<p>In 1993, lawyer and conservationist Harvey Locke first proposed a continuous corridor of protected habitat from Yellowstone National Park in the United States to the Yukon in Canada. Four years later, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) was founded, and its plan is now being implemented. The Y2Y corridor spans nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) and encompasses over 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers) of land. Inspiration for Y2Y is traced to a female wolf named Pluie, who was tracked with a GPS collar migrating from Canada’s Banff National Park to America’s Glacier National Park to near Spokane, Washington over an eighteen month period. This journey was testament to the wolf’s stealth and cunning and also suggested the need for continuous corridors of wildlands to allow other species to migrate throughout the territory in relative safety.</p>

<p>In the boot of New Mexico and the southeastern tip of Arizona along the U.S.-Mexico border, there is a 1,250 square mile (3237.5 square kilometer) plot of land, almost entirely unbroken by highways or subdivisions. The Malpai Borderlands harbors an estimated 4,000 species of plants, 104 species of mammals, 327 species of birds, 136 species of reptiles and amphibians, and the greatest diversity of bee species in the world. In this biodiverse landscape, 53 percent of the area is privately owned and 47 percent is public—a split that has led to tensions between government agencies, cattle ranchers, and environmentalists. The success of the Malpai Borderlands Group can be credited both to their reliance on science to help manage the Malpai and to their commitment to educating others about how grazing and conservation can coexist.</p>

<p>Formally known as the Great Green Wall of the Sahara and Sahel Initiative (GGWSSI), the Great Green Wall spans approximately 8,000 kilometers (4,970 miles) from Senegal to Djibouti and is 15 kilometers (9 miles) deep. Its purpose is to combat desertification by restoring degraded lands on the front lines of the encroaching desert. The idea of a wall of trees at the edge of the Sahara and the semi-arid belt of the Sahel is not a new one; it was originally proposed as early as the 1950s. However, it was not until 2007 that the governments of the twenty nations that encompass the wall endorsed the idea and began to undertake the project. Since 2007 the GGWSSI mission has evolved to encompass native bushes and grasses, as well as farmer-driven agricultural technologies like agroforestry and 'zai' pits to increase the moisture and fertility of the soil. When it is complete in 2030, it will be the largest designed living structure in the world.</p>

<p>Between 2006 and 2008, Kongjian Yu, founding principal of the design firm Turenscape, led a research planning exercise on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Chinese Ministry of Cultural Protection. The project—translated into English as National Ecological Security Pattern Plan (NESP)—was to develop geospatial plans on a national scale that indicated where the “ecological security” (i.e. ecological health) of land should be prioritized. The plans were to address issues such as water catchment protection, flood control, desertification, soil erosion, and biodiversity conservation. This research represents an emerging recognition at the highest levels of government that ecological concerns are in the Chinese economic interest and should be reflected in Chinese land use planning guidelines.</p>

<p>Although New Zealand enjoys worldwide fame as &ldquo;clean and green,&rdquo; the reality is different. New Zealand has suffered massive deforestation and huge loss of unique biodiversity over the past 300&ndash;400 years. More than half of the country&rsquo;s farming landscape is damaged and deteriorating and requires regenerative action. Some New Zealanders have taken such action in the western area of Waiheke Island, on the periphery of Auckland, the nation&rsquo;s largest metropolitan area. The Western Waiheke project is a composite of five master plans for individual private land owner clients who initially wanted lifestyle property subdivisions. Using McHargian land suitability analysis, the design team identified and mapped areas of land that have critical sensitivity, as well as cultural features and used them as the basis for an interconnected &ldquo;landscape commons,&rdquo; of indigenous vegetated habitat.</p>

<p>Over the past half-century, East Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo, has experienced rapid deterioration of its landscape. Owing to a burgeoning population and clear-cutting of its rainforest for Agricultural land, timber, and palm oil, roughly half of the rainforest has been razed. With the loss of habitat the orangutan cannot find food and faces starvation or capture. Orangutans that raid agricultural lands are considered pests and are often killed. In an effort to reconstruct a viable rainforest ecosystem and contribute to the local economy, the Samboja Lestari afforestation project was founded in 2001 by Dr. Willie Smits and the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. The original aim was for Samboja Lestari to sustain 1,000 orangutans as a breeding population large enough to survive in the event that all other orangutans were wiped out. The plan was to plant more fruiting species within Samboja Lestari than would be found in a typical rainforest so as to feed the orangutans. In addition, the local residents would be given free land outside the belt of sugar palms to farm using agroforestry techniques.</p>