Conserving Nature’s Stage

Abstract

The approach is attractive because it focuses conservation on the physical factors that create diversity in the first place while allowing species and communities to rearrange in response to a changing climate. It provides a logical structure for designing conservation networks that assume nature is dynamic and resilient and challenges us to create arenas for evolution, not museums of the past.

Good ideas don’t always translate into sound practices. With that in mind, Paul Beier, Mac Hunter and Mark Anderson hosted a workshop in 2013 to hammer out issues inherent in the conserving nature’s stage (CNS) approach. With support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, they gathered scientists and conservationists from around the globe who have been testing the approach in a wide variety of situations. After three days of intensive dialog, and two years of collaborative writing among 33 authors, the result is a notable collection of 10 papers. While not every question is addressed, we hope you’ll agree they tackled some good ones.

Additional Resource

For a summary of the special issue read about Conserving Nature’s Stage in Cool Green Science.

Citation

Beier, P., Hunter, M.L., and Anderson M. (2015). Special section: Conserving nature’s stage. Conservation Biology 29: 613–617.

https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12511