Carol Lane

One of the most crucial elements of CI’s plan to save the panda – as well as other threatened species throughout the world – is the biodiversity conservation corridor. It’s an important strategy that’s rooted in our commitment to meeting the needs of both people and animals.

The Corridor, Defined

Biodiversity conservation corridors are strategically located regions that link key habitats for plants and animals, including protected areas. Rather than the narrow strip of land you might envision, a corridor is actually a broad landscape that encompasses a range of land uses, including agriculture, human settlements, and even industrial activities.

What is their purpose?

By connecting fragmented habitats and protected areas, corridors enable us to:

• Conserve threatened species, like pandas, by linking isolated populations. Individual protected areas are sometimes too small to support viable populations of threatened species and maintain the ecological processes they need to survive. While corridors are anchored by protected areas, they also incorporate the additional land needed to connect forest fragments and create fully functioning ecosystems for people and wildlife. 
  
  

  MAP: Take a closer look at the distance between panda populations.

• Protect territory needed by wide ranging species, like elephants or big cats. Connectivity is critical for maintaining the seasonal movement and dispersal patterns of many species that must move from one area to another, either in search of resources or to migrate to new territories. This connectivity may also be critical for adapting to long-term changes, such as climate change. 
  
• Sustain natural processes, like water cycles and pollination. These processes are critically important for the survival of threatened and concentrated species. For example, while hydrological processes may be essential for the survival of a species in a protected area, they likely operate in an area broader than the protected area. A corridor can help ensure those processes are protected. 
  
• Develop solutions that protect nature while supporting human well-being. Because of their scale, corridors allow us to address human needs as well as those of nature, giving us more flexibility in designing conservation strategies that work for both people and wildlife.

What are the advantages of the corridor concept?

Most threats to critical habitats actually originate far from the sites and well outside of the control of park managers and conservationists, like decisions made by national and provincial governments or the pressures of changing market demands. Conservation corridors, however, can help foster and encourage collaboration among stakeholders at all scales. Planning a corridor is essentially creating a sustainable landscape that’s optimized for both human and nonhuman inhabitants over the long term.

Because of its large scale, corridor planning enables conservation to occur in partnership with human communities, and not become a rival to economic development.

A benefit felt around the world – one acre at a time.

The corridor concept can also contribute to the reduction of carbon emissions. Each acre of destroyed forest releases stored carbon, contributing more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the world’s cars, trucks, SUVs, and planes. This drives climate change, and climate change is affecting us all globally, in changing rainfall patterns, rising ocean levels, and increased drought.

So while corridor development is critical to protecting threatened species like pandas, it also works to curb global warming. Because our efforts to protect forests also account for human economic needs, corridors promote the well-being of both people and wildlife.

What challenges arise in planning a corridor project?

Successful corridor planning must involve a thorough understanding of local and regional people and their economic needs, followed by a strategy for addressing those needs while achieving biodiversity goals.

According to Grace Wong, CI’s Senior Advisor for Corridor Economics and Planning, “Conservation strategies at this scale inevitably revolve around the question of development versus conservation. It’s a matter of generating information on tradeoffs and costs, and also finding the synergies where possible. Often, to make a project work for people on the ground, we bring in all of our economic tools – such as fair trade coffee projects and ecotourism – to support development while lowering the costs of conservation to the government and local communities.”

A solution beyond the panda

While corridor development is a key element of CI’s larger conservation plan for the giant panda, the strategy is already seeing success throughout the world. Corridors are hard at work in Bolivia, Brazil, the Philippines, South Africa, and other areas. By considering the larger picture at multiple scales, and the needs of local parties concerned, we are providing an opportunity for the long-term resiliency of wildlife and human livelihood.