ABSTRACT
Conservation goals provide a reflection of societal values and political or institutional intent in management, create the entire context and sense of purpose of biodiversity monitoring, as well as the basis for selecting monitoring objectives and indicators.
The concept of ecological condition, as measured by deviations from an appropriate reference condition or more desirable system state, provides an ecosystem perspective for management that is complementary to a limited focus on the conservation of individual species. The maintenance and restoration of ecological condition invokes a much broader conservation challenge than that which is focused on preserving a particular set of biodiversity elements, and incorporates notions of intactness and ecological resilience.
Changes in ecological condition can be measured using ecological disturbance indicators that are classified according to their sensitivity to anthropogenic impacts.
Identifying and measuring sites that can provide an appropriate reference condition is problematic but can be assisted by identifying reference sites based on an independent understanding of human impacts, and adopting a more realistic interpretation of a reference state that is not limited to undisturbed areas but also encompasses the notions of best available and best attainable condition for a given study region.
