Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
fauna—become rallying points for international conservation efforts, attracting donations
or encouraging volunteerism.
1
Category
Description
Category Ia: Strict Nature Reserve
Restricted from all human disturbance except scientific study, environmental monit-
oring, and educational activities.
Restricted from most human disturbance, including roads and motorized vehicles.
Makes provisions for indigenous people practicing traditional livelihoods to access
resources.
Category Ib: Wilderness Area
The main objective is to preserve ecosystem functions, while also allowing human
visitation, tourism, and educational activities.
Category II: National Park
Designed to protect natural or culturally significant landscape features, with cultural
preservation providing an incentive for environmental protection.
Category III: Natural Monument
Category IV: Habitat- or Species-
Management Area
Focuses on conservation of a threatened species or degraded habitat, often involving
ecosystem restoration.
Category V: Protected Landscape
Sets aside land areas for conservation but also permits a wide range of human eco-
nomic activities, such as agriculture, forestry, and ecotourism.
Category VI: Protected Area with
Sustainable Use of Natural Re-
sources
Allows a wider range of economic activities but encourages maintenance of the land
in accordance with its “natural condition.”
Source
: Dudley 2008.
Conservation biologists have warned that we are now living through the “sixth great
extinction” in the roughly 4-billion-year history of life on earth, from the rise of single-
celled organisms to the ascent of human beings with frontal cortexes more complex than
anything in the known universe and endowed with the unique capacity to radically alter
the biosphere. Unlike the previous five mass-extinction events—the last of which caused
the demise of the dinosaurs approximately 65 million years ago—the current extinction
is the unique product of anthropogenic forces such as habitat destruction, species translo-
cation, overpopulation, pollution, and the unsustainable extraction and use of natural re-
sources. Such rapid loss of biodiversity—at a rate that likely tops thousands of species per
