What is meant by ecological management?

The traditional agricultural activities have been developed with the back to the conservation of the environment and biodiversity, it is necessary in the productive rural sectors to carry out a territorial ecological ordering that benefits the community and the existing biodiversity in the sector, carrying out sustainable and environmentally friendly agricultural activities. In Venezuela, its entire territory is provided with enough land and water resources to be able to develop environmentally friendly agricultural and livestock plans, however, there is ignorance about biodiversity, therefore, it would be interesting to establish an ecological ordering.

The lack of knowledge of the existing biodiversity in a territory for agricultural use could trigger its loss and the benefits that biological diversity could have in an integrated agricultural system, however, the lack of ecological management places this biodiversity at risk, this being a fundamental aspect to avoid potential conflicts that may arise in ecosystems. According to Berroteran (2011), environmental planning and territorial planning should propose strategies and methods that allow evaluating the territory from natural, biotic, social, cultural and economic physical aspects.

Ecological planning according to Semarnat (2009,) is an environmental policy instrument to regulate land use and promote sustainable development, and that aims to maximize consensus between sectors and minimize possible environmental problems due to the use of the territory. Ecological management should be considered as a continuous, participatory, transparent and methodologically rigorous planning process.

The ecological management program should include a zoning, the ecological guidelines for each zone and a set of ecological strategies. For its part, the ecological strategies will include all the actions, programs and projects that seek to achieve the corresponding guidelines. In order to carry out a correct conservation of biological diversity, it is necessary to locate the richest areas, those that contain the greatest diversity, those with high levels of endemicity in biological groups and those that contain species that are on the official lists of species to be protected.

In the same sense, it is urgently necessary to identify the critical areas for the conservation of biodiversity, given the high rates of deforestation and changes in land use that occur today, which leads to the loss of important numbers of species, as well as particular habitats and loss of the functionality of biological systems. Biodiversity can be significantly lost in part due to the lack of strategies that allow identifying what is really a priority to conserve.

The conservation of agricultural ecosystems is of great importance for food security, because in them we have necessary elements such as soil, water and the biodiversity of plant and animal resources that are indispensable in agricultural production. To establish the agricultural items logically the use of the land is necessary, therefore, man intervened the natural ecosystems and transformed them into spaces where sometimes monocultures are planted and this of course goes in opposition to the natural ecosystems, added to this, it influences the decisions on the management practices of the crops and the use that one has of the soil, that's why at present it seeks to strengthen the ecological processes and in the soil-water-plant interactions, which guarantees the quality of life of the people since, their well-being ultimately depends on the well-being of the ecosystem.

Dear readers, it is important to make diagnoses that allow determining the biodiversity present in a specific geographical area, especially where agricultural systems prevail in order to contribute to the improvement of environmental indicators of this area. In this way it can be verified whether or not there is a rational and equitable use of natural resources in this way we protect ecosystems and ensure sustainable agriculture.