Science

Ecoregion Conservation (ERC) is an approach for conservation planning and action across ecoregions. Because these strategies are based on ecoregions, they capture the broad-scale patterns of biological diversity and the ecological processes that sustain them.

The key principles ecoregion conservation include:

• planning and implementing conservation on the scale at which natural ecosystems operate;
• articulating a 50-year biodiversity vision that conserves the full range of species, natural habitats, and ecological processes characteristic of an ecoregion over the long term; and
• providing a geographical/ecological flagship for developing a sense of stewardship.

The first step in ERC is to identify the natural habitats, ecological processes, and population attributes that will be required to conserve the full range of biodiversity in an ecoregion over the long-term. The outcome of this process is a biodiversity vision that portrays priority areas or even a specific conservation area network that the ecoregion should protect in order to conserve its biodiversity and ecological processes in the future.