Increasingly, the goal of conservation is not so much to preserve a particular species, but rather, the ecological processes that would support that species in the long term. The notions of minimum dynamic area and the natural range of variabilty are central to landscape ecology as well, and as in landscape ecology, the task of predicting or documenting these remains a daunting challenge in conservation practice. Timescales and Sequence of Activity TNC uses a common process or sequence of activities in conservation planning, which unfolds in several stages. In the broadest sense, the steps include ecoregional planning , the selection of sites for a reserve portfolio , design and management of individual site plans , and monitoring and assessment to determine measures of success . Stresses are types of degradation or impairment afflicting the system.
Sources are the agents generating the stresses, which are to be mitigated.
Strategies are developed to abate stresses or to restore systems as necessary. Success are measures of diversity or ecological health, used to benchmark and assess the results of these strategies. Thus, the TNC process is one of adaptive management. The scale of conservation planning has been expanded from local sites to include specific attention on how these sites fit together at landscape and regional scales. At the site level, conservation practice is changing from a restrictive mentality in which people are fenced out of nature, to a more prescriptive strategy that attempts to reconcile conservation with other human activities, a trend best illustrated by conservation partnerships with corporations such as timber companies.