Introduction

The United States possesses great diversity of ecosystems and species. The greatest threat to biodiversity loss in the US comes from the loss and/or degradation of existing habitat. The US has experienced limited success in habitat and species restoration, and more needs to be done to protect remaining special places and the plants and animals that inhabit them.

Federal efforts to protect ecosystems in the US have taken the form of establishing protected areas and enacting legislation, notably the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA), to safeguard species and their habitats. However, some question whether legislation and protected areas do enough to address the systemic causes connected to biodiversity loss. For example, Bean (1999) observes that the ESA has been built on insecure ecological foundations, that it does not provide reliable protection for ecosystems, that it has become politicised, so is more an arena for legal posturing than biodiversity management, and that it has not encouraged community involvement along the lines suggested by Jules Pretty in chapter 4. Against the backdrop of this debate about the adequacy of existing efforts to protect biodiversity, there has been a proliferation of community-based efforts since the mid-1980s to address environmental and natural resource problems, including biodiversity issues. Community-based efforts can be seen as a new and evolving response to the inadequacy of existing institutions to solve the pressing problems, including biodiversity loss, which individuals and communities face.