This statement was made in 2001 by Stephen Hubbell in his ‘unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography’ (Hubbell 2002). He continues on metapopulation perspectives, asserting that this theory is very well applicable in cases of habitat fragmentation. Despite some critical discussion in scientific journals, the theory found application in planning and did change attitudes to nature conservation. The wider countryside has slowly been included in nature conservation, as also has landscape planning and land use planning.

In 1987 the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors in the United States of America recommended the ‘greenways’ as new tools ‘to provide people with access to open spaces close to where they live, and to link together the rural and urban spaces in the American landscape’ (President's Commission 1987).

At the international conference ‘Conserving Europe's Natural Heritage: Towards a European Ecological Network’ held in Maastricht in 1993, Graham Bennett envisaged the need for an operational framework for guiding the implementation of strategies on European nature conservation, indicating the concept of ‘ecological network’ as a tool for this (Bennett, 1994a). Engendered by the need to conserve and enhance the functioning of the ecological infrastructure of a region, the concept quickly moved on to conserving biological and landscape diversity, and to assisting other policy sectors with responsibility for sustainability and the conservation of natural ecosystems and biodiversity.