Planning for ecological connectivity across scales of governance in a multifunctional regional landscape

Abstract

Although a landscape is a single environmental system, human systems of governance at the landscape scale are often fragmented across jurisdictions and diverse stakeholders, impeding coordinated planning to maintain ecological connectivity. We sought solutions to overcome this challenge for wildlife corridor conservation in a rapidly developing, multifunctional landscape in one of North America’s most endangered ecoregions. Circuitscape modelling was used to identify key wildlife movement corridors through our study area. We then describe how the results of this modelling have informed a collaborative multi-stakeholder process leading to shared conservation objectives across scales of governance and illustrate its success with our case study. We conclude that achieving landscape-scale conservation objectives requires ongoing and coordinated collaboration facilitated by a dedicated group of individuals and informed by science.EDITED BY Davide Geneletti

Keywords

• wildlife corridors
• circuitscape
• shrub-steppe ecosystems
• functional connectivity
• environmental planning
• translational ecology
• british columbia