THE ROLE AND DESIGN OF WILDLIFE CORRIDORS WITH EXAMPLES FROM TANZANIA

Many protected areas worldwide will be too small to maintain long-term viable populations of many of their resident species. It may be possi ble in many cases to reduce the adverse ''island'' effects by linking adjacent protected areas with wildlife corridors. Wildlife corridors a re defined in this paper as habitat that permits the movement of organ isms between ecological isolates. Corridors should be designed for tho se species within a protected area that are considered to be most vuln erable to extinction. For these species knowledge about the habitat re quirements, dispersal, seasonal movements, avoidance behavior, and lea rning behavior are important for the design of wildlife corridors. The ability of a species to successfully use a corridor is dependent in p art upon the width and length of the corridor. In most cases, the dete rmination of the minimum corridor width will be an empirical calculati on. Many of the practical challenges of designing wildlife corridors a re examined by presenting examples of proposed wildlife corridors in t he Eastern Usambara Mountains and on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.