Management of Wetland Ecosystems with the Participation of Citizens

Anthropogenic disturbances with moderate intensity and frequency are highly effective in conserving floodplain biodiversity. In addition to the approach of expanding activities aimed at biodiversity conservation, it is also important to create a situation in which activities with diverse “nonconservation objectives” result in biodiversity conservation. This chapter describes the retarding basins for flood control and abandoned rice fields as sites with the potential to serve as habitats for organisms that originally inhabited in flood plains. The activities for diverse purposes and their effects on biodiversity at these sites are described, and the conditions under which conservation can be achieved as a result are discussed. The existence of activities with common effects on biodiversity and mutually different objectives, i.e., redundancy of activities, would contribute to robust and long-term biodiversity conservation.