The (Land)Owners of Conservation
Quality over Quantity
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Part II
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The Take home Message
- Public lands vary greatly in quality and effectiveness in meeting conservation goals.
- Generally speaking, the large wild areas with something resembling natural levels of both biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are concentrated heavily on federally owned lands.
- Land owned by non-governmental organizations tend to be limited in scale, but valuable for protecting unique habitats or the remaining vestiges of once common habitats, like tallgrass prairie.
- State-owned lands are a mixed bag of quality. Some state-owned properties are highly valuable for conserving biodiversity, but few are large enough to support natural ecosystem functioning. Further, the sportspeople-pay model of funding that keeps most state agencies afloat means that many state lands are managed for recreational opportunities, not conservation.
Much of the truly wild and relatively undisturbed natural habitat left in the United States can be found in national wildernesses and national parks, like Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, pictured here.
The full story
In Part I of this story, I discussed who owns the conservation lands in the United States. Total land ownership can give us some idea about the relative conservation value of lands purchased with the dollars of hunters compared to other sources, but that is an oversimplification. The quality of the management done on those lands is also important. In my view, the usefulness of a property for conservation should be judged on two factors: 1) how much biodiversity it protects, and 2) how well the ecosystem functions relative to a natural state. How the land is distributed on the larger landscape and how we manage and make use of that land are key in determining how a property fairs in these two areas.
To understand why the distribution of conserved land on the landscape is important, it's necessary to cover a bit of ecological background, this time about how reserve size affects biodiversity. One of the basic concepts we introduce to new ecology students is the species-area relationship. The species-area relationship is a relatively straightforward idea that predicts larger areas of habitat can support more species than smaller areas of habitat. That seems obvious, but the interesting part is how the number of species increases as the size of the habitat increases. The relationship is non-linear. A small block of habitat, say 1 acre, can support some number of species, all of which are likely to be small and require relatively few resources. Nearby, a larger block of the same type of habitat, say 5 acres, can support all the same species as the small block, plus some number of additional species, which may be bigger and need more resources. Although the area of the second block is 5 times the area of the first block, it is unlikely to support 5 times more species. This relationship continues indefinitely. A 100-acre habitat likely contains more species than the 5-acre block, but something less than 20 times more. As habitats get very large, few additional species are added to the biodiversity of the area, but the species which are added tend to be the large mammals and birds that many people associate with the term “wildlife”.
The size of a conservation property also plays a role in how well the ecosystem functions. Fully functioning ecosystems require both a rich biotic component, complete with the full complement of plants, herbivores, carnivores, and detritivores; and a relatively unaltered abiotic environment. The hydrology, geology, and soil quality all play important roles in ecosystem functioning.
Therefore, an organization or agency buying ten blocks of habitat each 1000 acres in size will effect very different conservation outcomes than an organization buying a single 10,000 acre block of habitat. The single large area may be necessary to maintain populations of mammals and birds with large home ranges. Large properties are also more likely to have something close to a fully functioning ecosystem. Conversely, spreading the available funding around to purchase many smaller blocks of habitat might allow for more targeted acquisitions of ecologically important habitats and might therefore maximize the number of species protected. However, the ecosystem of a small reserve will be much more dependent on neighboring properties to function.
Thinking about ownership of protected lands in this light, it becomes clearer how the purchasing priorities of the different landowners in the United States might affect conservation. For example, the huge tracts of land owned by the federal government and tribal governments are the most likely to support populations of the largest ungulate and carnivore species and may be vital for persistence of migratory species. You're also likely to find something close to natural ecosystem functioning in large national parks or wilderness where entire watersheds are often protected. Smaller state lands, those most often purchased with dollars provided by sportspeople are vital for a different reason. In places that have been heavily altered by humans and the remaining populations of rare species are scattered on small parcels spread throughout the state, attempting to protect large swaths of land is inefficient for conserving biodiversity. In that scenario, protecting what is left is likely the best (and only) option. Occasionally, some of the limitations of protecting small properties can be overcome by connecting them with corridors of habitat.
To understand why the distribution of conserved land on the landscape is important, it's necessary to cover a bit of ecological background, this time about how reserve size affects biodiversity. One of the basic concepts we introduce to new ecology students is the species-area relationship. The species-area relationship is a relatively straightforward idea that predicts larger areas of habitat can support more species than smaller areas of habitat. That seems obvious, but the interesting part is how the number of species increases as the size of the habitat increases. The relationship is non-linear. A small block of habitat, say 1 acre, can support some number of species, all of which are likely to be small and require relatively few resources. Nearby, a larger block of the same type of habitat, say 5 acres, can support all the same species as the small block, plus some number of additional species, which may be bigger and need more resources. Although the area of the second block is 5 times the area of the first block, it is unlikely to support 5 times more species. This relationship continues indefinitely. A 100-acre habitat likely contains more species than the 5-acre block, but something less than 20 times more. As habitats get very large, few additional species are added to the biodiversity of the area, but the species which are added tend to be the large mammals and birds that many people associate with the term “wildlife”.
The size of a conservation property also plays a role in how well the ecosystem functions. Fully functioning ecosystems require both a rich biotic component, complete with the full complement of plants, herbivores, carnivores, and detritivores; and a relatively unaltered abiotic environment. The hydrology, geology, and soil quality all play important roles in ecosystem functioning.
Therefore, an organization or agency buying ten blocks of habitat each 1000 acres in size will effect very different conservation outcomes than an organization buying a single 10,000 acre block of habitat. The single large area may be necessary to maintain populations of mammals and birds with large home ranges. Large properties are also more likely to have something close to a fully functioning ecosystem. Conversely, spreading the available funding around to purchase many smaller blocks of habitat might allow for more targeted acquisitions of ecologically important habitats and might therefore maximize the number of species protected. However, the ecosystem of a small reserve will be much more dependent on neighboring properties to function.
Thinking about ownership of protected lands in this light, it becomes clearer how the purchasing priorities of the different landowners in the United States might affect conservation. For example, the huge tracts of land owned by the federal government and tribal governments are the most likely to support populations of the largest ungulate and carnivore species and may be vital for persistence of migratory species. You're also likely to find something close to natural ecosystem functioning in large national parks or wilderness where entire watersheds are often protected. Smaller state lands, those most often purchased with dollars provided by sportspeople are vital for a different reason. In places that have been heavily altered by humans and the remaining populations of rare species are scattered on small parcels spread throughout the state, attempting to protect large swaths of land is inefficient for conserving biodiversity. In that scenario, protecting what is left is likely the best (and only) option. Occasionally, some of the limitations of protecting small properties can be overcome by connecting them with corridors of habitat.
Larger areas can hold more species than smaller areas, but the relationship isn’t linear. Large species need large spaces, while small species can survive in small spaces. There are many more small species than large species, so small spaces can hold many species for their size, but they rarely hold large birds and mammals.
Size, distribution, and interconnectedness of habitats are important, but the quality of habitat might be the single defining characteristic of effective conservation on public lands. Not all land protected for conservation purposes is equal. Unfortunately, assessing the quality of habitat is much more difficult than tallying the quantity or distribution of land. Technically, lands might be considered protected, but that can mean any number of things. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) uses information from governments and scientists to classify the conservation lands around the world according to their level of protection and permitted uses. The highest classification (Ia) is reserved for the most highly protected lands that are strictly controlled and on which human visitation is limited. In the United States, these areas tend to be small and little known, although some wilderness areas and state-owned conservation areas also make the list. Better known are the second (Ib) and third (II) classifications, which are large wilderness areas and national parks, respectively. The lowest classifications (V and VI) designate lands that have been altered by humans and are often used by humans for tourism and other purposes, but still hold some value for biodiversity. These are the classifications most state fish and wildlife management areas are given.
The IUCN categories are necessarily broad, in part because it is impossible for the IUCN or anyone else to adequately assess each of the hundreds of thousands of protected areas in the world. Every ecologist and conservation biologist wishes we could. We would love to know which species can be found in every conservation area, how close the ecosystem function is to that of a pristine ecosystem, and how resilient the habitat will be to external stressors. We would also love to know if each area is receiving the level of protection it has been designated by regulations. Unfortunately, that’s simply not possible. Instead, the best we can get are often qualitative assessments of habitat quality.
I, like most ecologists and wildlife biologists, spend an inordinate amount of time on protected lands throughout the United States. An ecologist judges a habitat differently than most people, which is both a blessing and a curse. No less than the famed naturalist and ecologist Aldo Leopold lamented this fact in one of the most famous passages from The Sand County Almanac:
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“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.” - Aldo Leopold
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This is a wonderfully poetic way to say that a trained ecologist can often rapidly assess the general quality of a habitat for conservation and biodiversity in ways that most people can’t. Some of these assessments are obvious: considering the conservation value of an acre of land managed by the BLM equal to an acre of land managed by the National Park Service is almost absurd. Some assessments are much more subtle and require a thorough understanding of what species should be present, the ability to identify and distinguish between native and non-native species, and an understanding of how the ecosystem should function. How prevalent are invasive species? Are native species roughly as common as they should be? Does a forest appear to have a healthy rotation of trees in the appropriate stages of growth? Are the insects in a stream indicative of a healthy or distressed system? Are there subtle signs of human alteration to the environment? Does the ecosystem appear to maintain some semblance of natural functioning? These are observations that can take years to master.
In my travels around the United States, I spend a fair bit of time making such evaluations. When I'm quail or pheasant hunting a new area, I'm as tuned into the structure of the prairie as I am to the habitat most likely to hold a bird. I'm sure my wife gets sick of me pointing out that this tree or that is invasive or that a native plant is growing out of place. I've been slowly building a catalog of these observations in my head over a 20-year ecological career. With that in mind, I'm going to make a broad generalization about how lands purchased for and by hunters compare in quality to lands protected through other means, and then I'll attempt to explain my reasoning. Recognizing first that every mechanism for funding conservation has success stories, I am fairly confident that lands protected by dollars originating from hunters are often of lower quality than lands protected through other means.
In my travels around the United States, I spend a fair bit of time making such evaluations. When I'm quail or pheasant hunting a new area, I'm as tuned into the structure of the prairie as I am to the habitat most likely to hold a bird. I'm sure my wife gets sick of me pointing out that this tree or that is invasive or that a native plant is growing out of place. I've been slowly building a catalog of these observations in my head over a 20-year ecological career. With that in mind, I'm going to make a broad generalization about how lands purchased for and by hunters compare in quality to lands protected through other means, and then I'll attempt to explain my reasoning. Recognizing first that every mechanism for funding conservation has success stories, I am fairly confident that lands protected by dollars originating from hunters are often of lower quality than lands protected through other means.
Great Smokies National Park is one of the last large swaths of protected land in the eastern United States, but the heavy human visitation means that truly wild places are rare, even in the remote parts of the park.
In the United States, many of the highest quality conservation lands were protected for reasons that have nothing to do with maximizing hunting opportunities. On average, there are probably few lands that protect a larger proportion of possible biodiversity than national parks and federal wilderness areas. Some national forests and many tribal properties fall into this category as well. Because these areas are often large, they not only contain high biodiversity, but also allow for something close to natural hydrology, nutrient cycling dynamics, competitive interactions, and predator-prey interactions. In other words, ecosystem functioning is high. Federal lands are not uniformly great for conservation however. BLM-managed land can be, and often is, grazed to the point it ceases to function as a natural ecosystem. Likewise, some Forest Service lands are managed for production with little more than a passing attempt to address conservation concerns.
NGOs like The Nature Conservancy and regional land trusts also protect some amazing places, either through outright purchase or with conservation easements. These are often small, important habitats for endangered species that rarely get the attention of other funding sources, so the biodiversity on some NGO properties can be highly unique. There are also a few NGO properties that are quite expansive and have the potential for ecosystem functioning like the large federal lands protected long ago. Few, if any, of these areas were funded by hunters’ dollars and while some may allow hunting or even limited resource extraction like logging, they are not managed exclusively for those purposes.
Forest Service lands can be a mixed bag from a conservation standpoint. There are some areas of high-quality, old-growth forest owned by the Forest Service, but there are also areas managed specifically for production of wood products, with little concern for conservation.
I don't want to imply that lands purchased by states using sportspeople's dollars cannot be effective for conservation. Some of the most diverse ecosystems I’ve seen were on state-owned properties that were most likely purchased at least in part with Pittman-Robertson funds. In fact, many of the areas designated in the highest IUCN category (Ia) are owned by states, but these areas tend to be small. Like NGO-owned properties, that means they maintain unique biodiversity but may lack some of the natural ecosystem functioning found on larger protected areas. Likewise, some of the National Wildlife Refuge properties purchased with revenue generated by the sale of Duck Stamps are high-quality habitats, and there are also some amazing lands protected by hunting-related NGOs, like Ducks Unlimited. That said, my experience is that these types of areas are the exception, rather than the rule.
More commonly, lands purchased with revenues from hunting and fishing are managed to maximize hunting and fishing opportunities. You will often hear that such lands can incidentally improve habitat for non-game species, which may not attract the funding necessary for conservation and protection on their own. A conservation biologist would refer to the game species in this scenario as a flagship or umbrella species. The flagship and umbrella species concepts have been hot topics in ecology for the last two decades, but no consensus has emerged. There is still considerable disagreement in the scientific community about whether focal species can effectively be used in conservation of entire communities. Proponents argue that while relying on surrogate species might not be the best option if we had the time and resources to manage each species individually, it is often the most realistic option to conserve the most species possible. Conversely, opponents argue that even if a flagship or umbrella species co-occurs with many other species when viewed at a broad spatial scale, small but important differences in habitat requirements between species will ultimately limit the conservation value of single-species management.
The most likely candidates to serve as flagships are charismatic species that draw public attention or habitat generalists with large range sizes for which conservation efforts would protect a wide range of specific habitats suitable to other species. Elephants might be a good example of both. If there is enough funding and room for elephants, the argument goes, there should be plenty of protection for nearly every other species as well.
From a purely academic perspective, the flagship and umbrella species debates are fun to watch unfold in the literature, but what do they mean in context of conservation in the United States? Should proponents of the sportspeople-pay model of conservation funding be using the argument that managing for ducks or deer can benefit entire ecosystems? Perhaps. On one hand, land protected for a game species is probably better than the alternative, which would likely be urbanization, monoculture agriculture, heavily grazed rangeland, or a mining extraction operation. However, the all-too-common blanket statement that management done for game species benefits non-game species is misguided.
Greater Sage-Grouse are commonly held up as an umbrella species in sagebrush habitats. Many argue that protection of game species like Sage-Grouse is an effective conservation strategy for non-game species in the same habitat.
Among game species, waterfowl are the most clear-cut case of a flagship or umbrella group. Huge efforts have been expended to recover waterfowl populations for hunting purposes, with much of that effort focused on protecting and restoring wetlands where waterfowl breed and forage. Restored wetlands, while not a perfect substitute for natural wetlands, do generally hold much of the biodiversity found in nearby natural wetlands. In broad strokes, birds that breed in wetlands are doing better than other birds in the United States, in no small part because of the work done to increase duck populations. This is slightly misleading though, because wetland birds, while doing better than forest or prairie birds, are still doing poorly. Over 50% of wetland breeding bird populations are in decline! By comparison to catastrophic declines in other bird groups, this is a conservation win, but it clearly demonstrates that even the best flagship species (or in this case, group of species) aren’t a perfect conservation solution.
I have no doubt lands protected or restored for the purposes of protecting game species are better (from a conservation standpoint) than the alternative. But does that mean they represent adequate management of the habitat to maximize the biodiversity of the areas protected? I would argue they often do not, and waterfowl probably represent the absolute best-case scenario for using game as a flagship. Basic ecological theory predicts that nearly all conservation efforts that help some species will have negative impacts on others because niche differentiation is what allows those species to co-occur in the first place. Ideally, the species that benefit from protection of a focal species are those in need of conservation, but I suspect this is not as common as we would like to believe. It is also possible that management of so-called flagship or umbrella species can have negative effects on biodiversity. Greater Sage-Grouse are commonly held up as an umbrella species in the sagebrush habitats of the intermountain west, but it now appears that management for Sage-Grouse can have neutral or even negative effects on some other species of concern in the area.
Areas preserved in something close to a natural state are rarely examples of using flagship or umbrella species to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. The most natural and important conservation areas were explicitly protected because they already had largely intact biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. The areas held up as examples of using a game species to protect non-game species look far different than a natural ecosystem. For example, if you’ve spent much time on wildlife management areas around the country, you’ve probably noticed a heavy emphasis on agriculture or livestock grazing on some of them. Some agencies are more prone to using this mixed agriculture/conservation management style than others. Among the federal agencies, BLM is well known for this. However, I would argue the most important examples are the state agencies east of the Rocky Mountains, where they are often the main players in protecting important habitats. It just so happens that many of the popular game species in the eastern United States do very well in agricultural areas, so managers take advantage of this to achieve multiple goals. Many wildlife management areas of the Midwest and Great Plains are farmed following standard agricultural practices, pesticides and all, for much of the summer. This serves as food for deer and turkeys during the summer. In autumn, some fields are cut as normal, except that some crop is left standing to attract doves or serve as cover for pheasants. After other fields are cut, they are flooded to attract ducks and geese. This strategy is highly successful for managing game species, but I would venture to guess the region’s land snails, beetles, and spiders are not well served by this management style.
Agricuture is used heavily in many wildlife management areas, in part because many game species do very well in such landscapes. Such management strategies are unlikely to support the full suite of biodiversity possible and ecosystem functioning is almost certainly limited.
This is where the argument that management for game species also protects non-game species becomes most problematic. It's ultimately why I think most properties paid for by sportspeople fail to serve as effective conservation areas. Management plans for game species are often very specific and focus on a food source and habitat for the game species. Almost by definition this precludes diversifying management strategies as broadly as would be needed to protect a broad suite of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Sure, you can find an endangered species here and there on state lands managed for game species. State management agencies are quick to point it out when this occurs, but it is almost always incidental when areas are heavily managed for game species. In short, managing for game species with the hopes of protecting non-game species is not a solution likely to succeed at maintaining either biodiversity or ecosystem functioning.
For this reason, I tend to think of many state fish and wildlife management areas, specifically those areas ultimately paid for in large part by hunters and managed to maximize hunting opportunities, as the equivalent of a golf course. Land owned or managed by NGOs like Ducks Unlimited or Pheasants Forever usually fall in the same category. The main goal of both wildlife management areas and golf courses is recreation. Both, to varying degrees, also serve some incidental biodiversity benefit. A golf course situated among suburban sprawl is likely the hotspot of biodiversity in the area, just as an area managed for hunting situated in an agricultural desert is likely the hotspot of biodiversity in that area. Neither approach anything like the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning you would find on an equivalent sized area managed for conservation. Unlike some conservation biologists and ecologists, I don't necessarily think this means these areas are a waste of space. I like to play golf and hunt on areas rich in pheasants but poor in other biodiversity. The recreational opportunities afforded by these areas are valuable, even if the conservation benefits are limited.
Protecting, restoring, and maintaining high-quality land is a cornerstone of the modern conservation strategy in the United States. It is important that conservation-minded citizens, NGOs, and governments continue to work through multiple channels to protect new lands and maintain or restore lands already under protection. Leveraging the willingness of sportspeople to pay, directly and indirectly, to participate in their hobby is one avenue for land protection that is a net positive for conservation. Still, I would caution against putting too much stock in the claims of hunters and hunting-interest groups that it is the solution to our biodiversity crisis. Land protected for hunting and fishing using hunting and fishing dollars do not represent a conservation panacea. Those lands are useful, but leave much to be desired from a conservation perspective.