Managing plant populations in fragmented landscapes: restoration or gardening?

Ecosystem fragmentation results in major changes in several environmental and biotic parameters that affect the ability of plant populations to persist. All stages of the plant life cycle may be influenced in either negative or positive ways by the changed biophysical settings caused by fragmentation and associated changes in the surrounding landscape. This may result in plant populations being lost or significantly reduced from patches of native vegetation, leading to the need for active management intervention. This intervention may include management of threatening processes, reversal of ecosystem degradation, or the reintroduction of plants of species that have been lost from an area. These management actions range from preventative management through to active restoration. In the present paper I explore the question of whether there is a limit to the degree of intervention that is desirable in conservation terms, beyond which we are no longer conserving but rather cultivating and gardening, i.e. creating an artificial and potentially unsustainable system. I discuss this question in relation to management of remnant vegetation in urban and agricultural settings and suggest that a careful mix of species-based and process-based management is required for us to succeed in the goal of biodiversity conservation in fragmented landscapes.

[1]  R. Davies.  Threatened plant species management in National Parks and Wildlife Act reserves in South Australia , 1996 .

[2]  M. Soulé,et al.  Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction , 1996 .

[3]  Christopher P. Dunn,et al.  Restoring diversity: strategies for reintroduction of endangered plants. , 1997 .

[4]  Daniel H. Janzen,et al.  Gardenification of Wildland Nature and the Human Footprint , 1998 .

[5]  S. Morton,et al.  Naturalness and Wildness: The Dilemma and Irony of Managing Wilderness , 2000 .

[6]  R. Mittermeier,et al.  Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities , 2000, Nature.

[7]  Hugh P. Possingham,et al.  The business of biodiversity: Applying decision theory principles to nature conservation , 2001 .

[8]  D. Coates,et al.  Priority setting and the conservation of Western Australia's diverse and highly endemic flora , 2001 .

[9]  ARE RECOVERY PLANS IMPROVING WITH PRACTICE , 2002 .

[10]  P. Kareiva,et al.  Improving U.S. Endangered Species Act Recovery Plans: Key Findings and Recommendations of the SCB Recovery Plan Project , 2002 .

[11]  C. Yates,et al.  Assessing limitations on population growth in two critically endangered Acacia taxa , 2002 .

[12]  R. O’Connor,et al.  THE SCOPE AND TREATMENT OF THREATS IN ENDANGERED SPECIES RECOVERY PLANS , 2002 .

[13]  Richard J. Hobbs,et al.  Handbook of Ecological Restoration: The ecological context: a landscape perspective , 2002 .

[14]  Richard J. Hobbs,et al.  Triage: How do we prioritize health care for landscapes? , 2003 .

[15]  R. Hobbs,et al.  What happens if we cannot fix it?: Triage, palliative care and setting priorities in salinising landscapes , 2003 .

[16]  Colin J. Yates,et al.  Impacts of ecosystem fragmentation on plant populations: generalising the idiosyncratic , 2003 .

[17]  P. Gioia,et al.  The Southwest Australian Floristic Region: Evolution and Conservation of a Global Hot Spot of Biodiversity , 2004 .

[18]  C. Yates,et al.  Breeding system, pollination and demography in the rare granite endemic shrub Verticordia staminosa ssp. staminosa in south‐west Western Australia , 2004 .

[19]  R. Hobbs,et al.  The wilderness society's WildCountry program: An interview with its National Coordinator, Virginia Young , 2004 .

[20]  Marcus Hall.  Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration , 2005 .