CONSERVATION BIOLOGY 101: critical intervention, not band-aid therapy

According to Foreman, the wounds will only be healed by:

1. Reversing and halting man-caused habitat destruction (setting aside vast protected areas like wilderness, monuments, and national parks);
2. Reestablishing “connectivity”  for wildlife to migrate between protected areas (via wildlife corridors on public and private lands); and
3. Rewilding entire continents (with large carnivores like wolves, grizzly bears, and mountain lions).

Here are a few more questions for you. Now do you see why it’s so important to the most radical individuals and groups to rewild public and private lands? And where do you suppose corridors will have to overlay? Bingo. Private lands. Land use planners call it “open space”.

Reversing and halting man-caused habitat destruction entails making significant changes to the way we live, work, and recreate. Connecting protected areas that are not adjacent to each other requires designating land for wildlife to travel from one area to another. And rewilding, a term coined by Foreman and Soule, founder of The Wildlands Project, is controversial: not everyone wants wolves, grizzly bears, and mountain lions moving freely about the continent.

Rewilding operates on the principle that large predators “are often  instrumental in maintaining the integrity of ecosystems… ” Soule and Reed Noss wrote in Wild Earth: “…the structure, resilience, and diversity of ecosystems is often maintained by “top down” ecological interactions that are initiated by top predators.” Foreman concurs, saying “If native large carnivores have been killed out of a region, their reintroduction and recovery is the heart of a conservation strategy.”

Foreman and Soule believe that protected areas are “the most valuable weapon in our conservation arsenal” that must be established “on very large landscapes, probably continental in scope”, connected by a “continental wildlands network of core wild areas, wildlife movement linkages, and compatible use lands… and must be based on the scientific approach of rewilding, which recognizes the essential role of top-down regulation of ecosystems by large carnivores…”

Rewilding North America was written as a plan to achieve the goals of conservation biology and enable the movement to “be prepared with solid strategies and policy initiatives for when new political or social opportunities” arose. Foreman acknowledges that the vision is bigger than perhaps can be achieved, but urges like-minded radical conservationists not to “ignore the more domesticated and fragmented parts of North America.”

That would likely be where our city cousins dwell: urban areas. And areas such as the LA Basin and Ventura County are not being ignored. Wildlife corridors have been mapped out there already.

Foreman concedes that a minimum requirement for rewilding North America is protection and restoration of Four Continental MegaLinkages, depicted above on the Wildlands Network map. He writes:

“The vision for a North American Wildlands Network along Four Continental MegaLinkages evolved from [the] mission ['when grizzlies in Chihuahua have an unbroken connection to grizzlies in Alaska, when gray wolf populations are continuous from New Mexico to Greenland...]. Such an rewilding vision does not shoulder aside nor downplay the need for vigilant and uncompromising defenses against schemes to domesticate the whole earth, but it adds a positive blueprint for all conservation work, a context for wildlands and wildlife defense… It is bold because it offers a plain alternative to business  as usual and is unflinchingly daring to say what actually needs to be done to stop our war on nature.”

Soule and Terborgh (in Continental Conservation) stress that buffers must be developed adjacent to wilderness areas that “maintain some degree of wildness but allow sustainable economic uses [i.e. tourism and recreation, some agriculture, etc.] that are compatible with the goals of the reserve network as a whole…. Here’s Foreman’s to-do list for achieving the Four Continental MegaLinkages ASAP. I have a feeling you’ll recognize many of them.

• Reintroduce carnivores wherever possible;
• Reintroduce beavers and other highly interactive species;
• Establish species recovery goals for ecologically effective populations;
• Generally halt predator and “pest” control;
• Reform wildlife management to adopt a more ecological approach;
• Select and design new wilderness areas based on ecological principles;
• Protect all large roadless areas on public lands;
• Protect all small roadless areas on public lands;
• Create larger roadless areas in the East;
• Remove livestock from much of the public lands;
• Reform livestock grazing where it continues;
• Prioritize simple soil and gully erosion control;
• Prohibit big-tree logging;
• Develop standards for ecological restoration in wilderness areas;
• Develop protection, restoration, and management standards for public lands wildlife linkages and compatible-use areas;
• Remove abandoned and unnecessary livestock fencing;
• Restrict all motorized vehicles to designated routes;
• Reduce the miles of public lands roads;
• Stop bogus R.S. 2477 (highway right-of-way) claims;
• Establish landscape permeability as a public land management goal;
• Identify and remove or mitigate barriers to wildlife movement;
• Encourage ecological management of private, corporate, and tribal lands important for linkages;
• Identify private lands that should be acquired  on a willing-seller basis;
• Restore a natural fire ecology;
• Remove destructive, unnecessary dams;
• Restore or mimic natural over-the-bank flooding, where possible;
• Establish in-stream flow as a beneficial water use;
• Prioritize removal of exotic species that threaten native species and wildlands; and
• Design networks for climate change.”

Foreman wrote (in 2004) that although “at this time a conservation-hostile administration and Congress may block reforms, conservationists and responsible land managers should work to develop solid strategies and reforms in anticipation of a future conservation-friendly administration or Congress that might pass them…”

Guess what? Until the last election, Congress had been feeling pretty friendly. The President too.

Despite the significant challenges, many radical conservationists aren’t discouraged. They’re in it for the long haul. Conservation biology’s vision, adherents say, is “bold” and “hopeful” despite the fact that fixes aren’t so easy to implement. America is quite developed. It’s not like you can just order everyone back to the Garden of Eden and start over.

Despite that fact, radical conservationists are increasingly convinced that their conservation basic building blocks will be put in place – Foreman says – within twenty years.

Soule and Foreman, in conjunction with other EarthFirst! members like Dr. Reed Noss, established the Wildlands Project in 1991 to plan for and implement a network of wildlife corridors stretching from Mexico to Canada. Now called the Wildlands Network, over the last twenty years they’ve influenced the mainstream environmental movement to get behind radical conservation’s principles to help establish wildlife corridors in a big way.

Numerous conservation organizations work together and separately to reverse and halt man-caused habitat destruction causes. Just think about the organizations with which you deal. The Wildlands Network and others concentrate on the establishment of wildlife corridors, believing that if you “build” protected migratory routes, carnivores will come. Philanthropists and state and federal wildlife agencies throw billions of dollars toward buying up private land and easements for the corridors.

Foreman states that private lands play a key role in establishing the North American Wildlands Network. They include: “lands owned by The Nature Conservancy, Audubon Society, and land trusts [incl. Trust for Public Lands], large private ranches, hunting and fishing club lands, and timber lands managed for conservation purposes including large carnivore protection, smaller tracts of land in important ecological locations such as riparian areas, owned and stewarded by conservation-friendly and conservation-savvy people, and key private in holdings and public lands grazing allotments that need to be purchased by conservation groups or conservation-friendly individuals.”

Over time, mainstream conservation’s goals have shifted. Foreman notes that while aesthetic (scenic beauty), recreation (solitude and self-sufficiency), and utilitarian (watershed protection) arguments have tended to dominate arguments for wilderness and other protected areas in the past, science and ecological reasons are now at the forefront. He says:

“Scientists, particularly from the new discipline of conservation biology, have become more prominent in conservation groups. This is most obvious in the Wildlands Project, Wildlife Conservation Society, World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, but other groups such as the Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife, Endangered Species Coalition, American Lands, and Sierra Club… have likewise emphasized ecological values… Hard-hitting groups like… Center for Biological Diversity, Forest Guardians, and Wildlaw have filed science-based lawsuits and appeals to protect endangered species and their habitats… Conservation biologists have gained foothold and an influence within federal and state land and wildlife management agencies, sometimes even in high positions.”

From The Nature Conservancy to Defenders of Wildlife to Tuolumne County’s homegrown activists, many folks call themselves conservationists. Organizations like the Wildlands Network link them collaboratively with national, regional, and local partners to advance a most radical conservation vision.

What policies they can’t implement through influencing public opinion and compromise, they litigate to gain (you won’t want to miss an upcoming post about that!).

Foreman indicates the gravity of his cause  in Rewilding North America:

“Efforts to protect the land and create a sustainable human society will come to naught without understanding these wounds and their underlying causes – and then doing our best to heal them… Perhaps we can raise this Lazarus of a North American landscape to robust good health. It is, at the very least, our duty as citizens to try.”

Consequently, many of these committed conservationists and others are unlikely to be satisfied with consensus-based or “balanced solutions”. They believe they know exactly what’s wrong. They have a plan to fix it. Anything less is falls short of achieving the mission and is unacceptable.

But is conservation biology’s plan to save the earth scientifically valid? Maybe, maybe not. [A new study just linked the presence of wolves in Yellowstone National Park to dramatic ecosystem improvements. From there it will be a short leap to making multiple use lands and private lands. That is, unless folks start looking for other options such as holistically managed grazing.]

Regardless, no one has asked us – the American people – if we believe it and will agree to conservation biology’s demands to heal the earth. No one has asked us if state and federal governments should invest billions of tax dollars into studies, plans, and land and conservation easements purchases to implement what is still a theory, not a fact. No one has explained the radical conservationists’ big picture. No one.

At the federal, state, and local levels, bill by bill, acre by acre, dot by dot, radical conservationists are just doing it. We’d better ask ourselves and soon: are we willing to make the sacrifices and changes radical conservation demands?

Are we willing to discard good stewardship for their brand of radical conservation?

If we don’t ask ourselves, they won’t either.