Les aires protégées : un instrument essentiel pour la recherche en écologie fondamentale et appliquée à la conservation

Abstract

Protected areas, though they provide a more or less stringent preservation to ecosystems and their biodiversity according to their conservation status, have proven, since several decades, to afford outstanding opportunities regarding biological research. They have provided invaluable information on the basic structure of communities, on the extent and importance of their biodiversity as well as on the functioning of ecosystems and on the mechanisms of fundamental ecological processes. They stand currently as an invaluable tool for the ecological monitoring, especially regarding the follow up of ecosystem health as well as for the global biodiversity assessment and for the improvement of the knowledge of the population status of threatened species. As a conclusion, the relevance of protected areas for ecological research both fundamental and applied is presently unquestioned. Therefore, one has to meet the urgent need to increase the support to the research into these areas, especially in conservation ecology. Another major requirement is to insure a better implementation of the transfer from the results of these researches to the conservation practices in order to improve the efficiency of the management plans of protected areas particularly in what addresses their biodiversity conservation.