The term ‘habitat fragmentation’ is often used inconsistently and as a broad umbrella for many patterns and processes that accompany landscape change. This has made it a panchreston or an explanation or theory used in such a variety of ways as to become meaningless. The panchreston problem has hampered efforts to understand and mitigate the negative impacts of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity, and has contributed to several largely unproductive debates. To overcome the panchreston problem, we suggest that the focus of future work needs to be specified more clearly within several key themes that comprise the broad domain of habitat fragmentation. Here, we outline three of these key themes and provide unambiguous terminology to help overcome the panchreston problem.