The first task in designing a reserve must be to decide what …

• Goals of a conservation reserve
• Large, intact, functioning ecosystems
• Areas with high biological diversity
• Significant species and natural communities
• Introduction to reserve design
• The Theory of Island Biogeography
• Implications of Island Biogeography
• The SLOSS debate
• Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Figures
• Table

Biology Articles » Conservation Biology » Theory and Design of Nature Reserves » Large, intact, functioning ecosystems

Large, intact, functioning ecosystems

- Theory and Design of Nature Reserves

Large, intact, functioning ecosystems

• Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in the Sierra Nevada only protected the giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) incidentally. They were established to protect an important watershed providing irrigation water for farms in the Central Valley. Yellowstone and Yosemite were established largely because of the unique geological features of the first and the scenery of the second.

   

• To protect an intact functioning ecosystem, the area protected must be very large. Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks together have an area about the size of the state of Connecticut. There is some doubt that even an area this large is large enough to contain a viable population of grizzly bears. The current goal for wolves is to establish a total population of only 100 animals.

   

• Protecting these vast expanses is the only hope we have for saving large-bodies mammalian carnivores, and there are few places in the world where this is possible. It's also pretty clear that there are large areas of the continental United States where it is no longer possible to set aside such areas (Figure 1)