Conservation of Populations and Species

Peter M Kareiva, National Marine Fisheries Service, Seattle, Washington, USA

Published online: April 2001

DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0003258

The conservation of populations and species requires that we identify how many and which populations have the greatest value, and then determine effective strategies for minimizing the threats to those populations. In many instances human activities have so severely imperilled species, that we must turn to habitat restoration, captive breeding, and large-scale ecosystem management to accomplish the goal of biodiversity protection.

Keywords: biodiversity; population viability; conservation; endangered species; extinction

Figure 1. Total number of spawning wild salmon from four populations of threatened Snake River populations in northwestern United States. (a) Imnaha. (b) Bear Valley/Elk. (c) Poverty Flat. (d) Sulphur Creek.
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 Further Reading
    Andelman S and Fagan W (2000) Umbrellas and flagships: efficient conservation surrogates or expensive mistakes? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 97: 5954–5959.
    book Caswell H (2000) Matrix Population Models, 2nd edn. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.
    book Caughley G and Gunn A (1996) Conservation Biology in Theory and Practice. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Science.
    book Fiedler P and Kareiva P (eds) (1998) Conservation Biology, 2nd edn. New York: Chapman and Hall.
    book IUCN (1996) 1996 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. Cambridge, UK: IUCN Publications Unit.
    book IUCN (1997) 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants. Cambridge, UK: IUCN Publications Unit.
    book Meffe G and Carroll R (1997) Principles of Conservation Biology. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.
    book Noss RF and Cooperrider A (1994) Saving Nature's Legacy: Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity. Washington DC: Defenders of Wildlife and Island Press.
    Simberloff D (1988) The contribution of population and community biology to conservation science. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 19: 473–511.
    book Stein B, Kutner L and Adams J (2000) Precious Heritage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Westemeier RL, Brawn JD, Simpson SA et al. (1998) Tracking the long-term decline and recovery of an isolated population. Science 282: 1695–1698.

Related Sub-Topics:

Conservation and Management | Population Ecology | Ecological Methods
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Article Title: Conservation of Populations and Species
 
How to Cite close
Kareiva, Peter M(Apr 2001) Conservation of Populations and Species. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1038/npg.els.0003258]