Linkages in the Landscape: The Role of Corridors and Connectivity in Wildlife Conservation

The world has seen unprecedented land clearing in the last half-century, with widespread conversion of forest to agriculture and other uses. This forest conversion has led to a significant loss of species around the world. For many species, much of the remaining habitat is fragmented, with scattered forests in a landscape otherwise occupied by humans. Various theories, such as island biogeography theory, suggest that this fragmentation is bad for species survival. One natural solution is to try to connected these islands of forest through wildlife corridors, greenbelts, and similar strategies. Though this solution sounds perfectly reasonable in theory there is little evidence whether it works or not. This is the question that Bennett addresses in this book. He does not present original research on the effectiveness of these linkage strategies but does a good job bringing together existing research on the topic. The book is intended primarily for students and for practitioners, but is accessible to a general audience interested in these questions. Bennett makes a convincing case that the usefulness of linkages strategies varies significantly by habitat and especially by species. For example, many birds can thrive in a fragmented landscape because they can move from one forest to another. At the other extreme, snails don't really benefit from linkages at all. The entire book goes through such examples, presenting the advantages and disadvantages of linkages in the landscape, successes and failures, challenges, and the evidence both for and against them. This is a very helpful book. Its overall coherence suffers somewhat from reliance on other people's studies, not all of which are directly comparable. But it's a good place to start.