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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• A short-term horizon for making decisions about land and water management, policy, and use that conflicts with the long spans of time needed to develop and implement creative, large-scale conservation policies and projects;

• The increasingly skillful and effective use of well-funded campaigns to advance specialized economic or political objectives, regardless of the larger consequences for society today and for future generations;

• A growing reluctance to regulate the impacts of activities that affect the health of land, air, and water, although it was clear long ago, in an America with much less government, that market forces alone cannot assure the production and protection of public goods such as the human and ecological benefits of natural systems;

• The framing of the protection of our air, land, and waters as a partisan political issue, which disregards the past leadership and many contributions of both major parties to conservation in this country; and

• The growing separation of many Americans from actual experiences in the outdoors that could help to foster an appreciation and understanding of conservation issues and provide balance to anti-environmental arguments.

Strategies for Creative Conservation

At this pivotal point in America's conservation history, what does the conservation movement have to do to resolve the conflicts between today's political parties, the global human pressures on our natural systems, and the need to create an environmental future in this country and around the world that is ethical, sustainable, and achievable? The answers, I believe, come not from Washington, but rather from a nationwide movement of landowners, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and community groups working together to protect the places they value, such as the Blackfoot Valley in Montana, the Flint Hills of Kansas, and the Connecticut and Hudson River Valleys in the East. Popular projects such as these suggest a number of strategies that can contribute to lasting and large-scale conservation success.

Work at the landscape scale.

In a world with many stresses and threats to nature, we know that disconnected pieces of natural systems are unlikely to survive. Most federal agencies are
beginning to think in these terms, but many institutional barriers must be overcome to make the conservation of what The Nature Conservancy calls "whole systems" the usual way of doing business.

Use multiple conservation tools at the same time.

It is essential to integrate preservation, traditional private and public land management, and restoration in places defined by both natural and human attributes. The combination of working at a large scale and using multiple approaches suggests that government must achieve an unprecedented level of coordination in how it uses its influence and resources.

Recognize, respect, and quantify the short- and long-term human benefits of conservation.

Conservation organizations must become expert in understanding and explaining the value of nature in shaping the future world. As multiple interests try to piece together the future, they must be able to represent accurately how important the natural components of that future will be.

Do not discard the idea of baseline conditions.

It is not always possible to sustain nature as it has existed in the past, but we can give the highest priority to protecting those places where ecological processes can continue, where change can be managed, and where we can, as The Nature Conservancy's scientist, Mark Anderson, says, "save the stage if not all the players."

Learn to balance adaptive management with long-term goals.

This requires bringing together a willingness to admit and adjust to mistakes with the consistency of purpose and action needed to influence the future of large systems. It takes time to reach the kind of long-term consensus building about the desired future condition that communities are trying to achieve. Successful, creative conservation projects extend over decades, not years.

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