Effects of Management on Biological Diversity and Endangered Species

Abstract

High biodiversity in Spanish and California woodlands is due to the intermixing of habitat types and habitat elements. Dehesa management in Spain creates a mosaic of vegetation that includes trees, shrubs, and grasslands. Maintaining this diversity requires control of invasive shrubs, but sustaining the woodlands calls for periodic management to permit an encroachment of shrubs that foster oak regeneration. Californian oak woodlands are also high in biodiversity, but have been managed far less intensively, largely for acorns and game in the pre-contact period and for livestock grazing and game in current times. Shrub invasion is slower and less common than in Spain. The impacts of livestock on oak regeneration seems to vary across California’s very heterogeneous climatic and soil conditions. Just as biodiversity supports the multifunctional dehesa economy, the possibilities of income generation from biodiversity may be crucial to the sustenance of California oak woodland ranches, reducing conversion to intensive agriculture and urbanization.