AbstractMain principles and approaches of nature reserve design are reviewed in present paper.The goal of building nature reserves is to prevent species extinction and biodiversity loss.The equilibrium theory of island biogeography has little contribution to conservation practice because empirical evidence does not support it and the design based this theory is not related to the central problem of species extinction population viability.The theory and models of population viability analysis and minimum viable population are used to study the problem of species extinction and the viability of ecosystems can be determined by using the viability of keystone species, thus they are theoretical foundation of the nature reserve design.The approaches of conservation evaluation have been used in nature reserve selection and examination. The corridor debate which has replaced the SLOSS debate becomes a “hot spot” in the nature reserve design.