Morrison Scott A, Boyce Walter M
The Nature Conservancy, 201 Mission Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA.
Conserv Biol. 2009 Apr;23(2):275-85. doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01079.x. Epub 2008 Oct 20.
Habitat corridors can be essential for persistence of wildlife populations in fragmented landscapes. Although much research has focused on identifying species and places critical for conservation action, the conservation literature contains surprisingly few examples of corridors that actually have been protected and so provides little guidance for moving from planning through implementation. We examined a case study from southern California that combines monitoring of radio-collared mountain lions (Puma concolor) with an assessment of land-protection efforts to illustrate lessons learned while attempting to maintain ecological connectivity in a rapidly urbanizing landscape. As in many places, conservation scientists have provided science-based maps of where conservation efforts should focus. But implementing corridors is a business decision based not solely on ecological information but also on cost, opportunity cost, investment risk, and other feasibility considerations. Here, the type and pattern of development is such that key connections will be lost unless they are explicitly protected. Keeping pace with conversion, however, has been difficult, especially because conservation efforts have been limited to traditional parcel-by-parcel land-protection techniques. The challenges of and trade-offs in implementation make it clear that in southern California, connectivity cannot be bought one parcel at a time. Effective land-use plans and policies that incorporate conservation principles, such as California's Natural Communities Conservation Planning program, are needed to support the retention of landscape permeability. Lessons from this study have broad application, especially as a precautionary tale for places where such extensive and intensive development has not yet occurred. Given how limiting resources are for biodiversity conservation, conservationists must be disciplined about where and how they attempt corridor protection: in rapidly fragmenting landscapes, the opportunity for success can be surprisingly fleeting.
栖息地走廊对于碎片化景观中野生动物种群的存续可能至关重要。尽管许多研究都聚焦于确定对保护行动至关重要的物种和地点，但保护文献中实际得到保护的走廊实例却出奇地少，因此几乎没有为从规划到实施的过程提供指导。我们研究了一个来自南加州的案例，该案例将对佩戴无线电项圈的美洲狮（美洲狮）的监测与土地保护工作评估相结合，以说明在快速城市化的景观中试图维持生态连通性时所吸取的经验教训。与许多地方一样，保护科学家提供了基于科学的地图，指出保护工作应聚焦的地点。但实施走廊是一个商业决策，不仅基于生态信息，还基于成本、机会成本、投资风险和其他可行性考虑因素。在这里，发展的类型和模式使得关键连接将消失，除非它们得到明确保护。然而，跟上土地转换的步伐一直很困难，特别是因为保护工作仅限于传统的逐块土地保护技术。实施过程中的挑战和权衡清楚地表明，在南加州，连通性不能一次购买一块土地来实现。需要有效的土地利用规划和政策，纳入保护原则，如加州的自然社区保护规划计划，以支持景观通透性的保留。这项研究的经验教训具有广泛的适用性，尤其是作为一个警示故事，适用于尚未发生如此广泛和密集发展的地方。鉴于生物多样性保护的资源有限，保护主义者必须在走廊保护的地点和方式上保持谨慎：在快速碎片化的景观中，成功的机会可能出奇地短暂。
