Describes a set of principles that will enable landholders to maintain or increase productivity without compromising ecological sustainabilty, and at the same time maintaining a substantial proportion of the native flora and fauna. The book provides the technical foundations underpinning the principles.

This book summarises the main discoveries, management insights and policy initiatives in the science, management and policy arenas associated with temperate woodlands in Australia. More than 60 of Australia’s leading researchers, policy makers and natural resource managers have contributed to the volume. It features new perspectives on the integration of woodland management and agricultural production, including the latest thinking about whole of paddock restoration and carbon farming, as well as financial and social incentive schemes to promote woodland conservation and management. Temperate Woodland Conservation and Management will be a key supporting aid for farmers, natural resource managers, policy makers, and people involved in NGO landscape restoration and management.

"This handbook is designed to assist private land managers. It will particularly help those contracted through the Environmental Stewardship Box Gum Grassy Woodland Project to improve the amount and condition of box gum grassy woodland on their properties." - Preface.

Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodlands may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of primary or secondary succession. This book presents research in the study of woodlands, including temporal and quantitative changes in the proportion of different land-use forms in the landscape of woodlands; butterfly communities in the woodland of Mount Fuji, Japan; experiences of the Caatinga and semiarid Mediterranean woodlands; ecology and management of natural and reforested Canary Island pine stands; and, the ecological distribution of miombo woodlands productivity.

Professor John Harper, in his recent Population Biology of Plants (1977), made a comment and asked a question which effectively states the theme of this book. Noting that 'one of the consequences of the development of the theory of vegetational climax has been to guide the observer's mind forwards', i. e. that 'vegetation is interpreted asa stage on the way to something', he commented that 'it might be more healthy and scientifically more sound to look more often backwards and search for the explanation of the present in the past, to explain systems in relation to their history rather than their goal'. He went on to contrast the 'disaster theory' of plant succession, which holds that communities are a response to the effects of past disasters, with the 'climax theory', that they are stages in the approach to a climax state, and then asked 'do we account most completely for the characteristics of a population by a knowledge of its history or of its destiny?' Had this question been put to R. S. Adamson, E. J. Salisbury, A. G. Tansley or A. S. Watt, who are amongst the giants of the first forty years of woodland ecology in Britain, their answer would surely have been that understanding lies in a knowledge of destiny. Whilst not unaware of the historical facts of British woodlands, they were preoccupied with ideas of natural succession and climax, and tended to interpret their observations in these terms.

Tasmanian woodlands range from the coast to the climatic treeline, from some of the poorest soils in the world to some of the richest, from waterlogged ground to sharply drained dry ridges. They are unusual in temperate Australia in that they support a full complement of native marsupial herbivores, which can occur in high densities. This chapter covers the subset of these woodlands with understoreys potentially dominated by native grasses and herbs, henceforth called grassy woodlands. These grassy woodlands have been dramatically reduced and degraded in Tasmania (Kirkpatrick et al. 1988), but still cover large areas of private land, largely utilised for wool production (Kirkpatrick et al. 2007) (see map below). They also occur on some smaller areas of public land, largely utilised for recreation and nature conservation. The remaining areas of grassy woodland on both types of tenure are under severe threat as the State Government embarks upon a misguided program to turn the dry Midlands of Tasmania into an irrigated food bowl. One key to the conservation of those grassy woodlands that are fortunate enough to survive lies in a middle path, avoiding both the thinning and thickening of trees. The other key lies in preventing a native grass and herb-dominated understorey from losing significant species or transforming into heath, scrub or vegetation dominated by exotic plants. The prevention of the last of these transitions relates to land-use decisions, and therefore to the economic, social and political context. The other transitions involve ecological interactions between climate, soils, fire regimes and grazing regimes. While climate change cannot be altered in the short term, fire and grazing regimes, two of the most effective vegetation management tools, are fortunately more malleable. The task given for this chapter was to report the conservation implications of ecological and social studies of Tasmanian grassy woodland in which I have been involved. Particular r.

The distinctive relationships between landscape change, habitat fragmentation, and biodiversity conservation are highlighted in this original and useful guide to the theory and practice of ecological landscape design. Using original, ecologically based landscape design principles, the text underscores current thinking in landscape management and conservation. It offers a blend of theoretical and practical information that is illustrated with case studies drawn from across the globe. Key insights by some of the world’s leading experts in landscape ecology and conservation biology make Managing and Designing Landscapes for Conservation an essential volume for anyone involved in landscape management, natural resource planning, or biodiversity conservation.