18 Approaches to Biodiversity Conservation

So far, we have focused on habitat management for individual species. For some forest wildlife goals, that is an appropriate approach. Oftentimes, especially on public lands, conservation of the full suite of living organisms present on a site, on an ownership, or in a watershed, is an objective, while also meeting other societal objectives such as potable drinking water, recreation, aesthetics and timber production. By now, you must be asking, “How in the world can we possibly manage forests to conserve the hundreds if not thousands of species that occur within a forest with one owner, let alone multiple owners?” Using a species-by-species approach is clearly untenable. But biodiversity is continuing to decline despite widespread efforts at conservation (Rands et al. 2010).

Logging of forest lands is viewed by many as being incompatible with maintenance of biodiversity. Indeed, unsustainable or illegal logging can have a long-lasting adverse effect on conservation of biodiversity (Rands et al. 2010). To mitigate these effects, Rands et al. (2010) suggested managing biodiversity as a public good, integrating biodiversity goals into public and private decision making, and developing conditions that allow implementation of biodiversity conservation policies. Goals are typically set at large spatial and temporal scales and achieved through multiple local actions. These actions are designed to minimize risk of losing a species while considering uncertainty in our decision-making process (Noon et al. 2009, Schultz et al. 2013). Monitoring of focal species and species of conservation concern is a key part of the biodiversity conservation strategies proposed over United States National Forests, in order to lessen the risk of losing species locally or regionally (Schultz 2013).

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Approaches to Biodiversity Conservation from Wildlife Habitat Management