Biodiversity Extinction Crisis Conference - A Pacific Response
| Chairperson | James EM Watson | The Wilderness Society | Australia |
Conservation and restoration of biodiversity is a great challenge facing Australia. To endure the biodiversity crisis, conservation systems must be systematically designed and implemented to maintain biodiversity over evolutionary timescales. It is imperative that protected areas are embedded within a broader landscape matrix in order to build upon and complement the anchors provided by the protected area network. This requires cross-tenure and multi-stakeholder approaches to conservation planning on a regional basis.
This symposium will describe a number of projects and regional case studies that recognize the importance of the large scale and long term ecological processes that contribute to the maintenance of landscape ecological function. They also recognize the need to incorporate the impacts of rapid climate change into conservation planning and management. As such, these regional scaled projects aims to conduct conservation initiatives that integrate continent-scaled, ecological and evolutionary-time span considerations of ecosystem processes into conservation planning at national, regional and local scales. To achieve this, it is necessary to translate ecological science into policy and practice.
An important component of landscape-scale approaches to conservation is that they provide examples of collaboration between a range of organisations, agencies, communities, governments and individuals with responsibilities for land stewardship.
Ultimately, these projects and case studies reflect the need for (i) significant improvement in off-reserve management and in the extent and management of the protected area network; (ii) community engagement to catalyze and sustain partnerships capable of developing and implementing conservation assessment, policy, planning and action; and (iii) recognition that assessments, policy, plans and management must be based on scientific principles designed to ensure the long term conservation of biodiversity.
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Climate change and ecological connectivity: The need for landscape linkages in space and time
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Conserving Biodiversity found in the Great Western Woodlands
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WildCountry science and ecological restoration in Gondwana Link: a convergence of thought and action
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From the Australian Alps to Atherton (A2A) and beyond – progress in establishing Australia’s first continental scale mountain connectivity conservation initiative
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Ecological processes: A key element in strategies for conserving biodiversity
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Victoria’s biodiversity crisis: Translating ecological processes science into policy
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