Protection of landscape connectivity for large mammals

The number of anthropogenic barriers has been increasing extremely fast over the past few decades. As a result, fragmentation of the landscape is perceived today as one of the hot issues. The open landscape composing of natural and semi-natural habitats, supposed to act as a connecting element between various populations, is now losing its capacities. In many cases, this is an irreversible process making the protection of the existing linear connections a key task within nature conservation. Ecological networks are coming to the fore with their basic attribute of suitable habitats and desired continuity. Among these networks, there is one designed to preserve the connectivity of populations of large mammals in the Czech Republic. The main purpose of this publication is to present the process of preparation, delimitation, and proposal for the actual design of such an ecological network.