Conservation of Arctic fauna and its habitats

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Curry-Lindahl, Kai
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1974
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Arctic; Polar Record; Siberia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400031909; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400031909

In reviewing the conservation of Arctic fauna, it may be useful to describe what is meant, geographically and ecologically, by the word Arctic, as it is used here. Geographical boundaries are not often the same as ecological boundaries, and the Arctic Circle itself has no zoogeographical significance. Permanently ice-covered land and treeless lands with permanently frozen subsoil in the Northern Hemisphere would be included in any definition of the Arctic region, and in northern countries the timber line constitutes a satisfactory southern limit for the region in question. In mountains, it is altitude rather than latitude that gives an Arctic character to climate and landscape, as in the Urals, the mountain chain of Scandinavia (south to 59°N) and eastern Siberia, and the Rocky Mountains of North America.