Beyond conservation : facing the reality of biodiversity in a human-dominated world

Abstract

The majority of the world’s ecosystems have been profoundly altered by human activities in ways that are essentially irreversible. Global population growth will place ever greater demands on ecosystems and the services that they provide. Using examples from waterway management in Australia, Dr. Thompson will discuss the issue of how we manage ecosystems within the bounds of what society demands from them, and in the context of regional factors such as climate change, habitat fragmentation and species invasions. He will argue that restoration is most often an unrealistic goal, and that rebuilding and managing ecosystems for a range of values is the challenge that ecologists truly face. Using data from major environmental management interventions including landscape-scale revegetation, invasive animal control and environmental flow provision he will describe the challenges in restoring, remediating and re-engineering natural ecosystems.