Blended-Landscape Communities and Forested Habitats: Accounting for Perceptions Within and Beyond the Urban Fringe

There is little question that population growth since the beginning of the 19th Century has significantly altered the dynamics of terrestrial systems. Along with a variety of allied forces (e.g., climate change, agricultural... [ view full abstract ]

There is little question that population growth since the beginning of the 19th Century has significantly altered the dynamics of terrestrial systems. Along with a variety of allied forces (e.g., climate change, agricultural trends, economic tides), recent population increases have hastened urban and rural sprawl into undeveloped, typically forested spaces resulting in what could be characterized as blended-landscape communities wherein people, fish, and wildlife depend upon a pool of shared ecological services. In turn, a cascade of human induced changes herald substantial deforestation, wild land fragmentation, and the creation of biotic archipelagos fostering loss of biodiversity, threats to traditional lifestyles, and human-nonhuman conflicts over valued resources. It has become a vexing, wicked problem often mandating regulatory attempts to rein in migratory impulses via regulatory and rhetorical means, the effectiveness of either approach pivoting on understanding and accounting for why people value forested habitats in the first place. This project reframes existing scholarship regarding place meaning and making, perceptions of forested environments, and drivers of sprawl with an eye toward identifying strategies for adaptive landscape-scale strategies designed to preserve fish and wildlife species. In particular, data from two related studies in the United States suggest that widespread motivations to preserve forested habitats in blended-landscape communities have relatively little to do with the sustainability of ecological services, species diversity, or natural resource values independent of how such spaces contribute to the social fabric of those living in a region. Thus, it is argued that efforts after enhancing ecological literacy via educational or rhetorical campaigns within and beyond already developed areas may be shortsighted considering a distinctly social milieu in the relative darkness at the edge of town.