The broader point I had hoped to make was that when we talk about landscape connectivity I'm actually speaking more broadly about the need to maintain functioning ecosystems across the landscape. As an example, in British Columbia right now there's a pilot project ongoing with the Ministry of Environment. It is attempting to establish objectives, targets, and benchmarks for key ecosystem values, and then to develop baseline information and use that information—those objectives, benchmarks, and indicators—as a mechanism for decision-makers in making choices about approving development and human activity in a way that does not negatively impact on ecosystem integrity and our ecosystem services.
There is a lot in the literature about landscape connectivity. Ultimately that is about the ability of any given species to be able to move across the landscape and go from one area of habitat to another, and that's going to depend on the species. Too often that is thought about in a relatively impoverished way. People do talk about wildlife corridors, and of course that's important, but we need to look at the landscape as a whole.
There's a concept that is sometimes called “porosity of the landscape”, the ability of species to move through barriers like roads or development. We need to be thinking in a fairly holistic way.
I want to say one more thing specifically about corridors. In an era of climate change, to the extent we are talking about movement corridors, we need to be very much thinking about connectivity of cross-climate gradients as a key element of landscape connectivity—essentially allowing species to move from warmer areas to cooler areas. While we're designing landscape connectivities, we need to be taking that into account. It's not only looking at barriers to movement and the types of human impact on the landscape, but also allowing species to move northward. That is going to become more and more critical in an era of climate change.