Thanks to Rebecca Watson for investigating the history and current status of 30 x 30. As a scientist, I just have to say that even if you write a scientific paper and make a series of assumptions, that does not make something “science.” For example, if you have x protections where x is unknown (in practice, as opposed to on paper) to determine you need y acres to protect z creatures may fall into “the current thinking of some scientists” but the scientific basis for the claim is, in fact, questionable. There’s also a substantial social science literature on biodiversity conservation that looks specifically at politics, power and privilege associated with “protected” areas.
Anyway, here’s the link to her blog post. an excerpt is below.
What is the status of the 30% target in the U.S.?
According to the congressional 30×30 resolution (relying on data from the U.S. Geological Survey[7]):
“(1) only 12 percent of the land area in the United States [is] permanently protected, mostly in Alaska and the West; and
(2) only 26 percent of Federal ocean territory [is] permanently protected, the vast majority of which is in the remote western Pacific Ocean or northwestern Hawaii . . . .”
The National Geographic Society maintains the U.S. will need to conserve an additional 440 million acres, within the next 10 years.
Given the significant amount of protected federal lands, the 12% protected land percentage seems low. We know the federal government owns 650 million acres, approximately 28% of the U.S., and that almost 40% of those lands, excluding Alaska, are in a protected status.[8] The simple answer is that federal protections do not measure up to the international biodiversity standards used by the USGS. Only those lands that meet the requirements of GAP 1 (permanent protection, mandated management plan to maintain a natural state with little to no management) or GAP 2 (permanent protection, mandated management plan to maintain a primarily natural state, with some uses/management allowed) count.
Conservation of which lands and what will “count”?
Candidate Biden’s Climate Plan included a commitment to 30×30 to protect “biodiversity,” slow the “extinction rate” and leverage “natural climate solutions.” President Biden stated that he would focus on the “most ecologically important lands and waters.” The 30×30 initiative is to include “all lands” — federal, fee, Tribal, state and local. Is it feasible to apply the GAP 1 and GAP 2 criteria to all these types of lands to reach the goal or can it be met with a variety of conservation standards? The Center for American Progress argues, “[m]easuring progress toward a 30X30 goal should account for a wide range of enduring conservation solutions.” Who decides what those “enduring solutions” are? In announcing the EO, President Biden said it, “launches a process for stakeholder engagement from agricultural and forest landowners, fishermen, Tribes, States, Territories, local officials, and others to identify strategies that will result in broad participation.”
In the U.S., ecologically important habitat is on private land—about 2/3 of listed endangered species are found on fee lands. More than half of U.S. forests — important as carbon sinks— are private. Conservation easements and Farm Bill incentives have been used successfully to conserve habitat on fee land that is also used for farming, ranching or limited residential use. Will the administration “count” conservation on “working lands”? If so, what are the conservation standards for fee lands and who will promulgate them? A recent op-ed in The New York Times by two wildlife ecologists urged the administration to move thoughtfully and inclusively on these critical lands. “Top-down declarations and land-use restrictions from Washington risk alienating rural Americans who otherwise support healthy lands, waters and wildlife . . . .”
Reading her description, I wonder why (and who) chose to cut off the protected areas as Gap 1 and Gap 2 (not lining up with IUCN here). Seems like that’s a pretty important decision (now that this is federal policy) and should be open to say, rulemaking and public comment?
Thanks Sharon for doing a post on this important issue. In any policy issue, the definitions of key terms are a crucial starting point of discussion. It seems that with 30×30, the organizations pushing this agenda have jumped right past definitional questions and are simply assuming that the key question of what legal statuses are considered “protected” has already been decided by “the science” and is not up for debate. ‘Protected’ means what they say it means–end of discussion.
And yet they’ve done everything they can to disguise what they actually mean, because when you actually look into it, 30×30 is really just a rebranding of their endless crusade to have virtually all federal lands managed as Wilderness. They are finally showing their cards in the debate about the latest Wilderness bill in Congress, as I’ve seen numerous editorials by the sponsors of these bills citing surveys showing general public support for the 30×30 concept as evidence that the public overwhelmingly supports massive new Wilderness designations (which wasn’t what the surveys asked about). Equating these terms shows that for 30×30 advocates, ‘protected’ basically just means Wilderness. 30×30 is just the same old Wilderness agenda with some clever new branding.
As I’ve mentioned before, it’s also extremely telling that they refuse to classify USFS inventoried roadless areas as at least GAP 2, and insist on classifying them as GAP 3 along with all other general National Forest land. The linked article defined GAP 2 status as “permanent protection, mandated management plan to maintain a primarily natural state, with some uses/management allowed.” How do roadless areas not meet this definition? In any objective sense they would, but that would be politically inconvenient because it would mean that vast amounts of National Forest land are already protected without being classified as legal Wilderness. Can’t have that now can we?
I also thought it was telling that the article mentioned that a big backer of the 30×30 agenda is the Wyss Campaign for Nature, which is also backing SUWA’s Red Rock Wilderness Act. ARRWA is mainly just a crusade against motorized recreation, targeting almost every popular off-roading area in Utah for Wilderness designation. It’s so extreme it generally hasn’t even gotten a hearing in Democratic controlled Congresses because of the devastating impact everyone knows it would have on Utah’s recreation industry.
Combine that with the fact that (as stated in the Colorado 30×30 report) the main reason for not counting USFS roadless areas as protected is the fact that they allow the limited presence of some motorized trails, and you have the answer to Watson’s question, “What forms of recreation, where and at what levels are compatible with 30×30?” Clearly motorized recreation is out, at the very least.
Thanks for all the posts about 30×30. In theory setting aside 30% of the landscape in some form of mostly natural state is something that I kind many people could support. Like Patrick alluded to above that is way different than support massive new wilderness designations. To have biodiverse landscapes with resilience from climate change we need to improve the natural state in places where there relatively little public land. Converting WSAs or IRAs into designated wilderness will not significantly change anything. The focus of 30 x 30 should not be the mountain west, but rather places where national forests and BLM land with their limited protections are scarce. I have noticed that for most receiver operating characteristic curves most bang for the buck comes early on. I think if you made a similar graph with the axes: natural state and level of administrative protections. You would see the same thing. Making urban and industrial farm land a little bit more wild and natural will have significantly more impact than designating an already wild patch of public land wilderness.
Lance, the “making farm land more wildlife-friendly” is what the USDA CRP program does, but will that “count”? Will USDA even be involved in determining what is in and out? Seems like an interagency team of folks knowledgeable about all the private land programs might be helpful.
Also, the urban idea fits right in with giving more access to underserved urban communities, increasing health and so on, so perhaps that would be a place to get more total bang for your preservation buck. Unless allowing people to recreate there would impact biodiversity too much (?).
When we worked on the Colorado Roadless Rule, our social scientist noted that many poor people in the San Luis Valley use firewood from federal land for energy.. in such cases, which probably occur throughout the West, limiting access for them might not meet environmental justice goals.
To have a chance of success, I think people need to keep their eye on the ball: Candidate Biden’s Climate Plan included a commitment to 30×30 to protect “biodiversity,” slow the “extinction rate” and leverage “natural climate solutions.” President Biden stated that he would focus on the “most ecologically important lands and waters.”
I think there has been a lot of work done already on identifying what is the “most ecologically important,” and I agree that federal lands are often not that (although their size can be a plus factor). I also agree that motorized recreation, or active management that promotes ecological integrity shouldn’t be used in a way that makes the perfect the enemy of the good. One other question is the legal status of the “protection.” If the bar is that there must be a legally binding commitment, then roadless area regulations would qualify.