Creative Conservation: Reflections on a Way to the Future (Land Lines Article)

Author(s): Bendick, Bob
Publication Date: October 2012

4 pages; Inventory ID LLA121003; English

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Article

Creative Conservation: Reflections on a Way to the Future

Bob Bendick

Yellowstone National Park seems so wild today because in 1872 it became the first national park on Earth and because the wildfires in 1988 and the successful reintroduction of wolves in the 1990s have restored the dynamic character of the original landscape. In his recent PBS television series, filmmaker Ken Burns called our national parks "America's best idea," but a growing number of people within the conservation movement now believe that, at best, fully protected areas like Yellowstone are only part of the conservation solution. They argue that we should be saving nature for people, not from the impacts of people, and that our efforts should encompass more different kinds of areas with less emphasis on "preserved" lands.

This is a variation on the 100-year-old debate between conservationist John Muir and forest manager Gifford Pinchot: Should we protect nature for its intrinsic value or should our approach be much more utilitarian? The latter view sought to maximize the long-term production of water, harvestable wildlife, and timber, and now would include carbon storage, biofuels, nutrient removal, protection from natural hazards--in sum, all the things that the natural world provides.

Contemporary discussions raise another issue about the pervasiveness of human impacts on natural areas. Yellowstone and every other place on the planet are profoundly influenced by human decisions. Aldo Leopold (1966, 254) perceived this dilemma more than 60 years ago when he wrote, "man's invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidity and scope." These tools are far more powerful today. In her recent book, Rambunctious Garden, science writer Emma Marris (2011) advances the argument that we will have to learn to accept a nature altered by human activities. It is not sufficient to think about preserving natural areas to allow the unimpeded function of their natural systems. Every place requires some form of management, even if only to protect what remains of its "natural" condition.

The extent to which humans have become responsible for nature was brought home to me in a recent conversation with Phil Kramer, The Nature Conservancy's Caribbean director. He described the die-back of coral reefs in that region and his team's efforts to restore them by selecting coral genotypes that seem most resilient to warmer water, growing those corals in nurseries, and then using them to rebuild reefs at many locations.

For thousands of years, consciously and unconsciously, humans have shaped their environments to fit their needs, but this kind of intentional intervention to respond to the growing threats to nature represents a new direction that is different from Muir's preservation and Pinchot's scientific management. We are now trying to create our conservation future at increasingly large scales. This creative conservation process builds on the analytical approaches to conservation of the past, but does not depend only on baseline analysis of historic ecosystems to establish goals for the future. Rather, it requires that our goals be derived from a synthesis of human and natural needs and benefits guided by what Aldo Leopold (1966, 239) called "a land ethic"--an informed personal responsibility for the health and future of our land and water.

Challenges to Protecting Nature

This approach to conservation faces a lively debate within the conservation community. Many people hold on to the idea of restoring disturbed areas to wilderness and to the ultimate power of nature, but others recognize that these approaches can be only a part of our future. From my perspective, the energy of the conservation community is better directed not to internal debate but to meeting the real challenges we face in sustaining the core framework and functions of natural systems for their benefit to people and to nature itself. What are these challenges?

• A declining regard for and understanding of science, including the kind of conservation and wildlife management science that Americans have pioneered for more than 100 years;

• The increasingly evident impacts of climate change, regardless of the cause, on the stability of natural processes and their relationship to people's health and safety;

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