I'm afraid this response in many cases could do more harm than good - because of the small issue of climate change. There is no doubt that climate change will force many animals and plants to reclocate to areas more suitable for them as rain-patterns and local climates change. In the past that was less of a problem but human changes on the landscape - large scale agriculture and urban development for example - has bisected the land. To address this efforts will be needed to join up the landscape - creating corridors for movement. If this isn't considered, preserving species in fixed places will not be effective as these places become more inhospitable.
In addition, maintaining species in small pockets affects their genetic stability, again, in the long-term methods to allow isolated pockets of species to move and interbreed has to be considered.
Finally, by focusing on local pockets we could overlook the overall ecology. Many of these pockets will not remain ecologically viable if the landscape around them is changed beyond recognition - as this will affect all sorts of things like local climate, nutrient movement and so on. This is one of the reasons why Natural England is looking at a more wide, landscape scale response towards nature conservation.
Thankyou I am currently a member of WWF but really want to get on a research project or action group (moinitorng, protetcing etc) or even work out in key areas of india or africa were I feel I could really help. Conservation corridors sound like a really good idea for endangered mammals but how realistic do youy think they are?
Worth also looking at the website of the Convention on Migratory Species, which is associated with the United Nations Environment Programme. Points to other useful resources and tells me that the Year of the Bat started on Wednesday! An interesting issue here is that conservation of migratory mammals is partly about protecting habitat and food sources, but is also about effective agreement on control of hunting, for example. Gorillas, antelope in Asia and Africa and marine mammals have big emphasis.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has lots of species/related resources, but you need to dig a little for specific information on migratory species. Species Survival pages are good.
I'd be interested if anybody has views on the relative emphasis on conservation of migratory species - there is clearly a lot of activity on birds with a lot of active public involvement and interest for decades. Mammals seems more of an emphasis on a few species and on the mobile marine species that move outside national waters. There is obviously growing concern on fish stocks - some of which are migratory, such as bluefin tuna - but concern on fish stocks has been around for the last 50 years, and concern is growing.