Talk:Ecological island

Ecological islands and mainland islands
Is there a difference between ecological islands and mainland islands? If they are the same, or similar enough to have one article covering both, I suggest that mainland island is the more common name and the article should be renamed to that. A Google search finds 36,000 for mainland island and 9,070 for ecological island. Nurg (talk) 07:56, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was no consensus Aervanath (talk) 12:06, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

"Mainland island" seems to be a more common term for the same thing. Any objections to a move? Lanma726 (talk) 23:16, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * They do not appear to refer to the same concept. The article is pretty specific about what the subject is. When I think of "mainland" it has nothing to do with ecological separation. 199.125.109.126 (talk) 23:50, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The use of mainland island in this context is well summed-up by The New Zealand department of conservation here: "An exciting area of conservation management, ‘mainland islands’ can be found at special locations throughout New Zealand. Within these areas, native plants and wildlife are still relatively intact and are kept discrete by means of fencing, geographical features or more commonly, by intensive pest management. Unlike real islands, which are surrounded by water, mainland islands are not easy to keep clear of pests which can re-invade from adjoining land." The concept is basically the same as the use of "ecological island" in this article except for this article's claim that (real) islands can be "ecological islands", a concept that would fit less well into "mainland island".  However, I'm not convinced that mainland island is the most common term for this topic.  The phrase "mainland island" gets more ghits, but many of those hits are related to other concepts, especially Mainland, the main island of Orkney; I'm not sure that this type of ecological preserve is the primary topic for Mainland island.  In fact, I'd advocate for making Mainland island into a dab page between Mainland, Orkney and Ecological island.  Baileypalblue (talk) 10:40, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If Mainland island is not so common a name for "ecological island" then Mainland island/Mainland Island could just redirect to Mainland, Orkney with a hatnote to ecological island. 199.125.109.126 (talk) 06:46, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I like the fact that the term ecological island can cover actual islands as well. However it seems to conflate two quite distinct concepts; an area that is naturally isolated ecologically (such as tepuis), versus an area that people have tried to isolate from the surrounding ecology. This is a drawback. Regarding usage, as far as I can see, it is not nearly as commonly used as mainland island. Ghits aren't a great measure, but it seems a stretch to say that "many of these hits" are related to other concepts - I only found three in the first fifty. And of the 9,400 ghits I get for "ecological island", over 2,300 disappear if you exclude the placename "Maungatautari" ; ie. references to the Maungatautari Restoration Project make up a big part of that total. Mainland island seems the clear winner here to me. Yes, move this article, and use "Ecological island" either for naturally isolated areas or for a disambiguation page. -- Avenue (talk) 12:36, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Here's a response to Avenue's google searching above. Searching for "mainland island" conservation (which would in theory limit a significant number of returns that don't relate to this topic) gives about 9,260 hits, which is statistically equivalent to the returns for "ecological island". Just a little food for thought. Parsecboy (talk) 19:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Addendum - Some more google searches:
 * Google news for "mainland island" conservation - 0 hits
 * Google news for "ecological island - also 7, all of which appear to relate to this topic
 * Google scholar for "mainland island" conservation - 791 hits
 * Google scholar for "ecological island" - 357 hits
 * There you go. Parsecboy (talk) 20:02, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * My 2 cents - it seems that the two terms are used equally in common usage, but "mainland island" appears to be somewhat preferred in scholarly journals (although there is still the possibility of false returns). I think, though, that because of the greater ambiguity of the term "mainland island", "ecological island" should be the preferred title. It is much clearer to me (a layman on ecological issues) what this article seeks to cover than the former. Parsecboy (talk) 20:07, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you not bothered by the ambiguity I noted, that "ecological island" refers to two quite different ideas? To me (and I admit I am familiar with the NZ context), "mainland island" seems less ambiguous, since it conveys the sense that the "island" is in an unnatural location.
 * I'm sure we could duel on the Google front until we're blue in the face. But I will point out that searching for "ecological island" conservation gives me 3210 hits, which drops to 2080 if Maungatautari is excluded - not really in the same league as the 9000+ corresponding "mainland island" results. And I wouldn't read too much into today's snapshot of news coverage. -- Avenue (talk) 23:55, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Order of sanctuaries listed
I couldn't see any ordering in the list of known sanctuaries of this type. So as the article is about the concept and evolution of ecological island sanctuarys, I changed the order of the sanctuaries listed to the date that they were enclosed by a fence, and therefore met the criteria defined in this article. The dates were taken from their respective wiki articles or websites. --Tony Wills (talk) 11:46, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

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External links modified (January 2018)
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