Wildlife corridors: Conceptualization, valuation as an environmental management tool and applicability on forest ecosystems

The world's natural forests have undergone an unprecedented process of deforestation during the past half century. Besides the loss of forested area, such forests as remain have become highly fragmented. Forest fragmentation refers to the disruption of a continuous area of forest into smaller fragments with various degrees of isolation. The deforestation and fragmentation of native forest are globally occurring phenomena that cause serious environmental problems, due to their impact on biodiversity. As part of efforts to encourage conservation of the biodiversity of these fragmented ecosystems management solutions have been sought that would allow areas of high biodiversity value to be connected, in order to enable these areas to be better conserved and managed as continuous forested areas. The concept of biological corridors emerged as an aspect of such efforts. This chapter deals with this tool for conservation management; its objectives, definitions, forms of economic exploitation, and use as a form of conservation of biodiversity.