Challenges for conservation and sustainable use in North America

Abstract

Conservation will only increase as a focus for governments in the 21st century. Canada and the United States have been successful in conserving wildlife and habitats over the past 100 years through the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. This approach is not universally accepted, however, and there are challenges to sustainable use practices such as hunting and fishing. Herein, we discuss seven of the biggest challenges to conservation worldwide: an increasing human population; globalization; urbanization and the human-nature divide; novel ecosystems; connectivity; funding, fragility and resilience; and abundance and superabundance. We then relate these to the North American context.