Biodiversity conservation

Biodiversity conservation protects and manages the variety of life at genetic, species, and ecosystem levels, including the processes that sustain it.

Protected area: A geographically defined area managed to conserve nature and associated cultural values. Protected areas conserve habitats by limiting or guiding activities within defined boundaries.
IUCN Red List: A global assessment system that evaluates species’ extinction risk using standardized criteria. Its risk categories help prioritize species conservation and track changing status.
Habitat fragmentation: The division of continuous habitat into smaller, isolated patches, often by human land use. Fragmentation isolates populations and makes landscapes harder to conserve as connected systems.
Preservationism: An environmental approach that seeks to protect nature from direct human use or alteration. It contrasts with conservation approaches that permit managed, sustainable use.
30 by 30: A global target to conserve at least 30 percent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. The target raises questions about effective protection, representation, and equitable governance.
Habitat restoration: The process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. Restoration repairs damaged habitats when protection alone cannot recover ecological function.
Key Biodiversity Area: A site that contributes significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity. The designation identifies sites whose protection could benefit globally significant biodiversity.
Overexploitation: The removal of organisms from wild populations faster than those populations can recover. Unsustainable harvest can drive population declines even where habitat remains.
Sustainable use: The use of biological resources at a rate that does not cause their long-term decline. It allows resource use where strict protection may exclude it.
Other effective area-based conservation measures: Geographically defined areas outside protected areas that achieve sustained, effective in situ biodiversity conservation. These measures broaden how conservation progress beyond formal protected areas can be counted.

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