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ABSTRACT The landscape of rural America is changing. Wildlife habitats are being converted to agricultural uses, corridors (linear patches that differ from their surroundings) are removed to expand fields, and urban development spreads across farms, forests, and prairies. The result is a fragmented landscape with fewer, smaller, less-connected patches of wildlife habitat and increasingly-degraded water quality that stresses aquatic ecosystems. The landscapes capacity to sustain a diversity of plant, animal, and aquatic species is declining at an accelerating rate. The loss of biodiversity has become a national concern. Land use planners are increasingly advocating the use of conservation corridors, including riparian buffers, windbreaks/shelterbelts, filter strips, field borders, and grassed waterways to improve water quality and wildlife habitat. Since many of the ecological functions of conservation corridors operate more efficiently at scales larger than an individual corridor, planning at the watershed scale offers the best opportunity to optimize these functions.
Key words: Connectivity, corridors, fragmentation, habitat, wildlife.
The landscape in the United States, as well as in many other nations of the world, is dramatically changing at a rate unprecedented in modern time. Much of the habitat that, just a few short years ago, was quality habitat for a host of wildlife species is now being converted to agricultural uses, being developed for human "needs" (e.g., housing), and being lost to deforestation. The result is a fragmented landscape with fewer, smaller, and less well-connected patches of terrestrial habitat. In addition, this increased habitat fragmentation frequently results in degraded water quality that stresses aquatic systems. The result of this diminished habitat quantity and quality is a reduction in the overall ability of any ecosystem to sustain a high diversity of plant, animal, and aquatic species. Loss of biological diversity has become, as well it should be, a national concern.
The potential importance of conservation corridors was formally postulated in the mid-1970s (Wilson and Willis 1975 Diamond 1975). The issue of corridors continues to receive considerable attention, both from the public policy sector and the scientific community. Planners from the county to federal level often now include "greenbelts" and other habitat corridors in their design plans (Noss 1987). There is general consensus among conservation biologists that landscapelevel connectivity has the potential to enhance population viability for many...