Policies for Managing Urban Growth and Landscape Change: A Key to Conservation in The 21st Century

Protecting natural areas in the face of urbanization is one of the most important challenges for conservation in the 21st century. Rapid population growth and increasingly land-consumptive development patterns have combined in many countries to put severe pressure on natural systems. In the United States, sprawling development is the most significant factor affecting forest ecosystems in the South (Wear and Greis 2002) and is the leading cause of habitat loss and species endangerment in the contiguous U.S. (Czech et al. 2000). Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth (2004) has identified loss of open space due to sprawling development as one of the four main threats to public and private forests.