Integrating wildlife conservation into land-use plans for rapidly growing cities

By definition, exurban development does not occur in isolation from other environments. Indeed, in many if not most situations, exurban is a categorization for a range of development types that occur somewhere between wild or rural lands and cities. Urban environments and the habitats found in cities and suburbs play important roles in the ecological health and biodiversity of adjacent and nearby exurban lands. In this chapter, we review the importance of wildlife and wildlife habitats in metropolitan areas and the influence of these urban habitats on adjacent exurban lands. We also describe how planning and science can work together to develop large-scale land-use plans that advance wildlife conservation goals. The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP), developed for Pima County, Arizona, serves as a case study for this type of conservation planning.