Climate change – implications for practical nature conservation in the 21st century

In accounts of nature conservation in the early seventies there is no consideration of the impact of climate change on nature conservation priorities. During the 1980s and 1990s this subject has moved from being an interesting subject for speculation to a major consideration for our work. of potential climate change are becoming more sophisticated, such that they can be applied at the regional and sub-regional scale at which most nature conservation takes place. Techniques are being developed that allow the distribution of species under different climate scenarios to be modelled. Using these we can explore various critical questions relating to the degree to which the current patterns of species occurrence may or may not survive in future. species respond to climate individually we must be prepared for changes to the assemblages and communities that we have used to define and evaluate sites of importance for nature conservation. Some species will prosper and spread under the new conditions, some will become more restricted. If the species that decline are already rare how far should we go in trying to maintain them under conditions that may be becoming increasingly unsuitable? How should we react as species spread beyond what is currently considered their native range? hanges are needed to land-use policies and legislation? Our protected sites andnature reserves will change along with the rest of the countryside. What happens if the habitats or species for which a nature reserve or Special Area of Conservation was selected can no longer survive there? We will need to reconsider our objectives for the protected site series. Work on improving the connectivity and permeability of the landscapes around protected sites to permit species movement in response to climate change would seem to become ever more important; but in practice will species be able to disperse fast enough to compensate for changing conditions? pers in this special issue explore some of these ideas. Those based on results from the MONARCH programme provide an overview of the range of different species, habitats and features (including some geological structures) that might be affected within Britain and Ireland. The papers cannot provide definitive predictions of what will happen, but they do raise questions that will need to be addressed by practitioners, researchers, and policy makers alike, not just in Britain and Ireland, but elsewhere in the world.