How are Biosphere Reserves organized?
o carry out the complementary activities of nature conservation and use of natural resources, biosphere reserves are organized into three interrelated zones, known as the core area, the buffer zone and the transition area. The core area needs to be legally established and give long-term protection to the landscapes, ecosystems and species it contains. It should be sufficiently large to meet these conservation objectives. As nature is rarely uniform and as historical land-use constraints exist in many parts of the world, there may be several core areas in a single biosphere reserve to ensure a representative coverage of the mosaic of ecological systems. Normally, the core area is not subject to human activity, except research and monitoring and, as the case may be, to traditional extractive uses by local communities.
