Once an area has been identified for protection the next steps are to design the reserve system and to put in place a plan for the management of the area(s) that will ensure protection and conservation of its biodiversity. Equally as important are the monitoring of outcomes of the management and the assessment of its effectiveness. This chapter continues from the previous one in responding to the problems of habitat destruction and fragmentation covered in Chapter 4.

By reading this chapter students will gain an understanding of the ways in which reserves can be designed to optimise their value, an understanding of the need to manage reserves and a knowledge of the range of different management approaches to different habitat types. Lastly they should gain an understanding of the vital importance of monitoring to assess the effectiveness of a management plan.

Designing protected areas

We have seen that in the past most protected areas have been set up in a random fashion more dependent on opportunity than design. However, a growing body of literature has developed on the optimal design of protected areas. The principles owe much to the theory of island biogeography and more recently to the concept of metapopulations, both of which were introduced in Chapter 4. Let us now look at some factors that could be optimised in the theoretical design of a protected area.

Shapes and sizes

It is generally agreed that the optimal shape for a protected area is circular (Fig. 9.1) because circles have minimum edge to area ratio therefore minimising marginal areas and edge effects.