IUCN, Forest Conservation Programme

The loss and fragmentation of natural habitats is one of the major issues in wildlife management and conservation. Habitat "corridors" are sometimes proposed as an important element within a conservation strategy. Examples are given of corridors both as pathways and as habitats in their own right.

Large areas of the world's forests have been lost or degraded and landscapes everywhere are being simplified by current land-use practices. In this publication, Lamb and Gilmour present approaches to restoring and rehabilitating the vast areas of degraded, fragmented and modified forests which cover much of the world. They argue that by applying best practice at the site level it is possible to enhance socio-economic and ecological gains at the landscape level.

This report brings together 27 indicators of human and ecosystem wellbeing using IUCN's pioneering Sustainability Assessment method. It is intended to complement Wellbeing Scores software, which allows users to explore different standards and combinations of what comprises sustainable development. The publication may provoke debate amongst forest conservationists and critics and provide them with a platform for exploring this new software.

Mitigating the impact of climate change presents governments and communities throughout the world with one of the main environmental challenges of our times. This publication provides an overview of the opportunities and challenges for carbon sequestration activities in the forestry and agricultural sectors of both industrialized and developing countries.

Forest loss and degradation carry a heavy human and environmental cost throughout tropical, temperate and boreal regions. In response, IUCN, WWF and various government and non-government partners have developed the Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) approach, which focuses on restoring the goods, services and ecological processes that forests can provide at the broader landscape level.

The eastern African coastal strip contains a tiny chain of patches of lowland tropical dry forest. They were previously considered to be of low conservation priority in terms of endemism and species diverstiy, but research since the mid-1980s has shown that their biological richness is comparable to other important tropical forest types in Africa.

Fires are a natural phenomenon. However, over 90% of all wildland fires today are due to human action causing significant forest loss between 6-14 million hectares of forest per annum. This leads to enormous economic losses, damage to environmental, recreational and amenity values, and loss of life. There is strong recognition that action is needed to catalyse a strategic international response to forest fires.