The Wildlands Network has released a report by Barbara L. Dugelby , titled Climate Disruption and Connectivity: A Strategy for Nature Protection. Dr. Dugleby is Latin America Program Director at Round River Conservation Studies. Climate change, she writes, is expected to become the most important or the second-most important driver of global biodiversity loss. She succinctly presents the ways in which climate change will impact biodiversity and strategies to assist wildlife in coping with climate change.
The preservation of isolated protected areas will not help species to adapt to climate change, Dugelby says. What is needed is an “interlocking network of protected core areas and managed connections designed at local, region, and continental scales.” Existing protected areas and reserves are not enough. Additional protected areas need to be created in order to reduce the spatial distance between already protected cores. Connections need to include corridors of natural habitat and areas used by humans that are nevertheless permeable to wildlife, privately owned agricultural and forest land that wildlife can freely cross. The network can only be created and maintained through cooperation among agencies, organizations, and private landowners.
The Wildlands Network, with many partners, is creating two continental-scale networks: Spine of the Continent (from Mexico to Alaska along the intermountain West) and Eastern Wildway (from Florida to Quebec), implementing these strategies. The western network is farther along than the eastern. The Wildlands Network hopes that these two networks, which are science-based, will become models for additional networks.
The report is documented with notes and an extensive bibliography. I wish that outline maps of the Spine of the Continent and Eastern Wildway projects, showing large existing protected areas, had been included. However, a map of Spine of the Continent and a map of the continent as a whole are available on the Wildlands Network Web site.
The report can also be accessed on the Web site.
–Mary Byrd Davis
Tags: Barbara Dugelby, Eastern Wildway, Spine of the Continent, Wildlands Network, wildlife corridors
