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Wildlife habitat corridors
From CopperWiki
Clearing of land for agriculture, urban development and many other changes to the natural environment have greatly reduced the amount of habitat available to wildlife.
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[edit] Why should I be aware of this?
- Man-made environments, such as open pasture and housing, can act as barriers to wildlife movement in search for food, dispersal of young to new home ranges and annual and seasonal migrations. Fragments of natural vegetation that remain in man-made environments may not provide all the resources one species requires for food, shelter and breeding.
- Conservationists discovered more than 40 years ago, if you connect these fragments with skinny strips of natural land, called “corridors,” plants and animals can more naturally spread. [1]
[edit] All about wildlife habitat corridors
The importance of wildlife habitat corridors lies in the fact that they facilitate movement of organisms between patches, thereby increasing species richness in those patches. Habitat corridors are strips of natural vegetation connecting 'island' habitats aimed at reconnecting isolated populations of wildlife. A system of corridor links is more likely to sustain wildlife populations throughout the fluctuations and catastrophes that they inevitably undergo. Thus, habitat corridors can increase the value of existing isolated habitats.
[edit] What a corridor should include:
Important components of a wildlife corridor are:[2]
- that the corridor be continuous and link areas of wildlife habitat;
- that the corridor provide a diverse natural vegetation. All forms of vegetation (trees, shrubs and ground cover, including fallen logs and leaf litter) should be represented where these are natural to the area;
- that the corridor be wide enough, and have suitable habitat, for the animals to live in as well as to move through; and
- that the corridor is managed in a way that maintains the habitat requirements and other resources required by wildlife.
Corridors should ideally be wider as they provide for greater diversity, have less impacts from adjoining land uses and associated edge effects (e.g. weeds, predators etc.) and provide habitat in their own right. Generally, wildlife corridors can be identified at 3 levels.
[edit] Regional Corridors
These are generally substantial in width (> 500m) and provide for dispersal of individual species. They are primary landscape connections between larger important areas of habitat. Regional corridors should ideally be at least twice the width of the average home range area of the animal species identified as potential users of the corridor.
[edit] Sub-regional Corridors
Such corridors are not as substantial in width as regional corridors, but are wide enough to provide landscape connections for species movement and dispersal. They connect larger vegetated landscape features such as ridgelines and valley floors.
[edit] Local Corridors
They are smaller, less defined linkages that provide local connection of remnant patches of vegetation and landscape features such as creek lines, gullies, wetlands and ridgelines. In some cases they may be less than 50m in width and as such may be influenced by edge effects.
