agronomic research is (therefore) to pass from a linear and sequential vision to a vision of a system in which the three aspects — description, understanding, and management — develop simultaneously in an interactive manner, in such a way that each activity benefits, as rapidly as possible, from the results of the others ( translated from the French ) .

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  Wildlife-Habitat Relationships

  Concepts and Applications

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

    (Publisher)

  PART III

  The Management of Wildlife Habitat

  Passage contains an image

  11

  Managing Habitat for Animals in an Evolutionary and Ecosystem Context

  Indiscriminant cutting of trees is calamitous. It is the citizen’s duty to guard our forest wealth. EMPEROR SHIVAJI*

  Concepts and theories, statistical analysis tools, and modeling technologies for habitat assessment have come a long way since the early days. The tools of Habitat Management have continued to evolve in response to new environmental problems and to new scientific concepts and findings. In some cases, what seemed to be utterly sufficient and immutable axioms of Habitat Management—such as the value of forest openings and edges for benefiting wildlife (e.g., Lay 1938)—have given way to different perspectives and new knowledge gleaned from changing landscapes, such as the more recent concern for excessive fragmentation of old- or native-forest cover (e.g., Perault and Lomolino 2000; also see box 9.1).

  Learning from traditional approaches to wildlife management, including their successes and failures, helps us prepare for management challenges to come. The basic tenets of Habitat Management provided by early wildlife biologists such as Leopold (1933) still prove useful today: wild animals need essentials of cover, food, and water for survival of individuals and for a chance of continuation of the population. But to this foundation, we provide some additional tenets to aid future assessments and management.

  We first discuss managing wildlife in situ in an ecosystem context. Borrowing from the old German concept of Umwelt, we view wildlife organisms, populations, species, and communities as a function not just of cover, food, and water (“habitat” in the traditional sense). They also respond to numerous other biotic and abiotic factors. In this regard, wildlife is a function of (1) the full set of environmental factors—including but extending beyond those essential three traditional habitat factors of cover, food, and water—which together influence realized fitness of organisms ; (2) the ecological roles of other species; and (3) abiotic conditions and events, including what we may term systematic or chronic changes and acute environmental disturbances or perturbations. In this fuller context, wildlife managers should attend not just to conserving taxonomic species, and not just to maintaining viability of populations (particularly threatened ones), but also to providing the rich complex of organisms’ ecological functions; the full set of ecosystem processes; the genetic diversity within and among species, demes, morphs, ecotypes, and other subspecific entities; and all the Umwelt conditions collectively required for their persistence and development.

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  Wildlife Habitat Management

  Concepts and Applications in Forestry, Second Edition

  • Brenda C. McComb(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Without a formalized plan in place, the myriad possible effects of manage-ment on all of these values can be overwhelming to those managing a landscape. Without a plan, the risk of taking an action that has long-lasting adverse consequences is likely to increase. Nongovernment organizations (NGOs) also are using landscape management plans to aid in large-scale planning efforts. The Nature Conservancy uses models of ecoregion structure and com-position, in combination with principles of landscape ecology, to identify areas of potential high priority for protection or recovery (Poiani et al 2000, Groves et al. 2002). More species-specific groups, such as the Ruffed Grouse Society and the Wild Turkey Federation, may employ landscape management plans at times to facilitate management on public and private lands (Yahner 1984, Ferguson et al. 2002). In so doing, these groups are ensuring, to the degree possible, that the needs of those species of most concern to their constituents are met, though they also freely recognize the need to consider many other species, ecosystem services, and social values as well. Goals reflecting conservation of biodiversity may also be driven by economics. Forest industries now often seek green certification (see Chapter 23) as a way of assuring that forest practices are sustainable, including measures taken to conserve biodiversity. Large-scale ecoregional assessments are often used as the context for landscape management plans that address biodiversity protection, among other social values. Often, these assessments rely on landscape management plans as the mechanism to implement the regional plan. Strategies for biodiversity protection are often established at regional scales, which guide the development of landscape plans, which guide the development of stand prescriptions. Regional strategies are real-ized by implementing stand prescriptions over landscapes and implementing landscape plans over regions.

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  Religion and the Environment

  • Oliva DSouza(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Society Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Natural life incorporates all wild plants, creatures, and different life forms. Training wild plant and creature species for human advantage has happened ordinarily everywhere throughout the planet, and majorly affects nature, both positive and negative. Natural life can be found in all biological systems. Deserts, woodlands, fields, and different regions—including the urban locales—all have particular types of wildlife. Natural resource management refers to the management of natural resources such as land, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular Religion and the Environment 190 focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generations (stewardship). Environmental management is “a purposeful activity with the goal to maintain and improve the state of an environmental resource affected by human activities. Environmental Management can be defined as “the management of the interaction and impact of human activities on the natural environment ”. Natural administration further means to guarantee that biological system administrations and biodiversity are ensured and kept up for fair use by future human ages, and furthermore, keep up environment respectability as an end in itself by contemplating moral, financial, and logical (biological) factors. Natural administration attempts to recognize the elements that have a stake in the contentions that may ascend between meeting requirements yet securing the earth. Assessment: Inspections with pertinent Government Departments (Provincial and National) we decide the degree of the issue Control: The issue is brought to the consideration of the transgressor/ polluter and the individual/organization who is educated to stop the unlawful movement and address the issue or concerns which incorporate the restoration of the regions. Common asset the board manages dealing with the manner by which individuals and normal scenes connect.

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  Landscape Ecology

  Concepts, Methods, and Applications

  • Francoise Burel(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Part IV Applications to Landscape Management 9 Application of Landscape Ecology Concepts to Landscape Management and Design From its origin, landscape ecology has been linked to problems of land development and management, as we have seen throughout this work. The questions posed to scientists involve the development of natural areas (reserves, national parks), agricultural lands (consolidation of parcels, river contracts), or urban spaces (green corridors). In France, for example, the 1976 law on conservation of nature, in requiring impact studies for major development works, favoured the elaboration of methods to evaluate the consequences of transformations of landscape structures on ecological processes. The central place of land in landscape ecology has made it a special field of research for the definition of principles of land management. The concepts, methods, and results presented in this work highlight the importance of spatial structures, but they also emphasize the need to study these structures in relation to combinations of processes or particular phenomena, such as the displacement of animals or the circulation of water. The visible elements and structures in a landscape are also closely dependent on organizational and evolutionary processes that are not necessarily spatial. In the context of development, social groups that are antagonistic or cooperative are necessarily active, and economic and cultural dimensions must be taken into account. Landscape ecology offers a point of view and tools with which to test alternative scenarios of results to negotiate.

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  Environmental Management in Practice: Vol 3

  Managing the Ecosystem

  • Paul Compton, Dimitri Devuyst, Luc Hens, Bhaskar Nath(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Who then are these landscape managers? They come from a variety of professions dealing with natural resources in one way or another. In practice, no individual is vested with the power to manage an entire landscape, and very seldom—with the rare exception of protected areas or extreme emergencies of landscapes that need restoration—is an agency given centralised power to make decisions on a given landscape. Landscapes are actually managed by a host of land users, owners, concessionaires, squatters, etc., each pursuing their own ends. An orchestra without a conductor? Hardly. In most countries landscape (spatial) planning and management supervision

  BOX 13.1 ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES APPLICABLE ALSO IN LANDSCAPE PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

  • Use an ecological approach that will recover and maintain the biological diversity, ecological function and defining characteristics of natural ecosystems

  • Recognise that humans are part of ecosystems, that they shape and are shaped by the natural systems; the sustainability of ecological and societal systems is mutually dependent.

  • Adopt a management approach that recognises that ecosystems and institutions are characteristically heterogeneous in time and space.

  • Integrate sustained economic and community activity into the management of ecosystems.

  • Develop a shared vision of desires, human/environmental conditions.

  • Provide for ecosystem governance at appropriate ecological and institutional scales.

  • Use adaptive management as the mechanism for achieving both desired outcomes and new understandings regarding ecosystem conditions.

  • Integrate the best science available into the decision-making process, while continuing scientific research to reduce uncertainties.

  • Implement ecosystem management principles through co-ordinated government and non-government plans and activities.

    Source : Anon., 1994

  authorities do exist, although there may be vast differences among these structures and the ways in which they operate. The way countries and communities manage their landscapes is, in fact, the litmus test of their land ethics, environmental awareness and social order. In most countries real (ecological) landscape planning is only just starting; for this reason it is most difficult to find examples of such management where landscapes would be managed as ecological and social systems on a sustainable basis, with conservation of biodiversity in mind. In developing countries with relatively preserved landscapes good examples of modern landscape planning are extremely rare. There is a lack of expertise, funds—and political will. Landscape management planning is long-term oriented, and because of this it will never receive priority over short-term issues. In addition, land management planning, which might attempt to moderate the ruinous clashes between traditional and modern land-use patterns and norms, is often considered as interference in politics —and doomed from the start. Thus, the best examples of modern landscape planning (considering the ecological and social aspects) in the developing world might be the planning (= establishing) and management of protected areas such as parks; this requires obtaining international, national and local (!) support for its values, clear objectives, much (usually imported) expertise, and some basic institutional network—from legislation to supervision, monitoring, research, law enforcement, etc. Thus, founding parks in many cases activates processes and institutions that will also be instrumental in introducing landscape management into other (‘normal’, ‘everyday’) landscapes. In this regard it is interesting to consider the wide scope of frequently overlapping management objectives set by the IUCN (1994) for the six categories of protected areas, such as national parks (Category II) or protected landscape/seascape (Category V) (Box 13.2).

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