10.13 Concluding remarks: from island biogeography to countryside biogeography?
As made clear at the outset of this chapter, this
review was not intended as a summary of all impor-
tant branches of wildlife conservation. However, we
have stressed along the way the importance of aute-
cological, distributional, and other forms of data.
The student of conservation biology will also need
to have a knowledge of such themes and issues as
ex situconservation efforts in zoos, and other dedi-
cated breeding facilities; germplasm (seed) banks;
species translocation schemes; reserve management
practices; CITES and other wildlife legislation;
poaching and trade in endangered species; strategic
conservation policy; the philosophy, politics, and
economics of conservation and other fields besides
(e.g. Primack 1993; Shrader-Frechette and McCoy
1993; Whittaker et al. 2005).
It must also be recognized that there can be many
aims and purposes for shaping conservation
management, ranging from the aesthetic, through
the scientific, to the economic. We may wish to con-
serve systems or species which are ‘representative’,
‘typical’, rare, speciose, nice to look at, of recre-
ational value, or provide economic return (Ratcliffe
1977; Shrader-Frechette and McCoy 1993). Such
multiplicities of purpose require requisite tools; the
island theories have their place in the tool kit, but
they should not always be the first to be reached for.
Allied to the habitat remnant/reserve strategy,
wherever possible, conservationists should argue
for greater priority to extensiverather than intensive
conservation, i.e. for environmental management
policies to encourage the survival (or passage) of
many species outside of the more closely protected
reserves systems (cf. Rosenzweig 2003; Daily et al.
2005). In short, to work to prevent habitat islands
and reserves becoming more and more like real
islands—except in those biogeographical contexts
where insuralization is actually beneficial to
survival prospects. We have seen in this chapter
that issues such as size, shape, and configuration
within a landscape are important to reserve suc-
cess, not just in terms of how many species will be
held within a reserve, but also which sets of species.
The number of species held in a reserve (or reserve
system) is actually less important than to conserve
those species which cannot survive outside the
remnants (e.g. Newmark 1991).
Some recent efforts have been made to move
beyond an exclusive focus on (forest) fragments
towards understanding the role of such habitat
islands within mixed-use landscapes. This switch in
emphasis comes under varying headers. For
example, Watson et al. (2005) show that the incidence
functions of woodland bird species in three different
landscapes in the Canberra area (Australia) differ
significantly, seemingly as a function of differences
in properties of the landscape matrix within which
the woodlands are embedded. Hence, Watson et al.
(2005; and see Box 5.2) join others (e.g. Gascon
et al. 1999; Cook et al. 2002, Ewers and Didham 2005)
in calling for greater attention to ‘matrix effects’.
Hugheset al. (2002) adopted a slightly different
approach to their study in southern Costa Rica,
focusing on the extent to which native forest species
make use of the surrounding countryside: they
found that some 46% of bird species foraged often
kilometres away from extensive areas of native
forest. Although they stress that not all species can
be so readily accommodated outside large tracts of
native forests, their work supports the importance
of developing ‘countryside’ landscapes that are
biodiversity-friendly and penetrable by native
fauna (as Harris 1994). Daily and colleagues (e.g.
Dailyet al. 2001, 2005; Hughes et al. 2002) coin the
term ‘countryside biogeography’ for this switch in
attention from remnants per se, to the way in which
remnants function within whole landscapes. This
switch in emphasis is similar to that promoted by
Rosenzweig (2003) under the heading ‘reconciliation
ecology’. Whether we label this shift in emphasis
‘matrix effects’, ‘countryside biogeography’, or
‘reconciliation ecology’, the common element is a
realization that effective conservation must include
consideration of what happens outside reserves, as
the way we shape the countryside, whether we farm
intensively or extensively, whether we retain
hedgerows and trees within mixed landscapes, can
have profound implications for regional diversityISLAND BIOGEOGRAPHY TO COUNTRYSIDE BIOGEOGRAPHY? 287