Throughout the world, wildlife populations that are being threatened by habitat fragmentation. New roads, housing developments, and timber harvesting have broken large tracts of contiguous forest into isolated patches that are too small for many forest-dwelling animals. To slow the rate of fragmentation, the department of natural resources needs to prioritize which lands to protect and design wildlife corridors to connect them.

Connecting isolated patches of habitat is important to maintain biodiversity and to allow individuals from different populations to create a robust metapopulation. This connectivity will allow spatially-discrete subpopulations to interact with each other to encourage genetic diversity and allows the species to recolonize a patch if the local population goes extinct.

Since we cannot individually consider each wildlife species, this conservation plan was designed around an umbrella species. An umbrella species is a species generally high on the food chain which requires large areas of intact habitat. In this particular area, bobcat (Lynx rufus) was my targeted umbrella species.

By focusing conservation efforts on protecting an umbrella species, we will indirectly protect other species with similar habitat needs.