MetroOur own Metro area has a plan for preserving biodiversity. This plan relies on purchasing plots of property that will help preserve particular habitats but also serve as corridors between the reserves.
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Metro - protecting habitats and water |
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The purchase property has been very successful by some accounts but critics have claimed that some prices were too high.
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| Looking at the properties that are preserved, you can see that they represent wetlands, forests, grassland buttes and other native areas in the northern Willamette valley. | Regional trails and greenways |
OregonThe entire state of Oregon also has a plan for preserving biodiversity and collects massive amounts of information
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Their plan focuses on the ecoregions of Oregon that we saw in our discussion sections.
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Ecoregions of Oregon - need link |
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These regions were analyzed to find critical pieces that need to be of critical areas to be preserved.
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Oregon Natural Heritage Information Center |
| One approach has been to suggest incentives for property owners to increase wildlife habitat or other preservation efforts. | National Stewardship Incentives |
Costa RicaCosta Rica is smaller than Oregon with a lower per capita income but they have organized a system of national parks and reserves that protect the biological resources on a much higher percentage of their territory than Metro or Oregon.
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Institute for National Biodiversity |
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Costa Rica's plan divides the country up into small management districts. Each district devises its own strategy. This provides some insurance that no one strategy will be implemented and fail all over the country. It also lets local areas control the use of their land.
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For example, see the plan for Guanacaste region. |
| The Costa Rican plan provides for limited use reserves that surround the national parks. This helps protect the wildlife in the parks from outside influences and it helps provide corridors for organisms between the parks and other reserves. The limited use of these reserves has been a major factor in the ecotourism boom in Costa Rica. | |
The total amount of land devoted to reserves isn't the only factor. Another major factor is the ability of organisms to move from one natural area to another. This includes animals of course, but also plant species need to propagate.
Compare these two regions (that look a little like Portland). They have approximately the same amount of reserves but in one cases they are scattered around and no easy corridors exist. In the other case there are fewer, larger reserves with easier passage between them. The gray lines are major highways.
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March 3, 2000