Species-rich vernal pools, such as these in California, could be one target for greater protection under President Joe Biden’s bid to protect 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
President Joe Biden last week unveiled an ambitious conservation goal, unprecedented for the United States: conserving 30% of the country’s lands and waters by 2030, which would require more than doubling the area of public and private holdings under heightened protections.
Conservation scientists welcomed the so-called 30-by-30 goal, announced in an executive order on climate released 27 January. “The ambition is fantastic,” says ecologist Joshua Tewksbury, interim executive director of the nonprofit Future Earth.
But Biden’s order also raises a thorny practical question: Which swaths of land and sea should be the top targets for enhanced protection or management? The order says the effort should aim for a number of outcomes, including preserving biodiversity, curbing climate change, and even creating jobs and reducing social inequality. But researchers warn that difficult trade-offs lie ahead, because few chunks of territory are likely to provide all of the desired benefits. “The balancing act [will be] the hardest part of this work,” Tewksbury says.
Reaching the 30% goal could require extending protection to vast expanses of land and sea, depending on how officials define “protected.” Only about 12% of U.S. land is already in wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, national parks, and other reserves with strong protection, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Much is in Alaska; just 7.5% of the lower 48 states is highly protected. (An additional 18% of all U.S. land has weaker protection that allows certain uses, such as logging or mining.) At sea, the country is much closer to the goal: Some 26% of coastal waters is protected to some degree within sanctuaries, national marine monuments, or other entities.
Conservationists have long argued that the current protections are not adequate. Some note that just 11% of species of conservation concern are well-represented on highly protected land in the United States. (Biden’s climate plan from his campaign listed “slowing extinction rates” as a goal, although that phrase doesn’t appear in the executive order.) Increases in protection that benefit species could also provide ecological benefits to people, they add, such as by protecting forested uplands that produce clean water.
Last week, researchers at Boston University and the Nature Conservancy released a discussion paper that maps and compares scenarios for reaching the 30% goal in the coterminous United States (which does not include Hawaii and Alaska). The scenarios examine trade-offs among four goals: minimizing cost, protecting climate-resilient landscapes, protecting species, and curbing carbon emissions.
Making cost the top priority led to expansive new protection in the western plains, where land is cheaper (see map, below). But because most of the added land supports relatively few threatened species, the scheme would fall short on that measure. The least cost scenario also protected relatively little land that absorbs or stores climate warming gases such as carbon dioxide or methane.
Different options
Two possible scenarios for increasing protection of land lead to different locations for conservation, showing the difficulty of optimizing multiple goals.
(GRAPHIC) N. Desai/Science; (DATA) B. A. Simmons et al. (2021), “Delivering on Biden’s 2030 Conservation Commitment.” GDPC Working Paper 001/2021, Global Development Policy Center/Boston University
Another scenario, which emphasized protecting resilient and connected landscapes, cost twice as much. It preserved areas across most of the country except deserts and the corn belt. A third vision, focused on preventing the loss of grasslands and forests that store carbon, delivered the most climate benefit, but cost three times as much. It also produced a patchwork of protected forests in the southeast that lacked connecting corridors, reducing their value for preserving biodiversity. A final scenario, which protected species across the country but especially in the south’s biodiversity hot spots, covered the greatest range of ecosystems. It cost four times as much and provided fewer climate benefits. Overall, the analysis found just 2% of lands scored highly on all four measures.
Observers say the Biden administration could make rapid progress and contain costs by enhancing protections for territory already owned by the federal government. “We can make really huge gains on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands,” says Jacob Malcom, a conservation biologist with Defenders of Wildlife. That could mean reducing logging, mining, drilling, and grazing. “There will be vested interests who are not happy about that,” Malcom notes. “So I don’t want to make it seem like it’s going to be easy.” Fishing associations, for example, have already reacted with concern to proposals to ban commercial fishing in 30% of U.S. waters. “Thirty-by-thirty is a campaign slogan, not a scientific proposal,” Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, wrote last year.
Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist of the World Wildlife Fund, notes the Biden order appears to define conservation broadly, and does not rule out human uses of natural resources. “It’s not protect, it’s conserve,” she says. “And that means getting creative.” Ending subsidy programs that promote development, for example, and boosting programs that pay farmers and landowners to conserve lands could speed progress toward the goal. Other assistance could come from a recent federal law that more than doubles spending—to some $900 million per year—on the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which can help states and local governments buy land.
The Biden administration’s plans should become clearer by May, when federal agencies must outline their strategies for reaching the 30-by-30 goal. Other nations will be watching, notes Charles Barber, a senior biodiversity adviser at the World Resources Institute. He notes that many countries are pushing for nations that have joined the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity to adopt a global 30-by-30 goal in May. The United States is not a party to the convention, but, Barber says, “The credibility of the U.S. as an international leader will depend a lot on what people see the United States doing at home.”
"save" - Google News
February 03, 2021 at 05:00AM
https://ift.tt/3rkoXqP
Protect species? Curb warming? Save money? Biden's big conservation goal means trade-offs - Science Magazine
"save" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2SvBSrf
https://ift.tt/2zJxCxA
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Protect species? Curb warming? Save money? Biden's big conservation goal means trade-offs - Science Magazine"
Post a Comment