ABSTRACT
Engaging with ‘nature’ in places they live and work, many people around the world
gain benefits, including aesthetic and cultural inspiration, recreation, and purer air
and water. Often local plants and animals are the only exposure that city people
have to natural environments so urban habitat represents an important educational
opportunity. Preserving ‘nature’ requires managing biodiversity, the variety of life,
at both the gene and species levels. It also requires managing the ecosystems of
which species form a part, as well as the ecological and evolutionary processes that
maintain them.
