The Landscape Game: A Learning Tool Demonstrating Landscape Design Principles

A board game was developed for use in workshops to demonstrate some theoretical principles underpinning conservation planning at the landscape scale. The game is based on neutral landscape models and demonstrates the effects of habitat removal and arrangement on landscape connectivity for organisms with different mobility characteristics. This paper briefly describes the ecological principles underpinning the game, the equipment required to run a game session and the rules of the game. The game was piloted in three workshops where it was played by a total of 75 people, primarily extension personnel. It proved to be an effective learning tool that was adopted by a number of the participants for their own communication activities.