GC: n

CT: The rugged Cabinet Mountains of northwestern Montana are an island of wild country with a population of fewer than 30 grizzly bears, their existence tenuous because they are cut off from others of their kind by distance, roads, and other development. Biologists are concerned about the small number of females, since they reproduce only every three to four years. So in recent years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has occasionally caught a sow near Glacier National Park, trucked it to the Cabinets, and sent it running off into the woods to increase the number of females.
But the Fish and Wildlife Service is pinning its hopes for the long-term survival of this population on a different strategy: the protection of an ecological corridor that would connect the marooned Cabinet grizzly bear population with a larger, more intact ecosystem, 50 miles to the south. That ecosystem is the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, some 600 square miles of rugged bear habitat now devoid of bears because they were wiped out to protect sheep.

S: http://e360.yale.edu/feature/ecological_corridors_connecting_fragmented_pockets_of_wildlife_habitat/2450/ (last access: 28 February 2015)

N: 1. ecological (adj): 1899, see ecology + -ical. Related: Ecologically.
corridor (n): 1590s, from French corridor (16c.), from Italian corridore “a gallery,” literally “a runner,” from correre “to run,” from Latin currere. Originally of fortifications, meaning “long hallway” is first recorded 1814.
2. A thin strip of vegetation used by wildlife, potentially allowing movement of biotic factors between two areas.

S: 1. OED – http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=ecological+corridor&searchmode=none (last access: 28 February 2015). 2. GDT.

SYN:
S:

CR: ecology