Habitat Fragmentation In The Temperate Zone

Abstract

The term “habitat fragmentation” has become a buzzword among conservationists and managers in recent years. Although it may sound like a new concept, some wildlife biologists suggest that it is simply a new term for an old concept; they argue that wildlife management has always focused on such factors as habitat distribution, juxtaposition, and edge, which are some of the major factors associated with habitat fragmentation (e.g., Leopold 1933).Modern studies of habitat fragmentation, however, are very different from classic wildlife management in several ways. First, they deal with many more species than the game species that wildlife managers historically attempted to manipulate. Secondly, these new species of concern often are those whose habitat requirements include late successional habitat types as opposed to classical management, which focused on early successional habitats where game species were abundant. Finally, today’s approaches vary greatly in matters of scale; classical wildlife management generally dealt with non migratory species, such as quail, turkey, or deer, whose populations could be manipulated on a scale of a few hundred or thousand acres.