Although species have always shifted their ranges, the rapid pace of current biophysical changes and the further complications imparted by human land use provide unprecedented challenges for biodiversity conservation. As a result, goals, methods, and strategies are being reconceptualized. For example, the terms conservation and wilderness protection, and their associated practices, seem to be static and simplistic compared to the challenges of managing novel species assemblages in unique climatic and disturbance regimes. A more proactive approach is developing that builds in the needed adaptations as biophysical change progressed; that would need to consider possible nonlinear ecosystem changes, with threshold effects and ecological surprises; that might force a reconsideration of the goals of ecological restoration; and that might require management of lands today for goals that could be quite different in 50 to 100 years. As examples, this could require such potentially controversial activities as planting trees outside their ranges so that they could serve as part of wildlife habitat in several decades, using prescribed burns, or bringing some species into captivity or botanical gardens until reintroduction becomes feasible. With the Anthropocene providing a potential new label for the current epoch and ongoing research providing new insights into disturbance regimes and successful conservation practices, it is appropriate to rethink implications for sustainability and human–nature relationships in general and for biodiversity in particular.

尽管物种一直在改变其范围，但当前生物物理变化的迅速步伐以及人类土地利用带来的进一步复杂性为生物多样性保护提出了前所未有的挑战。结果，目标，方法和策略正在重新概念化。例如，保护和荒野保护这两个词与在独特的气候和干扰环境下管理新物种组合所面临的挑战相比，它们及其相关实践似乎是静态且简单的。随着生物物理变化的进行，正在开发一种更加主动的方法，以建立必要的适应能力。需要考虑到可能的非线性生态系统变化，阈值效应和生态惊奇；可能迫使人们重新考虑生态恢复的目标；而这可能需要今天对土地进行管理，以实现可能在50到100年内完全不同的目标。例如，这可能需要进行可能引起争议的活动，例如在其范围之外种植树木，以便在数十年内使用规定的烧伤方法将其用作野生动植物栖息地的一部分，或将某些物种带入人工圈养或植物园，直到重新引入成为可能。人类世为当前时代提供了一个潜在的新标签，而正在进行的研究为人们对干扰制度和成功的保护实践提供了新的见识，因此，有必要重新考虑对可持续性和人类与自然的关系，特别是对生物多样性的影响。