IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v11y2022i3p348-d759845.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Value of Trail Corridors for Bold Conservation Planning

Author

Listed:
  • Mel B. Wilson

    (Sustainability Program, Harvard University, Extension School, Cambridge, MA 01238, USA)

  • R. Travis Belote

    (The Wilderness Society, Bozeman, MT 59715, USA)

Abstract

Conservationists are calling for bold strategies to connect wildlands and halt extinctions. A growing number of scientists recommend that 50% of all land must be held in a protected area network to maintain biodiversity. We assessed lands adjacent to the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and Continental Divide Trail (CDT) as possible wildlife corridors connecting protected areas in the American West. We evaluated the connectivity, wildness, and biodiversity values of the lands of each corridor and determined the conservation and land management status. We found that our corridors connect 95 protected areas creating two linear protected area chains from Mexico to Canada. Both the PCT and CDT corridors follow many of the best corridor routes previously found in the literature and hold high wildland conservation values. The American public already owns the majority of land units around the modeled PCT (88%) and CDT (90%) corridor. Therefore, we recommend further analysis of the lands adjacent to recreational trails as wildlife corridors. Employing our methodology on multiple scales could reveal that other recreational trails should be buffered and conserved for wildlife movement.

Suggested Citation

  • Mel B. Wilson & R. Travis Belote, 2022. "The Value of Trail Corridors for Bold Conservation Planning," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-14, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:3:p:348-:d:759845
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/3/348/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/3/348/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oscar Venter & Eric W. Sanderson & Ainhoa Magrach & James R. Allan & Jutta Beher & Kendall R. Jones & Hugh P. Possingham & William F. Laurance & Peter Wood & Balázs M. Fekete & Marc A. Levy & James E., 2016. "Sixteen years of change in the global terrestrial human footprint and implications for biodiversity conservation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 1-11, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hui Wen & Jiquan Chen & Zhifang Wang, 2020. "Disproportioned Performances of Protected Areas in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(16), pages 1-15, August.
    2. Kim, Yeon-Su & Rodrigues, Marcos & Robinne, François-Nicolas, 2021. "Economic drivers of global fire activity: A critical review using the DPSIR framework," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    3. Samuel Xin Tham Lee & Zachary Amir & Jonathan H. Moore & Kaitlyn M. Gaynor & Matthew Scott Luskin, 2024. "Effects of human disturbances on wildlife behaviour and consequences for predator-prey overlap in Southeast Asia," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.
    4. Thomas Eichner & Marco Runkel, 2022. "Animal Welfare, Moral Consumers and the Optimal Regulation of Animal Food Production," CESifo Working Paper Series 10149, CESifo.
    5. Ehsan Rahimi & Pinliang Dong, 2022. "What are the main human pressures affecting Iran’s protected areas?," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 12(4), pages 682-691, December.
    6. Lafuite, A.-S. & Loreau, M., 2017. "Time-delayed biodiversity feedbacks and the sustainability of social-ecological systems," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 351(C), pages 96-108.
    7. Nobel, Anne & Lizin, Sebastien & Malina, Robert, 2023. "What drives the designation of protected areas? Accounting for spatial dependence using a composite marginal likelihood approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    8. Caitlin Cunningham & Karen F. Beazley, 2018. "Changes in Human Population Density and Protected Areas in Terrestrial Global Biodiversity Hotspots, 1995–2015," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-20, November.
    9. Yangyang Gu & Xuning Qiao & Mengjia Xu & Changxin Zou & Dong Liu & Dan Wu & Yan Wang, 2019. "Assessing the Impacts of Urban Expansion on Bundles of Ecosystem Services by Dmsp-Ols Nighttime Light Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-17, October.
    10. Luis Santiago Castillo & Camilo Andrés Correa Ayram & Clara L. Matallana Tobón & Germán Corzo & Alexandra Areiza & Roy González-M. & Felipe Serrano & Luis Chalán Briceño & Felipe Sánchez Puertas & Ale, 2020. "Connectivity of Protected Areas: Effect of Human Pressure and Subnational Contributions in the Ecoregions of Tropical Andean Countries," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-19, July.
    11. Morgan Gray & Elisabeth Micheli & Tosha Comendant & Adina Merenlender, 2020. "Climate-Wise Habitat Connectivity Takes Sustained Stakeholder Engagement," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-21, October.
    12. Peter Mikula & Oldřich Tomášek & Dušan Romportl & Timothy K. Aikins & Jorge E. Avendaño & Bukola D. A. Braimoh-Azaki & Adams Chaskda & Will Cresswell & Susan J. Cunningham & Svein Dale & Gabriela R. F, 2023. "Bird tolerance to humans in open tropical ecosystems," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-10, December.
    13. R. Travis Belote, 2018. "Proposed Release of Wilderness Study Areas in Montana (USA) Would Demote the Conservation Status of Nationally-Valuable Wildlands," Land, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-10, June.
    14. Shamik Chakraborty & Ram Avtar & Raveena Raj & Huynh Vuong Thu Minh, 2019. "Village Level Provisioning Ecosystem Services and Their Values to Local Communities in the Peri-Urban Areas of Manila, The Philippines," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(12), pages 1-18, November.
    15. Li, Shicheng & Zhang, Yili & Wang, Zhaofeng & Li, Lanhui, 2018. "Mapping human influence intensity in the Tibetan Plateau for conservation of ecological service functions," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 30(PB), pages 276-286.
    16. Troxler, David & Zabel, Astrid, 2021. "Clearing forests to make way for a sustainable economy transition in Switzerland," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    17. Rocío Ponce Reyes & Jennifer Firn & Sam Nicol & Iadine Chadès & Danial S Stratford & Tara G Martin & Stuart Whitten & Josie Carwardine, 2019. "Building a stakeholder-led common vision increases the expected cost-effectiveness of biodiversity conservation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-18, June.
    18. R. Travis Belote & G. Hugh Irwin, 2017. "Quantifying the National Significance of Local Areas for Regional Conservation Planning: North Carolina’s Mountain Treasures," Land, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-16, May.
    19. Manan Bhan & Simone Gingrich & Sarah Matej & Steffen Fritz & Karl-Heinz Erb, 2021. "Land Use Increases the Correlation between Tree Cover and Biomass Carbon Stocks in the Global Tropics," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-15, November.
    20. Reaser, Jamie & Tabor, Gary M. & Becker, Daniel & Muruthi, Philip & Witt, Arne & Woodley, Stephen J. & Ruiz-Aravena, Manuel & Patz, Jonathan Alan MD, MPH & Hickey, Valerie & Hudson, Peter, 2020. "Land use-induced spillover: priority actions for protected and conserved area managers," EcoEvoRxiv bmfhw, Center for Open Science.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:3:p:348-:d:759845. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.