The Goal: preserve biodiversity and prevent extinctions. The Means: habitat management.
Types of Habitat Management:
Habitat Restoration - repair damaged or destroyed ecosystems, e.g., wetlands.
Habitat Conservation - protect areas from fragmentation or encroachment to maintain healthy ecosystems for local flora and fauna.
Habitat Expansion - create new wild habitats through reduced human presence, e.g., conversion of agricultural land to forests.
Habitat Creation across Climate Zones - extend vertical and horizontal range of habitats to facilitate species migration in response to climate change.
New Habitats for Relocated Species - in cases where original habitats are beyond hope, relocate species to areas newly available for habitat development, e.g., reclaimed agricultural land.
Habitat Corridors - protected corridors between wild areas to allow movement of species to breed, establish territories, or migrate in response to changes in local conditions.
Artificial Habitats - zoos, breeding compounds, and reserves to maintain robust gene pool for species without sufficient wild habitat to remain viable on their own.
Managed Shared Habitats - shared spaces to enhance coexistence of humans and other species, e.g., urban parks, urban-wildlife interface, pollinator gardens, farmland taken out of cultivation, sustainable grazing and pasture management.
Habitat Intervention - all habitats need to be monitored for ecosystem stress, whether due to climate change, disease, or decline of key species that other species depend upon (thereby jeopardizing the well-being of the entire biological community). Ideally, proactive measures and action plans are developed to address these issues, e.g., forest breaks to reduce spread of wildfires.
Habitat Experiments - adding or removing organisms to improve ecosystem health and/or provide new habitats for endangered species, monitored closely and tweaked as necessary.
Temporary Habitats - stop-gap habitats when the alternative is extinction.
Final word: all biological communities are temporary assemblages of flora, fauna, and microorganisms that have come together by chance and opportunity. Long before humans entered the scene, dynamic disequilibrium ruled the biosphere. Habitat management is not about preserving a biological moment in a specific locale. It’s about maintaining biodiversity and saving species.
References:
Huntley, B. and Webb, T. Migration: Species' Response to Climatic Variations Caused by Changes in the Earth's Orbit Journal of Biogeography Vol. 16, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 5-19. DOI: 10.2307/2845307
Mascaro J, Hughes RF, Schnitzer SA (2011) Novel forests maintain ecosystem processes after the decline of native tree species. Ecological Monographs 82(2): 221-228. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/11-1014.1
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Lesley Hughes, Sue McIntyre, David Lindenmayer, Camille Parmesan, Hugh Possingham & Chris Thomas. Moving with the times: assisted colonization and rapid climate change. Science, July 18, 2008
Prach, K. and L. R. Walker (2011). "Four opportunities for studies of ecological succession." Trends in Ecology & Evolution 26(3): 119-123.
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