LANDSCAPE PLANNING FOR NATURAL AREAS

Through out the early and mid-1970s, a strong interest in protecting the quality of
the environment dominated many aspects of a variety of policies pursued at the
federal level. Widespread citizen agitation against the growing manifestation of
environmental degradation led to demands for comprehensive congressional
mandates to protect the threatened ecosystem. It was when everything started the
application of landscape planning upon natural areas.

This task has been divided into 4 sections as follows:

1) Policies and strategic planning

2) Characteristics
3) Principles
4) Case studies

1) Policies and Strategic Planning

Natural areas encompass a wide range of environments and support a rich diversity
of plant and animal species. Natural areas stewardship is the long term management
of land and water to sustain natural heritage resources, restore and enhance habitat
condition, suitable for rare species, sustain the inherent biodiversity and beauty of
natural communities.

Stewardship of dedicated Natural Areas Preserves had established at Virginia which

consists of 6 major components:

Management Planning. Natural Area Preserve Management Plans are

developed to guide stewardship by establishing management goals for dedicated
natural areas and formulating methods by which those goals will be achieved
and management success is to be measured. Plans include a wide array of
supporting information and developed strategies for long-term protection,
maintenance, and enhancement of natural heritage resources supported on
natural area preserves.

Biological Resource Management. Management actions are taken to return

human-altered land or vegetation to a condition that supports continued
existence of rare species and/or natural communities by reinstating required
processes or abating stresses. The primary objective is to restore ecosystem
functions and maintain or enhance environmental conditions required to
perpetuate rare species and natural communities. By taking actions such as
invasive species control or restoring natural hydrology, natural area stewards can
improve habitat conditions for rare species and maintain the integrity
(composition and structure) of natural communities.

Operations Management. Site operations are a crucial aspect of natural areas

stewardship. Especially on public lands, some recreational uses are compatible
with the primary natural heritage resource management objectives while others

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 are not. Natural areas stewards design and maintain infrastructure such as trails,
signs, and observation areas in order to provide high quality visitor experiences
while protecting natural heritage resources from adverse human effects. Routine
management activities such as boundary line and access road maintenance, site
security, visitor safety, and law enforcement all fall under the operations
component of natural areas stewardship.

Fire Management. Prescribed burning is a specialized management activity

that is essential in natural areas supporting occurrences of fire-maintained
natural heritage resources. Prescribed fire is needed to perpetuate many species
and communities that depend on fire but have become rare. Their rarity is due to
the fact that natural fire has been mostly eliminated as a landscape process by
effective wildfire suppression and prevention programs. Prescribed burn
management is a unique component of stewardship, requiring expertise in
biology, ecology, and fire operations to safely and effectively mimic the process
of natural fire under controlled conditions.

Research. Research to improve understanding of natural history, biology, and

population dynamics of rare species and ecosystem functions is needed for
sound and defensible management planning. Scientific studies are conducted in-
house or sponsored through funding support in order to inform stewardship
decisions and actions.

Monitoring. A wide variety of monitoring techniques are used to assess change

in natural community composition and rare species population status. Monitoring
can determine if natural processes essential to natural heritage resource health
are occurring and whether or not management actions have been effective.
Monitoring is also needed to document effects of human visitation and public use
patterns on natural heritage resources and other natural features protected
within natural areas.

The plans which do not have the management of biodiversity as primary objective
perform poorly from landscape planning perspective. In order to achieve biodiversity
planning, natural areas are decreased in area, and increasingly isolated in an urbanized
region. Thence, many countries had perform more proper landscape planning for their
natural areas in order to nurture the nature and take good care of worldly biodiversity
and ecosystem.

In order to achieve such objectives, landscape planning should practice natural process
plans which are:

Landform plans - To protect and enhance a distinctive and convenient

landform. It should indicate areas for protection,
excavation and deposition.

Water space plans - To provide space for water storage, water transport and
water recreation. It should show areas for enhanced
detention, infiltration and evaporation.

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Habitat plans - To protect and enhance the pattern of natural and semi-
natural habitats. It should indicate the desirable mix of
habitats, based on historical analysis, hydrology and
pedology.

Air plans - To provide fresh air, clean air, and shelter. It makes places
healthier and more comfortable.

In California, they had introduced some initiatives to conserve natural areas during
landscape planning which consistent with applicable General Plan and Local Area Plan
policies:

 Cluster development on least-sensitive portions of site while tearing the

remaining land in a natural undisturbed condition.
 Limit clearing and grading of native plants at a site to the minimum amount
needed to build lots, allow access and provide fire protection.
 Maximize trees and other vegetation at each site by planting additional
vegetation, clustering tree areas, ad promoting the use of native plants.
 Promote natural vegetation by using parking lot islands and other landscaped
areas.
 Preserve riparian areas and wetlands.
 Promote the conservation of forest cover.
 Maintain natural storage reservoirs and drainage corridors, including depressions,
areas of permeable soils, swales and intermittent streams.

Meanwhile in United Kingdom, they also introduced some kind of policies to enhance the
quality of landscape planning for their natural areas which are:

Parks and Public Open Space

1. Public parks were one of the great urban reforms of the nineteenth century, but
many of them have fallen on hard times. They are under-used, under-funded,
badly planned, badly designed and badly managed.
2. The sections in Local Plans dealing with Parks and Public Open Space are
unimaginative and out-molded. A higher level of imagination, based on local
information, is required.
3. At the present time, the great need is for diversification, so that the use and
character of parks can be related to the desires of the communities which they
serve.
4. Parks can, for example, be diversified with regard to ownership, character,
culture, ethnicity, religion, landform, planting and use.

Reservoirs

1. Reservoirs should be planned as part of a landscape-wide development programs

for the areas in which they are set.

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 2. Since most old reservoirs were planned as exclusion zones, for now-obsolete
health reasons, there is a major opportunity to develop reservoir-side land for
other purposes.
3. Reservoir New Towns would yield many benefits for society and rich rewards for
the water companies which own the land.
4. Reservoirs in towns could provide a type of recreation (ie water recreation)
which is much closer to the needs of our own time than traditional urban parks.

Mineral Extraction

1. Permission for new quarrying projects should only be given when a restoration
and after-use plan has been prepared and agreed with the planning authorities..
2. After-use plans should provide for a range of possible activities, since land uses
20-50 years into the future cannot be predicted.
3. Finance for land restoration should come from the mineral-working operation.
4. Worked-out and restored mineral land should pass into public ownership.

Agriculture

Agriculture should be subject to planning control and all agricultural subsidies should be
linked to the provision of public goods:

a strategic reserve, for food production

greenways
high-quality 'hand made food' and 'wild food'
the creation of new wildlife habitats
recreational opportunities
the enhancement of scenery
additional tree cover
the reclamation of rivers
the conservation of farm walls, buildings and other historic features

Forestry

1. Forestry should be subject to planning control and subsidies should be linked to

the provision of public goods.
2. Forest landscape plans should be set forth in public documents, with simplified
versions displayed in visitor centers and similar places.
3. Forest landscape plans should explain how the design has been related to
existing features; how the design concept for the forest was generated; visual
quality objectives; areas of broadleaf retention and planting; silvicultural
systems; conservation areas; areas which will become old growth woodland;
habitat creation areas; wildlife networks; recreational networks; art trails; story
trails; provision for hunter-gathering; historic trails; the provision of footpaths,
bridleways, cycle paths and other recreation facilities; integration with agriculture
and other nearby land uses. Some 'forests' should be managed as woods, others
as wilderness.

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 4. Decisions about priorities will be based on an environmental assessment of forest
location and site characteristics. There is a great need for foresters to consider
the wider context and to become expert in EID.
5. Foresters can help to create a national web of green space open to the public.
Wherever possible lake shores, ridge lines, viewpoints, streams, recreational
facilities, long distance footpaths and scenic areas should be incorporated.
6. Forestry has an important role in and around urban areas.
7. In rural areas the web land should be subject to retention policies so that it
stands between zones of 'maximum modification' in the same way that
hedgerows and farm woodlands make compartments in the agricultural
landscape.

Rivers

1. A major reclamation programme is necessary to reclaim our 'channels', 'water-

courses', 'culverts' and 'coastal defences'. Their dignity must be restored, as
streams, brooks, rivers and shores.
2. Landscape character plans should be formulated.
3. Rainwater should be infiltrated near to where it falls - or else it should detain
near to where it falls, and discharged slowly.
4. Rivers and coasts should be planned, designed and managed. In places, this will
require no human intervention: the coast should be as natural as possible. In
other places, their scenic and recreational potential should be developed. Rivers
and coasts have exceptional scope for contributing to a green web of public open
space.
5. Negative environmental impacts should be mitigated.
6. Positive environmental impacts should be planned and designed. Waterfront
land is our most valuable land.

Besides, there are much policies regarding landscape planning for forests as forests are
the main source of natural areas. The existing policies much stress on ecology and
conservation as well despite management of natural areas.

Based on the study, the existence of different reproductive systems among sympatric
plants of different taxa and the frequent occurrence of artificial or natural disturbances
may influence the species richness of a particular region. The complex structure and
high species diversity of plant communities in tropical rainforests in Malaysia also have a
direct bearing on the ecological roles of the forest in maintaining and stabilizing such
environment systems as hydrological and nutrient cycles, food chains and energy flows,
heat and energy balance, and the carbon sink or storage system. The elimination of
these rainforests and may have a pronounced effect on local, regional and global
climate.

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Looking to the importance of balance ecology, the strategy and objectives of long term
ecological research has been done; end out with 4 basic goals:

1. The studies should document and monitor biological diversity, particularly plant
diversity.
2. Should provide continuing data on growth, mortality, regeneration, behavior and
dynamics of forest tree species.
3. These data should be used to establish a data base for research and education
as a contribution to the conservation and management of many types of reserves
and other protected areas in the world.
4. The data accumulated in long-term programs should be used to develop models
and methods for balancing human needs with biological diversity in the use of
forest resources.

These goals will be achieved with the implementation of a wide range of activities that
should enhance the accumulation of info and baseline data related to sustainable forest
management of strategies and activities will be as follows:

1. Conduct rapid assessment activities for providing a general view of biodiversity.

2. Survey entire target areas to create large-scale maps of ecosystems. This survey
will help to identify and protect critical ecosystem that are legally unprotected
but incorporated within a particular landscape system.
3. Select representative permanent plots for monitoring ecosystem changes.

Collectively, plants also provide many valuable ecological services, such as protecting
watersheds, stabilizing slopes, improving soils, moderating climate, cycling nutrients and
providing habitat for animals.

The joint IUCN-WWF Plant Advisory Group decided to develop a list of all major sites
and vegetation types considered to be of international importance for conservation
based on species richness and endemism. The project was named Centers of Plant
Diversity (CPD).

The objectives of CPD are:

1. To identify which areas around the world, if conserved, would safeguard the
greatest number of plant species.
2. To document many benefits, both economics and scientific, that conservation of
those areas would bring to society and to outline the potential value of each for
sustainable development.
3. To outline a strategy for the conservation of the area selected.

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In the other hand, Kedah and Kelantan both have a comprehensive State Forest Policy:

“To preserve permanently for the benefit of the present and the future inhabitants of
the country forest land sufficient

i. To ensure the sound climatic and physical condition

of the country, the safe guarding of water supplies
and soil fertility, and the prevention of damage by
flooding and erosion to rivers and paddy and other
agricultural and, such reserves are known as
PROTECTIVE RESERVE.
ii. For a supply in perpetuity at reasonable rates, of all
forms of forest produce which can be economically
produced within the country and required by the
people for agricultural, domestic and industrial
purposes; such reserves are known as PRODUCTIVE
RESERVES.

“To manage the Forest Estate with the object of obtaining the highest revenue
compatible with sustained yield, and with the two primary objects set out above”

“To foster, by education and propaganda, a real understanding among the people of
Malaysia of the value of forest to them and their descendants.”

Jungle reserves are selected areas of natural vegetation; or areas carrying the least
man-disturbed vegetation that are known of a particular type and that is possible to
preserve, or areas containing rare species or particular floristic individuals which it‟s
desired to retain for prosperity; or areas which it is desirable to preserve for wildlife
conservation. They can be parts of existing Forest Reserves or created especially under
the Land Code.

There are several rules governing the laying out and maintenance of Jungle Reserves
and the most important are:

i. Jungle Reserves shall contain natural vegetation or, if

this is not possible, the least man-disturbed
vegetation that is available and yet compatible with
the object of the particular Jungle Reserve in
question.
ii. At least one Jungle Reserve shall be established in
each large Forest Reserve of economic value.
iii. In Forest Reserves of very varied topography two or
more Jungle Reserves shall be selected so as to
include truly representative samples of the different
vegetation types present.

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In a worldly stage, Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP) is an international coordination
mechanism for halting the destruction of tropical forests and promoting their sustainable
use for the economic and social benefit of people.

The aim of the TFAP is to substantially increase investment in forestry in tropical forest
countries. According to the lead agency, the FAO: “Tropical Forests and woodlands are
essential to the economic and social well-being of rural people in developing tropical
countries. Yet they are being degraded and destroyed at an alarming rate. The causes
and consequences are well-known but so, fortunately, are the solutions. More research
is needed but lack of knowledge is no longer a barrier to action; the real obstacle is the
lack of political, financial and institutional support to apply the solutions.”

2) Characteristics

The characteristics of landscape planning for natural area partly have been cover in
those policies listed above. There must be many characteristics when we deal with
conservation, planning and environment whereby the most important is, it able to create
harmony between man and nature.

 A crucial step in any protection scheme is to identify what needs to be

conserved.
 Habitat continuity should remain the priority, but that we should move from a
strict historical basis of forest nature conservation, to a strategy in which more
natural processes and structures are allowed. Naturalness is the most reasonable
guide in setting conservation goals and priorities. Reliable assessments of
naturalness are therefore needed.
 Networks of reserves are critical to conservation, but conservation should be
more than partitioning ecosystems between reserves and areas of intensive
human use. A landscape scale perspective on forest conservation is therefore
needed. Forest-like habitats outside forests, such as hedges, hollow roads,
individual trees, also deserve protection, especially when they have a long
continuity.
 From social perspective, reserves alone are not sufficient to conserve
biodiversity, since they often aggravate society‟s ecological disconnectedness and
trivialize the role of natural ecosystems in sustaining society. Conservationists
should help to re-establish the connection of society to ecosystems by promoting
recognition of a broad array of ecological values and their relation to natural
biotas.
 Naturalness is a widely used criterion for evaluating the nature conservation
value of a landscape.
 The evaluation of naturalness in forests has a theoretical basis which is either the
concept of potential natural vegetation (PNV) or the concept of hemeroby. Both
concepts impose a static view on nature because they focus exclusively on the
current state of a forest (eg: the species composition) without considering the
historical dynamic that has produced it.

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3) Principles

After browsing through those policies and strategic planning, can be summarized the
principles practiced in landscape planning for natural area are:

1. Concerning on every natural aspect without harming other living things as it

conserves ecosystem and biodiversity.
2. Apply planning and environmental ethics.
3. Stress on projection planning because it leads to sustainable environment for
beneficial in the future.
4. It also can combine more principles in landscape planning that applies in Islamic
planning, Feng-Shui, Yin and Yang, as well as design with nature where as those
types of planning concern on ethics, nature and environment.

4) Case Studies

For this section, we will see the practical of policies at 2 places, Tanzania and Sarawak.
These studies will expose in general about the planning for forest area for the whole
area of state. This will include comments on the rules‟ enforcement and how effective it
plays it role.

1. Tanzania: Tanzania Forestry Action Plan 1990/91-2007/08

The plan is, to a much greater extent than other plans, multi-sectoral and is set firmly in
the content of a review of land use policy. Above all, it clearly recognizes and attempts
to resolve the conflicts of interests in the forests.

A major emphasis of the Tanzanian NFAP is on securing community control over forest
lands to stabilize land use and assure long term sustainable resource management.
Nevertheless, the plan also promotes further logging in natural forests, and the
assurances that this will be sustainable seem weak. Thus, while this plan will increase
forest loss due to industrial forestry, it will also seek to promote a community- based
forestry approach.

The main cause of forest loss is agricultural expansion exaggerated by colonization from
Rwanda and Burundi. This expansion is facilitated by the development of the road
network and the almost total lack of government planning. Cash crop expansion,
including tobacco cultivation, has exacerbated the problem. The impact of government
policies to promote cash-cropping and to develop state farms are however, not well
evaluated.

The plan advocates the provision of individual and community titles to farming lad to
stabilize land use and give incentives to more intensive and productive land
management. Village boundaries will also be demarcated over wide areas to encompass
much of the forests in areas surrounding villages. The plan proposes that land tenure
legislation be updated and the institution to redistribute lands to the villages be

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strengthened. land use planning at 3 levels (national, district, village) will be needed for
this to be effective.

The plan also includes community forestry, catchments forests, commercial forestry and
woodlits.

The NFAP provides a good evaluation of the conflict of interests between local people
and protected area legislation. Although the text adopts the conventional approach of
classifying local people within protected areas as „encroachers‟ and does not address the
question of whether the definition of lands for conservation may violate customary land
title, the recognition of local needs is clear.

Tangible benefits should be provided to the local communities in order to encourage

their participation. Community and farm forestry activities in areas surrounding the
forests reserves could promote the development of natural resources based activities for
the benefit of local communities.

The plan does explicitly try to take the needs of community into consideration. This is
done by shifting the focus from simply „conserving protected areas‟ to new, legislated
„utilization schemes‟. These include „income earning activities in national parks and game
reserves‟ projects using „wildlife management area concepts in buffer zones of parks and
reserves‟, game ranching, and „wildlife extension services‟

2. Sarawak

The area under natural forest cover in Sarawak is about 8.7 million ha (Sarawak Forest
Department 1991). Of this, about 6million ha are designated and managed as
Permanent Forest Estate (PFE), and 288,806 ha are Totally Protected Areas (TPA).
TPAs, which comprise about 3.3% of the state‟s natural forest cover, fall into 3
categories:

i. National parks (the 9 in Sarawak cover 113,955 ha)

ii. Wildlife sanctuaries (there are 3, totaling 174,851.4 ha)
iii. Nature reserves

The idea of TPA in Sarawak began with the conceptualization of national parks in the
1950s. the National Parks Ordinance was passed and a Board of Trustees formed to
administer the national parks. In 1973, the Conservator of Forests replaced the Board of
Trustees as administrator of national parks, and the Forest Department was charged
with the responsibility of enforcing the National Parks Ordinance (Amendment 1973).
The Wildlife Protection Ordinance was drawn up in 1958. Samunsam Wildlife Sanctuary
was the first established under this ordinance in 1979. both the National Parks
Ordinance and the Wildlife Protection Ordinance have since been amended to create
new category of totally protected areas – nature reserves, formally established in 1990
under the amended National Parks Ordinance.

Local communities depend on the forests for resources for domestic use, which
residents are allowed to collect within TPA. The right of access to forests and forest

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products must be legally determined before the TPA constituted. This process in
frequently lengthy and difficult because written documentation and surveys are usually
not available, and villages and people often move from place to place over time.

The TPA also protects other vital resources, such as water catchments. Streams in
Lambir Hills National Park and Kubah National Park, for example, supply about 38million
litters of water daily to Miri and Kuching, respectively.

Further, TPAs are venues for environmental education. Together with other institutions,
the Sarawak Forest Department is using the TPAs to train teachers in environmental
education. The Forest Department is also running conservation education programs with
the goal of increasing local participation in conservation and sustainable use of
resources. At Batang Ai National Park, for instance, a pilot conservation education
project was initiated with local rural communities to increase their involvement in park
management. The project aims to cooperate with local communities to maintain or
enhance the biodiversity of the national park and surrounding areas.

To conserve biodiversity in natural areas effectively, the Forest department must

address a number of specific problems:

i. Sarawak, like most tropical countries, has many endemic species and a high
level of diversity in its plants and animals. Some of these species may be
„missed‟ by the parks – unique species or ecosystems may not be
incorporated in the TPA system.
ii. Effective conservation of biological diversity must be based on accurate
information. The state of knowledge about most species and ecosystems is
inadequate.
iii. A reserve should be large enough to contain minimum viable populations of
the endangered species. If a single large reserve is not feasible, reserves
should be established in several sites.

The lack of sufficiently large TPAs to preserve viable populations of many animals has
prompted the government plan several new reserves, including Pulong Tau, Usun Apau,
and Hose Mountain National Park and Batu Laga Wildlife Sanctuary. There also
proposals to expand the boundaries of the existing TPAs. In constituting its new TPAs,
the Forest Department has taken into account several principles of habitat management:

i. Larger areas of habitat contain more species and have larger population sizes
than do smaller areas
ii. Small areas are more prone to extinctions from random environmental
fluctuations
iii. Large protected areas have substantially less perimeter to patrol than many
small reserves of the same total area.

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The Forest Department also reviewing its Permanent Forest Estate (PFE) management
system in Sarawak. The PFE includes areas where timber harvesting is prohibited, such
as slopes greater than 35°. A network of interconnecting PFEs is planned to coincide
with the current TPAs to preserve representatives of all species and habitats. In this
way, overall biological diversity can be enhanced by integrating TPAs into management
plans at the landscape level.

As conclusion, landscape planning for natural areas is very significant in a way to

conserve ecosystems and bio-diversity. The environment has right upon human just like
we have right on environment. It needs to be preserved; otherwise man will get the
adverse effects cause by their own greediness. There are many ways to apply planning
on nature regardless some problems that may occur during the process. Thus, everyone
including government department and all environment users should realize the
responsibility to maintain the nature for betterment of life.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) Manual of Malayan Silviculture for Inland Forest 2 nd edition. By: J. Wyatt-Smith,

W.P Panton, R.C Barnard; Forest Research Institute of Malaysia
2) Forest and Range Policy: Its Development in US. By: Samuel Trask Dana, Sally K.
Fairtax; McGraw Hill Book Comp.
3) The Tropical Forestry Action Plan:What progress? By: Marcus Colchester and
Larry Lohman; World Rainforest Movement.
4) IUFRO Research Series 10:Forest Biodiversity-Lesson From History For
Conservation. Edited by: O.Honnay, K.Verhayen, B.Bossuyt and M.Hermy; CABI
Publishing
5) Ecology, Conservation and Management of Southeast Asian Rainforests. Edited
by: Richard B. Primack and Thomas E. Lovejoy; Yale University Press New
Heaven and London.
6) Landscape planning and environmental impact design. By: Tom Turner;
UCL:London, 1998
7) California Stormwater BMP Handbook-New Development and Redevelopment
8) Article: Towards a Landscape Planning for Biodiversity-Alternative Futures for the
Region of Camp Pendleton, California
9) Natural Areas Stewardship; Virginia Natural Heritage Program
10) Landscape Planning notes
11) Introduction to Environmental Science notes

NAME : NUR UYUN BINTI. AMAN

MATRIC NO : 0530108

SUBJECT : LANDSCAPE PLANNING (AUP 1212)

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