Landscape management - Ecological Applications: Toward a Sustainable World - page 274

appreciate that because species often use a variety of habitats, a landscape perspective may be
needed for reintroduction programs
identify biodiversity hotspots with exceptional concentrations of endemic species undergoing
exceptional loss of habitat
understand that regional species richness (gamma richness) consists of within-habitat richness
(alpha) plus additional species added as further habitats are included (beta richness)
recognize the importance of social and economic dimensions of landscape management, particu-
larly where multipurpose reserves are concerned

Omar is usually objective about the documentary fi lms he has to review as part of
his course, but he became unusually absorbed in this one - 'The Great Dance: a
hunter's story' (directed by Craig and Damon Foster). In the words of a Kalahari
bushman 'tracking is like dancing because your body is happy'. The fi lm takes us
inside the hunters' minds, and we discover how they themselves 'put on' the mind
of the animal they are tracking, how much they understand and respect their quarry,
how they must help it die as quickly and painlessly as possible. The fi lm recounts
their four hunting techniques - the use of arrows tipped with poison, the tracking
of cheetah who can be chased from freshly killed prey, the scaring of vultures in
desperate times to feed from rotting fl esh, and, most extraordinary of all - 'the hunt
by running'. ' I could hardly believe that when the weather is really hot a small group
of bushmen will run for hours after an antelope, never letting it settle. Remarkably, the
animal becomes exhausted before the bushmen, who spear it and carry the prime meat
back to the tribe. ' The fi lm records one chase through desert scrub that lasts for 6
hours before the bushman's voice tells us '. . . but now they have run into the wildlife
reserve. We must leave them, or else we'll be put in gaol.' Omar feels really angry
that conservation managers have not found a way to accommodate a lifestyle that
has lasted 30,000 years.
In previous chapters I have treated most environmental issues as if I was peering
at them through a microscope, asking questions about the match between environ-
ment and organisms in relatively homogeneous and small-scale settings. I say 'rela-
tively' because no environment, even when viewed with a 'microscope', is entirely
homogeneous. The approach I have used is generally adequate when planning pest
control in a farmer's fi eld, designing a fi shing regime in a particular marine area,
conserving koalas in a particular forest, or setting aside a single nature reserve. But
ecological problems are not always confi ned to a single habitat patch. The population
of an endangered species may exist as a metapopulation of subpopulations in physi-
cally separate patches, but with some interchange of individuals among them
(Section 10.2). The fi sh in a marine protected area are likely to contribute to the
population dynamics of the fi shery in a different way than fi sh at large in the sea
(as already touched on in Chapter 7) (Section 10.3). The effectiveness of a pest
control plan may be compromised by the nature of the surrounding countryside
(Section 10.4). And the restoration or protection of maximum biodiversity demands
a network of reserves that, between them, incorporate the most species (Sections
10.5, 10.6). Sometimes the aim is even more ambitious and complicated - to design
a multipurpose reserve that simultaneously incorporates different objectives (Section
10.7), such as hunting and conservation in the Kalahari Desert. In all these cases,

10.1 Introduction