The Steady State Blog

I am amazed at the dedication and efforts of wildlife refuge managers, and I think the majority of Americans agree with this sentiment.  What is less impressive in my mind, though, is the productivity of our conservation lands and the lack of awareness about this topic.

I spent several years working in the National Wildlife Refuge System.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages National Wildlife Refuges to provide habitat for migratory birds, endangered species, fish, and other wildlife.  To a casual observer, the job appears to be done.  When you visit a National Wildlife Refuge, you tend to find a place teeming with wildlife.  Take, for instance, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico.  In the right season, a day at Bosque del Apache provides face time with vast flocks of snow geese and sandhill cranes.

It’s a great experience for visitors, but in a way, they’re deceived.  The land appears to be providing resources for these flocks of birds, but it’s only through careful management and dedication of the refuge staff that the land can provide enough resources.  The natural functioning of the river system is long gone, taken by dams and diversions for irrigation.  Floods, the major driver of the ecological systems that provide for the birds, no longer occur at the historical scale and frequency.  Refuge managers, biologists, and staff work the land to provide enough resources.  In some cases, they try to mimic conditions that would have historically occurred.  For example, they use pumps and diversion channels to flood fields and create temporary wetlands.  In other (perhaps less enlightened) cases, they grow crops to provide bird food.  Without these interventions, the flocks would be much smaller, and might not even spend the winter at Bosque del Apache.

Refuge lands represent a band aid approach to conservation.  Due to a lack of interconnected, highly functional conservation areas around the nation, we have chosen to apply band aids on the landscape (intensively managed refuges) to stem the loss of blood (habitat conversion, species extinctions, and declining ecosystem services).  As any good doctor knows, prevention is much more effective than treatment of symptoms.

Conservation lands, by their very definition, mean that they are kept out of economic production.  They are not to be cleared, mined, farmed, grazed, covered with suburban homes, or otherwise exploited for profit.  America pioneered the idea of conservation lands back in the days of Teddy Roosevelt with the establishment of magical places like Yellowstone National Park and Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge.  The problem is that conservation lands have been unable to keep pace with economic growth.  The endless pursuit of economic growth has left a poor network of conservation lands, one which focuses on rocky, icy, and arid places.  These places contain beauty, habitats, and species worth protecting, but they are not representative of the habitats of the nation, and most of them require intensive management to be as productive as they were when ecosystem productivity was higher.

Given the current state of band-aid conservation, what can we do?  The main step is to start the gradual process of transition from unsustainable growth to a steady state economy.  The “redevelopment” of wilderness and interconnected conservation lands is a critical piece of this transition.  We can put large chunks of land off limits to economic growth and focus national efforts on ecosystem health.  People can be redirected from jobs that tend to harm ecosystems to ones that restore them.  We can have a naturally functioning set of ecosystems that will continue to provide services and wonder for generations to come.