ABSTRACT
Ecology as a scientific discipline developed at the same time as nature conservation and provided the theoretical basis for conservation management with its practical manipulation of species populations and plant and animal communities. As in all areas of human endeavour, beliefs (or in science, theories) have always had a far greater influence on actions than the facts. Given sufficiently convincing weight of evidence against them, beliefs, and theories, can however change over time with profound effects on practical action based on them. After a long period largely dominated by ideas now nearly a century old, ecology in the last twenty years has undergone a major transformation in its basic precepts, fed by a surge of new ideas derived more from widespread empirical research rather than deduced from belief and academic theorising. Links have also been forged with cognate disciplines. Landscape ecology is one of the significant products of these changes. It is providing both the intellectual underpinning and the rationale for widening the horizons of nature conservation into the more holistic approaches of landscape management.
