g., Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources 1995; Packard and Mutel 1997; Panzer 2002) when a site can have more than one ecosystem layered right on top of each other (Kirby 1992). General ecosystems versus site individuality Aiming for “ecosystems” in conservation management and restoration (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources 1995; Packard and Mutel 1997; Panzer 2002) is aiming for a native but general vegetation type. This can lead to a more generalist fauna with the loss of specialists (e.g., Kirby 1992; Swengel 1996; Longcore et al. 2000; Nekola 2002). The primary method for prairie conservation management is burning, and this shift find more can be explained away (sites too small, too degraded)

and blamed on the specific method of fire (fires too big, too frequent, and taking away from investing in other kinds of management). But in addition to those factors, an even more fundamental issue is aiming for the average and general ecosystem. Although native, this can lead to average and general butterflies. Bog butterflies reliably live only in sites persistently far outside the landscape average, even in a relatively natural northern Wisconsin context. An alternative approach to both site selection and CHIR 99021 management embraces site and species individuality by targeting specialists first. For example, by picking spots for the most specialized and

rare birds first, then working up from there, all bird species were quickly captured in the fewest sites, compared to other methods of site selection (Williams et al. 1996). By logic, these sites should be conserved for their uniqueness, not be made more typical or

average, even if also natural. Dynamism versus stability To be sure, bogs are particularly long-lived stable vegetation. Other vegetations are naturally more dynamic, so that conservationists aim to conserve and restore that dynamism. But pockets of remarkable stability are natural in other vegetations as well. Brown (1997) described paleo-environments in the tropics particularly speciose in the most conservative insect species, where surprisingly small perturbations of pristine vegetation might have permanent negative effects on those species. In a study of Canadian boreal forest (Gandhi et al. 2001), 3-mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase fire skips (“residuals”) within the perimeter of the most recent wildfire contained older trees than in the unburned forest surrounding the most recent wildfire. The trees in the skips were on average 180 years old (maximum over 300 years old), while the surrounding mature forest unburned in the last fire was only about 72 years old. These fire skips were reservoirs for forest beetles, and the only place where a glacial relict beetle was found. These stably consistent pockets occur in other vegetation types, which also need to be conserved for insects there. Gandhi et al.