Guide to Significant Wildlife Habitat - Door County Web Map

Appendix D
Natural Areas – A Definition and Status Report
Natural Area: A working definition
A natural area is a site largely unaltered by modern human activity, where native vegetation is
distributed in naturally occurring patterns. These patterns change over time under the influences of natural
processes such as windstorms, drought, flooding cycles, and wildfires, as well as interactions between
plants and wildlife that inhabit or periodically use a site. A natural area may be host to one or more
natural community types such as boreal forest, open bog, talus forest or calcareous fen, the existence and
extent of which are determined by factors such as climate, soil composition, and a site's unique history.
Many natural areas do include some evidence of modern human activity, such as small areas of former
croplands in a site largely dominated by native prairie, or occasional decayed stumps in a forest that was
logged long ago. However, natural areas are characterized by being primarily in a natural state, with only
minor evidence of disturbance from modern human activity.
Where natural areas are found
Natural areas occur on private as well as public land, and across political jurisdictions. They may
be found in designated preserves, within existing parks, or may be interspersed throughout developed and
managed environments such as farms, ranches, commercial and industrial areas, and residential
communities.
How natural areas fit into the larger landscape
Of course, today's landscape looks very different from the way it looked 150 years ago. Many
natural processes, such as large-scale fires and the presence of large herds of bison, are no longer present
on most of the landscape. Natural areas today, ranging in size from a few acres to several thousand acres,
are generally within larger landscapes that have been highly altered. Because all natural areas are an
integral part of the larger landscape in which they exist, it is important to pay careful attention to wise
stewardship of adjacent and nearby lands.
All natural areas may be considered "open space", but many types of open space are not
natural areas. Golf courses, baseball fields, pine plantations, parks with maintained lawns that are
landscaped with exotic species, all could be described as open space, but are places where natural
features have been partially to totally displaced. While some such areas offer a degree of habitat to
native plants and wildlife, others have been highly altered, leading to dramatic declines in diversity
of species.
In many parts of the state, it is often not practical or even possible to protect natural areas large
enough to include the natural patterns that once existed on the landscape. Nevertheless, even small natural
areas are important, and sometimes represent the only opportunity to protect natural communities or rare
species in an area. For example, a ten-acre prairie in western Wisconsin that is surrounded by croplands
bears little resemblance to the huge expanse of prairie that once existed on the landscape. However, if it
were of good quality, it would still be considered a natural area.
The surrounding land could be planted to native prairie using seeds from the natural area, or could
be kept in other kinds of open space that might help buffer the land from activities that could lessen the
integrity of the site. Similarly, a forty-acre old-growth forest is a natural area, even if it is surrounded by
recent clearcuts. Allowing the clearcut forest to regenerate naturally would be one alternative that would
help buffer the natural area and eventually add to its size.
Appendix D – Natural Areas: A Definition &Status Report 179