Natural World Heritage: A New Approach to Integrate Research and Management

Abstract

For more than 12,000 years, humans have modified, changed, and even destroyed many natural ecosystems in a large part of Europe, especially forest ecosystems. This evolution resulted in a European territory characterised by diversified rural landscapes where we can generally distinguish three complementary parts including cultivated space, pastoral space and forest space. These systems connecting natural, modified ecosystems with agro‐systems could have an interesting biological diversity. Since the middle of the 20th century, the modernisation of agriculture, and the extension of single crop and industrial breeding have completely changed this vision again. According to the evolution that we imposed on nature, the disappearance or the regression of certain species, the invasion by foreign species, we can discuss our strategy to preserve the future of the natural patrimony, biodiversity, the ecosystem’s functioning and services. Using the Mont‐Saint‐Michel bay case study and the National Park of Banc d’Arguin registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List, we try to show that long‐term multidisciplinary research is necessary to provide new knowledge and we propose a new system of management for complex ecosystems with users, stakeholders and elected members.