ABSTRACT
The conservation of biological resources may be the greatest environmental challenge yet for the society. As Frank Golley remarked in his editorial in the first issue of Landscape Ecology, "We face widespread deterioration and destruction of the Earth's landscapes and waterscapes, with direct impacts on humankind." Accomplishing the goals of conservation requires a broad-based, grass-roots assault on the human-caused threats to biological resources. American society's growing awareness during the 1970s of the need to conserve a full and viable complement of the nation's biological resources evolved to a sense of urgent public concern by the end of the late 1980s. The chapter argues that practitioners concerned with increasing their effectiveness in conservation of biological resources. While researchers continue to focus on the big picture, practitioners can be helpful by providing researchers' feedback from their experience in applying tools that are available and suggesting new or modified tools and applications.
