Fencing for Conservation Restriction of Evolutionary Potential or a Riposte to Threatening Processes?

About this book

How can we best protect the world's biodiversity in the face of the growing human population? This question is the central theme of contemporary conservation biology. The protection of biodiversity from overuse by fencing it off from the surrounding landscape is one of the conservation tools available to us. Fences have become common features of our environment and firmly entrenched in our lives, as we use them to surround our farms, houses, and anything we want to keep to ourselves or protect.

Within the last few hundred years, conservationists have started using fences to protect biodiversity from overuse and poaching, as well as to protect people from wild animals, especially large carnivores and megaherbivores such as elephants and rhinos. The methodologies for, and approaches to, the use of fences by conservationists vary, and range from the intensive fencing practices in places such as South Africa, to the complete avoidance of fences in other places such as parts of East Africa. In other areas such as Australia and New Zealand fences are used, at enormous costs, not to protect biodiversity from people, but to protect vulnerable native species from invasive alien species such as foxes and cats. Some may argue that biodiversity conservation is not possible without fences, while others argue that the fencing in of biodiversity simply creates zoos and restricts evolutionary potential.

Fencing for Conservation: Restriction of Evolutionary Potential or a Riposte to Threatening Processes? reviews some of the issues regarding fencing for conservation and summarises the current state of knowledge and practice, describing numerous case studies from around the world. As such it will be of interest to students and researchers of conservation biology, invasion biology, ecology and wildlife management.

Contents

Chapter 1.An introduction to fencing for conservation. Matt W. Hayward and Michael J. Somers
Chapter 2. Perspectives on fencing for conservation based on four case studies: marsupial conservation in Australian forests; bushmeat hunting in South Africa; large predator reintroduction in South Africa; and large mammal conservation in Poland. Matt W. Hayward
Chapter 3. The relative merits of predator-exclusion fencing and repeated fox baiting for protection of native fauna: five case studies from Western Australia. Paul J. de Tores and Nicky Marlow
Chapter 4. Fences or ferals? Benefits and costs of conservation fencing in Australia. Chris R. Dickman
Chapter 5. The use and potential of pest-proof fencing for ecosystem restoration and fauna conservation in New Zealand. Bruce Burns, John Innes and Tim Day
Chapter 6. Fencing for purpose: A case study of elephants in South Africa. Rob Slotow
Chapter 7. An adaptive monitoring programme for studying impacts along the western boundary fence of Kruger National Park, South Africa. Ken Ferguson, Laura Adam and Ferran Jori
Chapter 8. Does the vastness of the Serengeti limit human-wildlife conflicts? Marion L. East, Julius W. Nyahongo, Katja V. Goller and Heribert Hofer
Chapter 9. Barriers, the beef industry and unnatural selection: a review of the impacts of veterinary fencing on mammals in southern Africa. Michelle E. Gadd
Chapter 10 Modelling the effect of fences on the viability of spatially structured populations of African wild dogs. Michael J. Somers, Markus Gusset and Fredrik Dalerum
Chapter 11. Towards a true ecology: exploring the implications for conservation of the human and social dimensions of fencing in the subtropical thicket biome, South Africa. Andrew T. Knight and Richard M. Cowling
Chapter 12. Ecological, social and financial issues related to fencing as a conservation tool in Africa. Peter A. Lindsey, Chap L. Masterson, Andrew L. Beck and Stephanie Romanach
Chapter 13. Do fences or humans inhibit the movements of large mammals in Bialowieza Primeval Forest? R. Kowalczyk, K. Schmidt and W Jedrzejewski
Chapter 14. Exploring the value of wolves (Canis lupus) in landscape-scale fenced reserves for ecological restoration in the Scottish Highlands. Christopher Sandom, Joseph Bull, Susan Canney and David W. Macdonald
Chapter 15. The influence of land use and fences on habitat effectiveness, movements and distribution of pronghorn in grasslands of North America C. Cormack Gates Paul Jones, Michael Suitor, Andrew Jakes, Mark S. Boyce and Kyran Kunkel
Chapter 16. Use of electric fencing and associated measures as deterrents to jaguar predation on cattle in the pantanal of Brazil. Sandra M.C. Cavalcanti, Peter G. Crawshaw Jr. and Fernando R. Tortato

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