Are we achieving the management goals we think we are?
Originally written by Michael Remke
The sun sets along the Grenadier Range in Southwestern Colorado. Water from this pond makes a 1,000+ mile journey before theoretically reaching the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. Photo – Michael Remke
In this essay, I hope to open up a conversation about federal land designation policy and true success in terms of follow-through in attaining these goals. Our public lands cover hundreds of thousands of acres across the U.S. and there are many barriers to reaching our diverse goals and visions. In some cases the goals of the designation itself my be limiting our achievement, others may be from lack of public involvement and support for various management policies. Although I group my critiques around different federal designations of our public land, I am not blaming the dedicated and hardworking members of these agencies, or groups who support them. We all have a vested interest in these public assets, and shared responsibility in maintaining and enhancing them.
A Brief History of Public Land Management in the U.S.
Theodore Roosevelt – 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909
During the expansion of the New World and the freshly formed United States of America, prospectors were struck by the abundance of natural resources within the land and territory adjacent to the states. Expeditions turned up gold, silver, and vast forests filled with trees of tremendous size.
The early 1900s brought leadership to America that quickly realized our federally acquired land was being pillaged for its fruits. Theodore Roosevelt had a profound appreciation for America’s resources and landscapes. He quickly realized that without some sort of regulation, our resources would be squandered. He more or less created a system of land designations that prioritized different types of land for different purposes. The Forest Service was established to manage our forests for sustainable timber harvest, for the people and the land. The Park Service designed to protect and conserve the geologic, ecologic, and cultural treasures of our country.
Over the last century, the public lands system became a hierarchy of conservation priorities, or a matrix of red tape to economic gain, positioning the “crown jewel” of the United States, the National Park System, at the top.
As the years progressed, politics and growth in America complicated the public lands system. New agencies with new purposes appeared – the Bureau of Land Management became the Forest Service’s sister agency responsible for America’s open grasslands, deserts and ranges. Natural events like fires devastated valuable commercial grade timber and since, became the “enemy” in the eyes of the Forest Service, just as large timber cuts remained empty as no seedlings grew in place of the old trees that once stood. Continual change in political climates and the encroachment of human population into wild spaces have created additional challenges to these land management agencies that attempt to manage millions of acres of ecosystems within constrained budgets.
From their initial designations, little has changed in the goals and visions of these public lands and how they are managed which is contrasted by rapid advancements in scientific knowledge and broadening public opinion about how lands should be managed.
In this essay, I intend to explore how our perception of conservation itself, plays into how land is designated, and subsequently managed.
“Loved to Death” – National Parks
Looking West into Grand Canyon National Park shows bountiful canyons and miles of protected river. Photo – Michael Remke
As an ecologist, of the modern era, I would say that, National Parks and Monuments take the cake for conservation priorities. These units operate strictly in the best interest of “preserving” the geography within its borders, – how it was at the time of the designation. No resource extraction and dedicated active management for ecosystem health (forest thinning and noxious weed programs) are the priorities at these units.
Parks draw millions of viewers each year as they represent some of the most iconic landscapes in America. From the glacial valleys of Yosemite to swirling white-water in the Grand Canyon, these landscapes are globally famous. National Parks use their beauty to monetize public lands – tourism is top priority.
The Downsides of this:
Paved roads, RV hookups, gift stores and trains of tourists plow into our parks every year. The densities of peoples visiting these landmarks creates huge conservation challenges. Trails erode away, trash piles along roadways, and human – wildlife interactions degrade biological cycles in ways unforeseen (think tourist who put a wild buffalo calf in their car this last year).
To be clear, the parks are setting excellent modes in aggressive land management, with regards to the volume of people attending parks – and often doing it well, it’s just not easy. The mud in the water in this story comes from a critical question… With such high visitation and so many unique conservation challenges, are National Parks and Monuments truly a conservation victory?
Viewers line up by the thousands to watch ‘Old Faithful’ put on a show in Yellowstone National Park.
“Playing Catch up” – The Forest Service & Bureau of Land Management
Timber Harvesting can be beneficial for both the forest and society, if managed in the right way. Photo – Michael Remke
Theodore Roosevelt worked closely with Gifford Pinchot to create the United States Forest Service, whose very mission is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of our forests and grasslands to meet the needs of future generations. The agency and organization was found to regulate and control timber extraction processes to ensure future forest health, to sustain the people and the land. In the early days of forestry, there was a poor understanding of ecosystem processes and landscape level ecology. Furthermore, in their first decade, the Forest Service witnessed some of the largest fires in American History. Nearly a hundred fire fighters and over a million acres were burned in the Great Fire of 1910.
Pinchot used this event to create an understandable fear of wildfire, making one of the major objectives of the forest service to suppress wildfires. At the time, science had nothing to offer Pinchot that suggested he was in the wrong. So across the west, fires vanished nearly as quickly as they appeared. As the years progressed and fires were halted in their tracks, many forests grow dense with no disturbance to remove some of the fuels and prompt cycles of regeneration. Forest scientists watched as forest health declined, learning costly but valuable lessons in forest management.
Today, science has developed a wealth of knowledge and tools about interacting and managing these precious landscapes in the United States, and managers are faced with new challenges. We once perceived a healthy forest as something that exists in a “stable state”. It was believed that anything that altered the forest from the state, just set the forest on a path back towards that same stable state.
In the modern times, this cyclic concept is still well accepted, but now we also accept that forests progress along various trajectories. For example, earlier we discussed how forests have become overly dense with young trees due to the lack of fire. So now, a fire does not have the same effect it had in the past, instead it burns hotter, larger, and longer. A clear solution to this is to actively manage/interact with forests.
As a result, no longer do we see forest rapidly redevelop and proceed back to their previous state, burned areas remain barren or become dominated by thick grasses and wildflowers. These new insights are complicated by other issues: more unpredictable weather, severe drought and the uncertainty brought by climate change, as well as land use change and urban encroachment into forested lands. This new information is conflicting with dated philosophical components of our land management policies, especially those of wilderness.
No plan, no problem – Wilderness
Aldo Leopold – American author, philosopher, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist, and environmentalist
Wilderness is one of the most profound assets of our public land system. The very concept of wilderness was born from Aldo Leopold back in the 1920s. He failed miserably in his attempts to manage game herds by managing predators. In his failures he reversed his philosophy and concluded that nature balances itself out, human intervention does not lead to stable ecosystems. Contrarily, ancient tribes who have inhabitant these regions for some 10’s of thousands of years hold nearly the opposite perspective – “wilderness is a wasted land that suffers because we do not care for it.”
Today, our wilderness areas are defined by the Wilderness Act of 1964. Under this poetic document, Wilderness are places where mechanized travel of any kind is prohibited, they are areas protected from development. Most of the time, Wilderness is a place where “man is just a visitor”, an area protected from our permanent habitation.
In reality, most wilderness areas are high-elevation subalpine and alpine forests or low elevation desert canyons in relatively remote areas. In a nutshell, these areas are incredible. They are secluded and special for all the reasons listed above – but are they really a conservation victory?
Pine Beetles have always been a part of forest ecology. Droughts, climate change and fire suppression is believed to help them succeed in killing enormous areas across the west.
Are they a conservation victory? I am perplexed by this question… Wilderness areas are jeopardized in many situations when considering climate change. There are clear direct correlates between human industry and growth on the Earth’s atmosphere and climatic patterns.
An example being, beetle outbreaks and the forest mortality that ensues. Abnormally warm springs allow for many insects, including mountain pine beetle, to live multiple life cycles in a single summer thus allowing for widespread beetle attacks on trees that may not have existed historically. Many Wilderness forests are threatened by these outbreaks, especially when other concepts come into play. White pines, a threatened example, that survive beetle attack are often susceptible to a spreading invasive fungal pathogen known as “White Pine Blister Rust”. If this tree species were lost, a primary food source of inter-mountain grizzly bears would be lost.
If we continue to protect wilderness as largely “no action” areas, we may lose the very thing we hope to protect with our “wilderness” designation.
I propose a new conception of wilderness. Wilderness not only as secluded and remote places for us to visit, wonder and meditate in, but also as barometers of our actions elsewhere. The browning of our wilderness should be an alarm. Natural processes, be it beetle outbreaks or wildfire, are important cycles to be aware of, but when they appear to be occurring at unprecedented rates, they are a call for action. They should tell us we are not doing well and we have to learn how to better interact with our forests and the Earth. They clearly show us what “no action” in our forests is not healthy for them.
We need to reflect on the scars we see in wild areas and ponder their existence relative to actively managed areas. Wilderness is essential, not simply for recreation and spiritual reasons, but also for learning about how to become good stewards of lands elsewhere.
Beetle Killed Forest – Wolf Creek Pass Colorado, from this vantage it would be safe to assume %70-%80 of the adult Spruce has been killed by beetles. Photo – Alex Pullen 2014
Dialog:
A patch of thinned ponderosa pine on Apache Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona. Stumps indicate trees cut from a recent thinning that aimed to restore this forest to its more historical structure. Photo – Michael Remke
Land designations are not just pieces of land we “touch” or not “touch”, I believe they should be accepted and utilized as tools and a means to beneficially interact with the non-human environments that encompass our communities. A new National Monument designation or Wilderness area should be celebrated, however, that alone should not imply a conservation victory.
Our public land officials who make on the ground decisions are non-elected, hard working professionals attempting to utilize the latest and most pertinent science to achieve multiple goals under limited Federal budgets. Managing hundreds of thousands of acres, is no easy task, and the public is often generally quiet in conversation regarding how public lands are managed. All too often, private interest groups and business (including ranching, and oil & gas) are driving conversations about how public lands should be managed while the general public is often unaware that decisions are being made about a public asset they too have a stake in.
We all need to be a part of the conversation to help assure our public asset is managed for the reasons we are passionate about: recreational access, hunting, fishing, foraging, wildlife habitat and most importantly – watershed and air shed protection – even after land designation victories are won.
Volunteers of the Grand Canyon Trust and Flagstaff High School students work with researchers to find populations of Southwestern White Pine Seedlings that are resistant to both drought, and white pine blister rust. Climate solution based forestry has potential to preserve ecosystem function into the centuries to come. These groups all interacting really prompt excellent conversation.
An appropriate metaphor would be to consider earning a college degree. We celebrate after the completion of any degree, yet we accept that the true work begins afterwards as we start and progress in our careers. In conservation then, consider a “land designation” the completion of a specific degree… After it is finished, we need to work on developing the goals and steps and budget necessary to ensure we achieve the goals we intended on achieving. History has shown us, that we will make mistakes along the way. As ecological research and public opinion become more and more a part of public land management policy, we will continue to evolve and adapt the profound vision laid down by the conservationists of decades old.
To be clear, this critique is an attempt to relieve the Federal Land Management system of full responsibility of managing public lands and instead insist that the public voice ought to be louder. Federal offices are faced with the contingencies of multi-use demands and the public needs to help by showing up to volunteer trail work days, coming to public hearings, and writing informative comments to proposed actions on public lands.
To help raise your voice and represent your community or interest group, be it recreation or otherwise, see how you can be involved directly in working with the forest service here. Additionally, find your Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management offices at these links and contact your local office to make sure your voice is heard.
If you want to help win current battles for new, beneficial land designations, here are a few petitions I’d recommend:
Be sure to continue following these lands even after we win the land designations and help ensure the public land offices in charge of these beautiful lands have the tools and people they need to help achieve the goals set by the initial land designation!
Michael Remke – Ecologist, author, naturalist and photographer
Michael Remke
is a modern naturalist, a passionate scientist, recreationalist, and explorer of public lands. Michael is a Ph.D. Candidate at Northern Arizona University’s School of Forestry.
Be sure to continue following the Mike and his advocacy for our public lands:
