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A REPRESENTATIVE BIOLOGICAL RESERVE SYSTEM FOR THE UNITED STATES?

J. Michael Scott

Calls for a representative system of biological reserves date back at least to F. von Mueller's 1890 address to the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science. In that address he stated, "Choice areas and not necessarily very extensive should be reserved in every great country for some maintenance of the original vegetation and therewith for the preservation of animal life concomitant to particular plants." The first action in this regard in the U.S. was a 1917 request by the National Research Council to the Ecological Society to prepare a "listing of all preserved and preservable areas in North America in which natural conditions persist" and "to urge the reservation of such areas as demanded immediate attention" (cited in Shelford 1926). These duties were discharged in part with a report to the National Research Council in 1920 by the society's Committee on Preservation of Natural Areas for Ecological Study and the Committee on Common Cooperation (Anonymous 1920), and more fully in 1926 with the publication of Victor Shelford's Naturalist's Guide to the Americas. A later product of the Ecological Society by the Committee on the Study of Plant and Animal Communities and the Ecologists Union was a 1950 article in Living Wilderness that included a listing of 691 established nature sanctuaries in the U.S. and Canada and their legal status and dominant vegetation (Kendeigh et al. 1950-51). In 1950, The Ecologists Union became The Nature Conservancy, a group that has dedicated its conservation efforts to protecting "the last of the least and the best of the rest." More recent efforts to establish a representative system of biological reserves included those of Dasmann (1972), who stated that the need for a network of natural reserves encompassing representative areas of the ecosystems of the world was a high priority. Clearly, the idea of a representative biological reserve system is not new. Today, 119 years after von Mueller's prescient statement and 82 years after the formation of that historic Ecological Society committee, it's time to ask where we stand in our efforts. That is, what portion of U.S. biodiversity is in nature reserves, and what is not?

In the absence of complete knowledge of the composition, structure, and function of U.S. biodiversity we must rely on known elements of diversity and their mapped occurrences to answer these questions. There have been several recent attempts to assess the degree to which either public lands or biological reserves have captured significant representatives of the species and ecosystems of the U.S. Crumpacker et al. (1988) determined the ownership status of 135 of Kuchler's (1964) potential vegetation types in the conterminous U.S. Their findings suggested that perhaps 33 (24%) were inadequately (< 53,000 ha) represented on federal or Indian lands. Although the documented occurrences on land managed by different federal agencies and tribes provide insight into the relative importance of public and private lands, Crumpacker et al. did not discriminate among different management categories (e.g., wilderness areas versus forests managed for silviculture). Only for National Park Service lands, which accounted for seven (5.2%) of the 135 vegetation types, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service holdings, on which five (3.7%) of the 135 types occurred, could one gain insight into the management status of the vegetation. This suggests that the percentage of vegetation types potentially underrepresented in areas managed for long-term maintenance of natural ecosystems is even greater than the 24% Crumpacker et al. indicated.

Other, more recent assessments have not been as comprehensive geographically, but they have addressed the issue of management status and assessed the occurrence of mapped vegetation types within an ecoregion or state. For example, Stoms et al. (1998) found that 28 of 44 mapped vegetation types in the intermountain semi-desert ecoregion had <10% of their current area in wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, national parks, or other biological reserves. In Utah, 30 of 36 mapped types had <10% in reserves (Edwards et al. 1997). In the southwestern ecoregion of California, 19 of 62 vegetation communities had 10% of their area in reserves and were considered to be at risk (Davis et al. 1995). Davis et al. (unpublished manuscript) identified 73 of 194 mapped vegetation communities in California that had less than 10% of their area in reserves, parks, or wilderness areas. In Idaho, 33 of 71 mapped vegetation types failed to meet the 10% standard (Caicco et al. 1995). Thus, in the studies listed above, 30 to 83% of mapped vegetation types failed to meet the 10% standard, let alone the 12% figure suggested by the Brundtland Commission (Brundtland 1987) or the even higher 25-75% suggested by some authors as necessary to meet conservation goals (Noss & Cooperrider 1994).

These results suggest that we have a long way to go before our reserve system captures the full range of mapped occurrences of dominant cover types even for a relatively limited land area. This conclusion is reinforced by recent findings that current biological reserves occur most frequently in areas of high elevation and low soil productivity, while low-elevation areas with high soil productivity frequently have less than 3% in reserves (J.M. Scott et al., unpublished data). When land ownership patterns are examined, we find it is exactly those areas of low elevation and high soil productivity that are overwhelmingly in private ownership. Thus, the ecosystems and species in those areas, some of the most at-risk elements of biodiversity in the U.S., cannot be preserved on federally owned lands alone. Privately held lands are an important element in any attempt to complete the U.S. biodiversity portfolio. Policy makers have recognized this in their efforts to engage private landowners in conservation initiatives such as habitat conservation plans and safe harbors (both programs of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). Such efforts present challenges to us as conservation biologists to conduct unbiased studies and present the results of those studies in a format comprehensible to those making land-use decisions (Wiens 1997).

Early in my career, I was stationed in Hawaii and tasked with documenting the distribution, abundance, and habitat associations of the state's endemic forest birds. After seven years of field effort involving dozens of field biologists and two statisticians, we had twice sampled some 10,000 points distributed along 800 miles of transects. Three years of data analysis and writing followed, with products including refereed journal articles and a book, all of which were sent to federal and state agency personnel and several conservation groups. Very little of that information was used for making land-use decisions. We clearly had failed to demonstrate the relevance of our findings to management. It was not until we portrayed the results as a simple map showing the lack of congruence in occurrence of endangered forest birds and areas managed as biological reserves that action finally was taken. That action has resulted in establishment of two national wildlife refuges and several private natural area reserves.

It is uncertain why early calls for a representative biological reserve system went unheeded. My experience in Hawaii and elsewhere has convinced me that making the results of our research intelligible to policy makers is an even more daunting task than framing the right research question, conducting the research, and analyzing the results. Not that those tasks are trivial. They are not. For example, we are still in the infancy of our efforts to determine what species exist, where they occur, and what constitutes a viable population. However, regardless of the quality of our research, or how well-documented our conclusions might be, we will have fallen short of what needs to be done unless we can present the results of our research efforts in a manner that all parties involved in current debates about land use can easily understand. If we are to move toward establishing a representative biological reserve system for the United States we need to do a better job of providing biologically defensible data to those making decisions affecting natural systems. This information must be presented in clear, concise formats that can be understood and easily used by nonscientists on state and local planning boards and nonprofit organizations and by others who are involved in land-use or protection decisions. In making this information available we must "distinguish clearly between statements that are based on science and those that are based on personal values or viewpoints" (Wiens 1997). In the end, research that is relevant to an issue, yet is not made available and understandable to the public and to those making policy decisions, is a waste of time and money.

J. Michael Scott
U.S. Geological Survey
Department of Fish and Wildlife
University of Idaho
Moscow, Idaho 83844-1141

Literature Cited

Anonymous. 1920. Preservation of natural areas. Ecology 1:57.

Brundtland, G. H. 1987. Our common future. Oxford University Press, New York.

Caicco, S. L., J. M. Scott, B. Butterfield, and B. Csuti. 1995. A gap analysis of the management status of the vegetation of Idaho (U.S.A.). Conservation Biology 9:498-511.

Crumpacker, D. W., S. W. Hodge, D. F. Friedley, and W. P. Gregg Jr. A preliminary assessment of the status of major terrestrial and wetland ecosystems in the United States. Conservation Biology 2:103-115.

Dasmann, R. E. 1972. Towards a system for classifying natural regions of the world and their representation by national parks and reserves. Biological Conservation 4:247-255.

Davis, F. W., P. A. Stine, D. M. Stoms, M. I. Borchert, and A. D. Hollander. 1995. Gap analysis of the actual vegetation of California 1: the southwestern region. Madroño 42:40-78.

Edwards, T. C., Jr., C. G. Homer, S. D. Bassett, A. Falconer, R. D. Ramsey, and D. W. Wright. 1995. Utah gap analysis: an environmental information system. Final project report. Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Utah State University, Logan.

Kendeigh, S. C., H. I. Baldwin, V. H. Cahalane, C. H. D. Clarke, C. Cottam, W. P. Cottam, I. M. Cowan, P. Dansereau, J. H. Davis, F. W. Emerson, I. T. Haig, A. Hayden, C. L. Hayward, J. M. Linsdale, J. A. McNab, and J. E. Potzger. 1950-51. Nature sanctuaries in the United States and Canada: a preliminary inventory. The Living Wilderness 15(35):1-45.

Kuchler, A.W. 1964. Potential natural vegetation of the coterminous United States. American Geographical Society Special Publication 36.

Noss, R. F., and A. Y. Cooperrider. 1994. Saving nature's legacy. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

Shelford, V. 1926. Naturalist's guide to the Americas. Williams and Wilkins, Maryland.

Stoms, K. L., F. W. Davis, K. L. Driese, K. M. Cassidy, and M. P. Murray. 1998. Gap analysis of the vegetation of the intermountain semi-desert ecoregion. Great Basin Naturalist 58:199-216.

Wiens, J. A. 1997. Scientific responsibility and responsible ecology. Conservation Ecology 1 (online):9.

J. Michael Scott received the 1998 Edward T. LaRoe III Memorial Award from the Society for Conservation Biology.

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