Wildlife Corridor

A wildlife corridor or green corridor is an area of habitat connecting wildlife populations separated by human activities (such as roads, development, or logging). This allows an exchange of individuals between populations, which may help prevent the negative effects of inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity (via genetic drift) that often occur within isolated populations. Corridors may also help facilitate the re-establishment of populations that have been reduced or eliminated due to random events (such as fires or disease). This may potentially moderate some of the worst effects of habitat fragmentation.

Wildlife corridors are susceptible to edge effects; habitat quality along the edge of a habitat fragment is often much lower than in areas further from the habitat edge. Wildlife corridors are important for large species requiring significant sized ranges; however, they are also vital as connection corridors for smaller animals and plants as well as ecological connectors to provide a rescue effect.

Although wildlife corridors have been proposed as solutions to habitat and wildlife population fragmentation, there is little evidence that they are broadly useful as a conservation strategy for all biodiversity in non-developed or less-developed areas, compared to protecting connectivity as the relevant ecological attribute. In other words, corridors may be a useful meme for conservation planning/ers, but the concept has less meaning to wildlife species themselves. Very few wildlife follow easily-identified "corridors" or "linkages" (e.g., using compuatational modeling), instead most species meander and opportunistically move through landscapes during daily, seasonal, and dispersal movement behavior. Wildlife corridors may be useful in highly-developed landscapes where they are easily identified as the last remaining and available habitat.