1. 7. Ecological Succession
7.2 Conservation of Habitats

2. Starter
What is conservation? Come up with a definition.

3. Starter
Conservation is the management of the Earth’s natural resources in such a way that maximum use of them can be made in the future.

4. Learning Objectives Describe what conservation is
Explain how managing succession can help to conserve habitats
Success Criteria
You can state the reasons for conservation and give examples of managing succession leading to the conservation of habitats

5. What is conservation?
Conservation involves humans intervening to maintain ecosystems and biodiversity
It can involve caring for existing resources or reclaiming those that have already been damaged by human activity

6. Reasons for Conservation
In pairs (or alone, if you really want), come up with a list of reasons for conservation

7. Reasons for Conservation
Ethical: respect for living things, other species should be allowed to coexist
Economic: living organisms have a huge gene pool and may have the capacity to make millions of substances
Cultural and Aesthetic: habitats enrich our lives and inspire writers, poets etc who entertain and fulfil us

8. Conserving habitats by managing succession
Climax communities do not contain all the species that existed in earlier stages
Maintaining habitats at different stages of succession can keep these species present, by preventing change to the next stage

9. UK example
Much of the higher ground in the UK is moorland, sheep are grazed and the heather often burned on this land
This prevents the climax community being reached as the young tree saplings are destroyed, stopping progression to deciduous woodland

10. Task
Work through the Application and How Science Works questions on page of the textbook

11. Learning Objectives Describe what conservation is
Explain how managing succession can help to conserve habitats
Success Criteria
You can state the reasons for conservation and give examples of managing succession leading to the conservation of habitats