ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the importance of conserving forest fragments, remnant trees, and other natural habitats in the agricultural landscape for the conservation of regional biodiversity. It highlights how biological information has been integrated into land-use practices through an adaptive and collaborative conservation strategy implemented by the Monteverde Conservation League (MCL) that includes environmental education, reforestation, and forest fragment protection. The MCL reforestation program started small with the help of volunteers who experimented with planting a few native tree species in windbreaks and degraded pastures. Forest fragments in the Monteverde region have been found to contain a high diversity of trees: in a 10% sample of 30 forest fragments Guindon found 59 tree families, 130 genera, and 225 species, representing 31% of the tree diversity of the entire Tilaran mountain range above 700 m. Forest fragment size was the best predictor of tree species, genera, and family richness, with larger fragments containing greater diversity.