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While the intent of establishing protected areas was originally to preserve natural areas for human enjoyment, most have now taken on the role of both providing recreational opportunities and protecting natural communities. While many protected areas prohibit development within their boundaries, they attract development around their periphery. Such development increases conservation pressure on the associated protected area by changing land use patterns outside the protected area, and inside the protected area with potentially increased recreational use. Understanding whether these anthropogenic changes in and near protected areas have demographic, community, or distributional consequences for native species is vital to our ability to maintain species diversity and ensure population persistence. Within the context of this broader question, I examined whether the rural development around protected areas and recreational trails and trail use within protected areas have altered bird communities in the Baraboo Hills of Wisconsin. First, I investigated whether forest bird communities have changed in the Baraboo Hills between the late 1970s and the early 2000s due to changes in forest cover or housing density. I found that there was no change in forest cover or housing density between survey periods. Bird communities have become more similar between surveys, not due to changes in forest cover or housing density, but appears to have been primarily associated with successional changes of the forest. Second, I investigated the effects of trails and trail use in protected areas on forest bird communities. I found that while bird species richness was not associated with recreational trails or trail use, the densities of most species were negatively associated with both trail use and trail width. Trails and trail use can also affect nest success, possibly by altering nest attendance behavior. I found that the nest success of Acadian Flycatchers (Empidonax virescens) was negatively associated with trail use. This suggests that both the presence of humans, and the presence of the trail itself, negatively affect forest bird communities. I recommend that the construction of new trails in forested protected areas should be limited, and that trail width should be minimized for newly constructed trails.
A leading theorist addresses a wide spectrum of topics central to the field of environmental philosophy.
An ideal text for students taking a course in landscape ecology. The book has been written by very well-known practitioners and pioneers in the new field of ecological analysis. Landscape ecology has emerged during the past two decades as a new and exciting level of ecological study. Environmental problems such as global climate change, land use change, habitat fragmentation and loss of biodiversity have required ecologists to expand their traditional spatial and temporal scales and the widespread availability of remote imagery, geographic information systems, and desk top computing has permitted the development of spatially explicit analyses. In this new text book this new field of landscape ecology is given the first fully integrated treatment suitable for the student. Throughout, the theoretical developments, modeling approaches and results, and empirical data are merged together, so as not to introduce barriers to the synthesis of the various approaches that constitute an effective ecological synthesis. The book also emphasizes selected topic areas in which landscape ecology has made the most contributions to our understanding of ecological processes, as well as identifying areas where its contributions have been limited. Each chapter features questions for discussion as well as recommended reading.
Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa comprehensively explores the challenges and potential solutions to key conservation issues in Sub-Saharan Africa. Easy to read, this lucid and accessible textbook includes fifteen chapters that cover a full range of conservation topics, including threats to biodiversity, environmental laws, and protected areas management, as well as related topics such as sustainability, poverty, and human-wildlife conflict. This rich resource also includes a background discussion of what conservation biology is, a wide range of theoretical approaches to the subject, and concrete examples of conservation practice in specific African contexts. Strategies are outlined to protect biodiversity whilst promoting economic development in the region. Boxes covering specific themes written by scientists who live and work throughout the region are included in each chapter, together with recommended readings and suggested discussion topics. Each chapter also includes an extensive bibliography. Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa provides the most up-to-date study in the field. It is an essential resource, available on-line without charge, for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a handy guide for professionals working to stop the rapid loss of biodiversity in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.
No one looking ahead at the middle of the last century could have foreseen the extent and the importance of the ensuing environmental crises. Now, more than a decade into the next century, no one can ignore it. A New Environmental Ethics: the Next Millennium for Life on Earth offers clear, powerful, and oftentimes moving thoughts from one of the first and most respected philosophers to write on the environment. Rolston, an early and leading pioneer in studying the moral relationship between humans and the earth, surveys the full spectrum of approaches in the field of environmental ethics. This book, however, is not simply a judicious overview. Instead, it offers critical assessments of contemporary academic accounts and draws on a lifetime of research and experience to suggest an outlook for the future. As a result, this focused, forward-looking analysis will be a necessary complement to any balanced textbook or anthology in environmental ethics, and will teach its readers to be responsible global citizens, and residents of their landscape, helping ensure that the future we have will be the one we wish for.