The Wilderness Act protects 175,000 square miles of public land. As the natural world is transformed by climate change, has the landmark 1964 law backfired? Biologists Daniel T. Blumstein and Thomas B. Smith explain. Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Daniel T. Bloomstein, Thomas B. Smith et al. | 11/1/2011 April 22, 2024
In late 2023, four environmental groups sued the National Park Service, invoking conservation laws to halt tree replanting in the wake of devastating wildfires in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. Around the same time, the National Park Service announced it was looking to invoke wilderness laws that would restrict the use of fixed anchors on Yosemite’s iconic big wall climbs.
How a law enacted 60 years ago to protect nature in undeveloped areas came to serve an entirely different purpose, and in the process became counterproductive to its own objectives. The Wilderness Act of 1964 currently protects approximately 175,000 square miles of public land in the United States, most of which is roadless and accessible only on foot or by herd animals. you can’t. Now more than ever, we need to protect these wild spaces. That is where endangered species and their habitats can best thrive, with minimal impact on humans.
But California’s national parks, where the Environmental Management Commission has applied for conservation law, are neither remote nor roadless. Rather, appeals against conservation laws in these parks are part of a change in approach to the law that may ultimately be counter to its purpose, and that needs to be reconsidered.
In addition to these cases, conservation laws are increasingly being used to restrict scientific research in protected areas. This includes research into habitats that are being destroyed by the effects of climate change and disease outbreaks, which directly impact the biodiversity that this law seeks to protect. Many of the limited activities are essential to understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes needed to manage these lands in the future, but they are not permitted under conservation law, or Permitted only in very exceptional cases.
As conservation biologists, we work in remote natural laboratories around the world. Dan Blumstein spends his summers studying marmots at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) near Crested Butte, Colorado. Crested Butte is famous as a recreational and natural tourism destination. RMBL is an internationally recognized research station adjacent to the 283-square-mile Maroon Bells-Snowmass Nature Preserve.
In many cases, well-intentioned people invoke this law in a way that precludes both effective federal management of public lands and scientific research, making conservation law a weapon against effective natural resource management and a necessity. This will be used as a barrier to accessing appropriate resources. scientific knowledge.
Over the past decade, RMBL has begun hosting hydrological and atmospheric research with incredible potential, thanks to new remote sensing technologies that can collect continuous data. Small weather stations and sensors create accurate models of ground growth conditions and help understand precipitation and snowmelt conditions. Conducting these studies near Crested Butte, at the headwaters of the Colorado River, is essential to understanding the hydrology that ultimately supplies water to 40 million people in the southwestern United States and northeastern Mexico.
But conservation laws have allowed scientists to set up weather stations, install semi-permanent sensors, remotely control cameras to monitor wildlife, and install small This means no metal tags can be permanently marked or small plastic rain gauges left on these lands. Although there is a process to apply for an exception, it is difficult and the government almost always denies exceptions.
Should research be conducted in protected areas? If so, to what extent are research-related impacts acceptable? As a society, we should conduct science in areas where these impacts are minimized. should we allow recreational use? Governments need to re-evaluate how they operate nature conservation laws. We say this not because we view natural areas as unimportant, but rather because we view them as essential resources that help manage biodiversity.
Human-driven change, an unplanned global experiment on Earth, is occurring everywhere in this Anthropocene. We are living a global experiment in Earth’s biodiversity. We urgently need natural areas with limited human influence as safe harbors for the biodiversity on which we depend. At the same time, it is futile to pretend that these areas are completely untouched by humans.
Scientific research helps find solutions to restore habitats and protect biodiversity while managing human impacts. This includes research into how human activities change the traits and resilience of existing species. For example, Thomas Smith studied how climate change will affect biodiversity in Central Africa, as species will need to move or adapt to new habitats to avoid extinction. I am. He and other researchers used genomics to determine where certain species would be best adapted to future warmer climates. We then worked with conservation authorities to select areas of the new park that would be best suited to protect the species.
In the Anthropocene, conservation laws are needed more than ever. One reason for this is that countless human attacks on the environment have increased the value of minimally impacted land. Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, and Kings Canyon National Park welcome millions of visitors annually, making these national parks a natural treasure trove and a great place to study ecological processes. places, which serve an important but entirely different purpose than the areas protected by this law.
In many cases, well-intentioned people invoke this law in a way that precludes both effective federal management of public lands and scientific research, making conservation law a weapon against effective natural resource management and a necessity. This will be used as a barrier to accessing appropriate resources. scientific knowledge. As we face unprecedented changes to our natural environment due to climate change, we also need to rethink how we interpret the laws that protect our natural environment in new and unexpected ways.
Aldo Leopold, the father of conservation biology, once said: “One of the punishments of ecological education is that one lives alone in a world full of scars.” Using the best science and ecological knowledge from our wildlands, we can learn more about our small planet. Being a good steward is one way to help repair those wounds.
