JOURNAL OF NATURAL RESOURCES ›› 2019, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (9): 1820-1832.doi: 10.31497/zrzyxb.20190903

• National Park and Protected Areas • Previous Articles     Next Articles

From biocenosis to ecosystem: The theory trend of conserving ecosystem integrity in national parks

WEI Yu, LEI Guang-chun   

  1. School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
  • Received:2019-03-02 Revised:2019-06-15 Online:2019-09-28 Published:2019-09-28

Abstract: The nature conservation has entered a new stage of integratively managing human-nature harmonized ecosystems. It has become a consensus to break through the elementary thinking and systematically conserve ecosystem integrity from perspectives of ecological characters, ecosystem health and self-organization ability of ecosystems. After experiencing long-term fragmented management across different sectors, China began to emphasize unified management for ecosystem integrity in the process of establishing a national park system. This study argues that the ecosystem integrity of national park does not only mean an intact internal natural space, but also matters to the national ecological security and thus should be strategically viewed from spatial layout of natural protected areas. The vision of sustainably maintaining ecosystem integrity can only be realized by taking each national park as a node of an eco-geographical area. These nodes should be bridged with surrounding protected areas, and effectively balance the relationship both between administrative areas and between people and nature. From this point of view, existing researches are still insufficient in guiding the macro-scale conservation of ecosystem integrity and balancing the relationship between people and nature. Problems also exist in piloting national park systems, such as the lack of managerial technology, the restrictions imposed by administrative boundaries on national park boundaries, the failure to build ecosystem integrity networks with national parks as the core, and the insufficient consideration given to different human-land relations. It is recommended to view the ecosystem at a macro scale and take into account the relations between national parks and surrounding areas, between different administrative regions, and also between human and nature within national parks. This is the best approach for achieving the long-term goal of ecosystem integrity.

Key words: ecosystem integrity, national parks, theoretical system, biological integrity, management system