Conservation

IUCN's 50th anniversary celebrations in Fontainebleau, France, on 3 November 1998, included a symposium organized around three main areas: conservation, communities and consumption. A wide range of prominent scientific figures led the workshops to encourage new thinking on diverse aspects of these topics. These Proceedings contain keynote addresses and summaries of the responses elicited by these papers.

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.

Over past decades, two global environmental issues "biodiversity loss and climate change" have often moved in wholly unconnected domains, with no link being made between the fate of unknown species in the Amazon rainforest and emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants in industrialized countries. However, results now show that climate change is a major threat to efforts to conserve biodiversity.