Integrating Land Use Planning and Biodiversity - Defenders of Wildlife

INTRODUCTION
efenders of Wildlife has long been a leader in
the conservation of wolves and other endangered species.
While Defenders takes great pride in that work, the organization's
mission is to protect all native wildlife in its
natural habitat and to secure biodiversity throughout the
country, not only in places with large expanses of protected
land and populations of large predators. As communities
grow and their borders expand, Defenders' mission
has led the organization to examine the land use
planning process and its effect on wildlife outside of
parks, preserves and refuges.
Biodiversity has been defined as "the variety of living
organisms, the genetic differences among them, the communities
and ecosystems in which they occur, and the
ecological and evolutionary processes that keep them
functioning, yet ever changing and adapting" (Noss and
Cooperrider 1994). That diversity is essential to the biological
processes that sustain life. The quality of the air
we breathe, the water we drink, the soil we cultivate, the
plants and animals we depend on for food and fiber, and
the landscape we enjoy for recreation — the fundamentals
of our civilization, economy, and health all depend
on biodiversity.
Habitat loss is now the most significant threat to biodiversity.
As many other reports and scientific papers have
shown, the loss, degradation and alteration of habitat are
the primary factors responsible for the worldwide decline
in numbers of wild animals and plants. While many people
think habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity are
problems confined to exceptionally species-rich areas
like the tropics, they are very real problems here in the
United States. Uncontrolled growth, often referred to as
"sprawl", plagues communities across the country. It
permanently fragments contiguous habitat into marginal
pieces of land. Habitat loss and diminishing biodiversity
may be the most urgent environmental problems we now
face.
In December 2000, to help draw attention to the importance
of biodiversity, problems caused by habitat loss,
and the potential role of land use planning in solving the
current conservation crisis, the Doris Duke Charitable
Foundation awarded a grant to Defenders of Wildlife,
NatureServe, the Environmental Law Institute and Island
Press. The Duke Foundation asked the four groups,
together known as the Consortium on Biodiversity and
Land Use, to examine the interaction of biodiversity,
habitat protection and land use planning in a
program of research, publishing, and public outreach.
To investigate the vital role conservation planning can
play in connecting land use planning and biodiversity
preservation, and as part of work funded by the Duke
Foundation grant, Defenders of Wildlife sponsored a
two-day workshop at the Wye River Conference Center
in Queenstown, Maryland from February 28 to March 1,
2002. The workshop brought together over three dozen
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