ABSTRACT
Humans have developed technology sufficient to alter nearly all processes affecting landscape—deliberately and otherwise. Landscape fragmentation continues around the world, creating yet more dismembered landscapes. Once landscapes are dismembered other ecological processes such as invasions of “weedy species” occur, further changing natural ecological processes. Creating movement corridors in human-dominated landscapes is one way of protecting natural ecological functions. The bottom-up effects of landscape fragmentation such as loss of favorable habitat, increased isolation, increased negative edge effects, and the effects of introduced species have been disastrous. The ecology and large range of wolves dictate that recovery of sizable populations must take place not in small, isolated reserves, but in the large matrix of managed, human-dominated lands. Therefore, wolf recovery is particularly dependent on human attitudes. Dispersal corridors are “an essentially continuous band or congenial habitat by which many ecologically compatible species might extend their ranges”.
