Connectivity

In our last post we mentioned that Douglas Tallamy and his Homegrown National Park are making the case for creating connected habitats. The Homegrown National Park movement emphasizes the necessity of ecological connectivity and wildlife corridors. Traditional nature preserves and national parks are too isolated and fragmented to independently preserve native biodiversity. One of the biggest discoveries in urban ecology is that many small habitat patches can function as one larger network when they’re close together.

Connectivity matters more than size. Modern urban restoration increasingly emphasizes connectivity rather than isolated habitat patches. Networks of connected habitat including residential yards, street plantings, parks, and natural areas often provide greater ecological benefits than the same total area of habitat scattered in disconnected patches. By improving movement, recolonization, and genetic exchange, connected habitat networks enhance biodiversity and increase the resilience of urban ecosystems.

Restoring public natural areas like the Bluff creates habitat anchors. If homeowners within a quarter- to half mile of the bluff also convert portions of their yards to native plantings, those private landscapes can function as stepping stones that improve connectivity for birds, pollinators, and other wildlife moving through the urban environment. The ecological impact of restoring the Bluff can be multiplied if nearby neighborhoods participate in residential habitat restoration. Coordinated efforts over the next 20 to 30 years could create a continuous network of hundreds of acres of connected native habitat, even though most of that habitat would exist in many small patches rather than in large parks. This distributed habitat model is increasingly recognized by urban ecologists as an effective way to improve biodiversity and ecosystem resilience in cities.

Rose City Bluff Restoration hopes to be an anchoring area in a potential wildlife corridor from Rose City Park to the Bird Alliance of Oregon’s new Wildlife Care Center and Nature Sanctuary to Rocky Butte. Many Portland yards have the potential to become a part of this ecological network. We encourage our area homeowners to make their yards stepping stones by adding even just a few Pacific Northwest natives to their yard.

Much of the above was sourced from ChatGPT so we asked it for citations. If you want to learn more about connectivity these are all good places to start:

Rudd, Vala & Schaefer (2002) – Restoration Ecology. This was one of the earliest papers to explicitly apply connectivity theory to urban restoration.

Zhang et al. (2012) – Ecological Engineering. This study developed restoration planning methods that prioritize connectivity rather than simply protecting the largest habitat patches.

Shanahan et al. (2011) – Biological Conservation. This study examined bird communities in urban revegetation projects.

Ossola et al. (2019) – Landscape Ecology (U.S. Forest Service). This research quantified the role of residential properties in Boston’s urban forest.

Sexton & Lawhorn (2025) – Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. A recent review of urban restoration summarized decades of research.

SER – The Society for Ecological Restoration – International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration. SER has elevated the importance of connectivity in its guidance.