Lower New England – Northern Piedmont Ecoregional Conservation Plan

Summary

The Nature Conservancy’s mission is to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. The increasing rate of extinction in recent years has led to the realization that conserving rare and threatened species and natural communities per se is insufficient to effectively protect biodiversity. In broadening the scope of its work, the Conservancy has shifted towards protecting landscapes on an ecoregional scale.

Planning by ecoregions, or areas that are unified in climate, topography, geology, and vegetation, is more sensible ecologically than planning within political boundaries such as states or provinces. Ecoregional planning methods improve on the traditional approach of protecting rare species and terrestrial communities by expanding to include common ecosystems that are representative of each ecoregion. Protection of good examples of these representative ecosystems can serve as a “coarse filter,” protecting a broad diversity of both common and rare species. The methods chapters in this report explain and elaborate on the concepts introduced here, especially as they relate to ecoregional planning in the Northeast and East.

Citation

Barbour, H., & Anderson, M. G. (2003). Lower New England—Northern Piedmont ecoregional conservation plan (first iteration, edited). The Nature Conservancy, Northeast and Caribbean Division, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.