Fire Prevention Plans: “Almost impossible unless we have a different mindset”

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Huge kudos to Missoulian/Ravalli Republic reporter David Erickson for one of the best, factual and most candid looks at the issue of home/community wildfire protection, which appeared in today’s paper. Honestly, I have to believe that one of the reasons this article is so complete and interesting is because the reporter must have taped the entire conversation. So instead of a garbled collection of one sentence sound bites, the public gets huge chucks of information from Montana DNRC and U.S. Forest Service fire experts, spoken in their own words.

From my perspective, the heart of the article is the simple fact that way, way too many homeowners living in the Wildland-Urban Interface simply don’t take responsibility for conducting proven and effective FireWise measures, which need to occur on a pretty regular basis, and certainly long before a wildfire is cresting the ridge. Remember, on the Lolo Creek Complex fire professional “firefighters [from as far away as North Carolina] had been relegated to raking pine needles from yards while others cleared brush and limbed up trees surrounding homes.”  Yet,  many times (as the article points out) these are the same people who complain the loudest when U.S. Forest Service, state DNRC and even local volunteer fire department crews aren’t able to save their house during a wildfire.

The article really cuts to the heart of the issue regarding some of the politics in Montana, including what can best be described as simply anti-government sentiments.

The situation described by US Forest Service and Montana DNRC fire experts also seems to contradict one of the common refrains I hear all the time in Montana, and also on this blog when we talk about wildfire in places like Colorado’s Front Range. Basically, while some people want to give the impression that homeowners, neighborhood associations and communities have done absolutely everything possible to get FireWise and prepare for the wildfire, and all that’s left to do is increase “fuel reduction” efforts on public Forest Service lands, the experts in this article paint a much different picture. Perhaps this is just the situation and mindset in Montana, so I’m curious to see what others have experienced.

Finally, I also must highlight that the point made by Montana State Forester Harrington regarding the fact that “thinning and pre-treating forests” really doesn’t work when you have single-digit humidity, 95+ temperatures and high winds is basically the same exact point that environmentalists have been trying to make for the better part of two decades now. Reader’s may recall George Wuerthner’s piece “Wind Drives All Large Blazes,” posted on this blog as the Lolo Creek Complex fire was burning.

Please do read David Erickson’s entire article. Below are some highlight snips:

LOLO – How do you reconcile the fact that many private landowners in Montana are resistant to the government and local fire managers telling them what to do with their land when those same private landowners become outraged after a wildfire burns their property that wasn’t properly taken care of beforehand?

That’s the question a group of state legislators grappled with when they met with Bitterroot Valley fire managers and Montana Department of Natural Resources forestry officials on Thursday to tour the remains of the 11,000-acre Lolo Complex fire that ripped through the Highway 12 corridor west of Lolo this past August….

State Sen. Cliff Larson of Frenchtown, who represents Senate District 50, said he lives near where the Black Cat fire torched 12,000 acres in 2007.

“I know the Frenchtown Fire Department tried to work with local landowners on fuel reduction programs and protecting against fire hazards,” he recalled. “People said, ‘Just get off my property, don’t tell me what to do.’ And there are two people that I know of personally that were outraged when the fire department didn’t come there right away and because they had 15 cords of wood stacked behind their house they had to hose them down to protect their house.

“And they are outraged that they didn’t get that attention, even though the fire department went there in advance and warned them that they have some serious fire hazards right there on their property. And those two families are still complaining. So how do we force people to cooperate with the DNRC and the fire departments and the Forest Service? It’s frustrating.”

Bob Harrington, the Montana DNRC state forester, said that community wildfire prevention plans are really good in some counties but not great in others.

“We in the fire service have been at it for 15 to 20 years now, really intensely trying to impress on those homeowners that live in the wildland/urban interface to treat their property,” he explained. “We do public media, we do workshops, and there are individual consultations that the fire departments do, that our folks do. A lot of the landowners do it and take advantage of it. But we have a lot folks that that isn’t enough of an incentive yet. Whether it’s pressure from insurance, pressure from banking or peer pressure from their neighbors. Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn’t. Unfortunately, sometimes we as Americans, there’s a lot of us that don’t respond unless it hits us in the wallet.”…

The fire managers agreed that the Lolo Complex’s main blowup was the type of fire behavior that is not easily controlled….

Harrington said a variety of factors contributed to the fire’s wild blowup.

“That’s a part of the public dialogue that we’ve been having since this fire happened,” he said. “We have folks on one side who are saying, ‘See, forest management doesn’t do anything to stop forest fires,’ because there was so much Plum Creek land that had been managed, and that also burned. The reality is, when we are talking about thinning and pre-treating forest, we’re not talking about fires like this. This was one of the most extreme fire days that you are going to see in western Montana. Single-digit humidity, close to triple-digit temperatures, and then winds 20, 30 and 40 miles per hour.

“The analogy I always give is that we still give flu shots even though we have influenza outbreaks because we are trying to minimize the effect of that, so we’re still treating forests. Reducing fire risk and prioritizing some sections in the wildland urban interface, and it gets a little bit trickier on private land and industrial forest land, which the majority of this fire happened on, areas that had been intensively managed in the past. A lot of what carried the fire was second-growth trees. Everything was burning, grass and downed logs, everything.”

Harrington said he has noticed that some landowners take advantage of educational programs and cost-sharing programs to prepare their land for fire danger, but others do not….

“So the innovators that understand where they live, they’ve taken advantage of it. But even then, like these guys saw managing this fire, we had a lot of folks in Sleeman Gulch where we had firefighters out there doing that work at the last minute.”….

Ehli said that in his experience, telling property owners what they need to do on their land to mitigate fire danger isn’t going to work.

“When we start talking about a wildfire prevention plan, I was the chief of the Hamilton Volunteer Fire Department when that came through and there was a huge pushback,” he said. “Oh my God, the resistance you got from county personnel, county commissioners and huge, huge pushback. So when you start talking about a community wildfire prevention plan, it’s not as simple as drawing lines on a map. Not only because of the enormous amount of property you have to think about, but also the political aspect as well.

“So we have got to be honest with ourselves when we start talking about prevention plans, I’m going to say it, it’s almost impossible unless we have a different mindset put in. And maybe we’re going to get there someday within the state of Montana and get people on board and get property owners on board about what we need to do, but we’ve really got to talk about the near impossibility of getting something like this in play, mostly from the political standpoint.”….

Liane said that he hopes a fire like the Lolo Complex will convince people to listen to local fire departments about taking steps to protect their property during the winter.

“Those of us who have served in natural resources committees would love to hear more about how do you convince those individuals who are knotheads to take the firewood off their back porch?” he said. “We need to build a plan that encourages people through local service activities, and the fire department in Frenchtown is very proactive. They have the same problem that Lolo does. People are sitting ducks when a fire like this comes through.”

Hansen said not a lot has changed since the big fires of 2000 rolled through the Bitterroot Valley.

“It’s the short-term memory thing that kills us,” he said. “I mean, if you had come down here last winter knocking on doors to sell people on the idea of fuel treatment, they would have told you to pound sand. Now the next three years, they’ll be begging for it. And three years from now they’ll have forgotten how bad the fire was. And we’ve seen it happen since the fires of 2000. You know, two years after the fire, they are back to not wanting anybody to tell them what to do.”

“Until the fire comes knocking at their door,” Ehli added.

To Manage, Perchance to Sell, Forest Vegetation on Public Lands: Why or Why Not?

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We have been discussing what lies behind our different worldviews on a deeper level, or at least trying to, for some time. Recently, Mike Wood asked us to talk about our interests here. For some reason, this ran out of steam, but now our guest, Bryan Bird, volunteered to engage in this discussion. The discussion started in a thread about the Rim Fire, so I am starting it over here so it doesn’t get lost. It’s really not about the Rim Fire, it is more general and more fundamental.

Again, Bryan is a guest, so I ask you to be on your best behavior on this thread.

Here’s the first post, in reply to Bob, which triggered my latent desire to have this conversation:

Point taken, but if we are doing this: I am a trained scientist (Masters), held science jobs with the USFS and the US Park Service, and spent the last 17 years digging around in the relevant scientific literature and working in the field on fire and logging related issues. I grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills outside of Sequoia-Kings Canyon NP.

One thing I am fairly certain of, based on this experience, is that on the balance, timber harvest on federal, public lands is a losing proposition, both ecologically and economically. That is not to say that there may be circumstances when mechanical vegetation treatments will be justified and we should put people to work doing it, but generally not.

So I replied here:
Bryan, if you are up for it..

I am a trained scientist (Ph.D), held science jobs with the FS and CSREES, and have spent 40 years (sheesh!) working sometimes in the field and sometimes not on forest management (including fire and logging issues). Including a notable stint in FS Research where my cubicle adjoined two fire scientists. I worked many places including the Eldorado in California.

I am not certain, based on this experience, that timber harvest is a “losing proposition both ecologically and economically”. In fact, I would argue the opposite.

I think there are two framings that I have…
1. “Local” production is best:
Should the US get its wood it uses from here or from our neighbor to the North or from ?. Why is wood different from agriculture or energy? Isn’t it better economically and environmentally to produce it ourselves?

Or 2.
Why not use trees you remove?
This posits that there are reasons to thin forests and to diversify stand structure. These reasons may be for fuels treatment or to increase habitat for certain species.

How do you frame this issue?

I would imagine that you, like me, are not an expert in economics. But there are markets for wood, and people sell wood and wood products all the time. But we can have that discussion as well, as lots of folks on the blog and elsewhere do know about it.

I would be very interested in carrying on this discussion with you, and see where we diverge in our thinking. We have similar experiences, but I suppose different values. If you are up for it, I definitely am.

And he replied here:

I suspect our fundamental difference is found in what we value our public forest lands for. It appears to me that you see some mix of subsidized commodity production to be preferable (classic multiple use), whereas I see recreation, clean water, wildlife, hunting, wildness, property values, and even aesthetics to be the highest value for the most people (Americans). Go to Headwaters Economics website to see any number of rigorous analyses of these values in Western states and counties. http://headwaterseconomics.org/land/protected-public-lands-increase-per-capita-income

I do not have a degree in economics but I have co-authored several papers, reports and projects that considered the economics of timber sales on public lands and non-commercial, restoration on public lands. My general take home is that, when all values on public lands are considered, it does not make fiscal sense to manage them for commodity production. In fact, there were few forests, post the Ronald Reagan/James Watt heyday of logging levels that actually made any positive returns for the treasury. Most forests, with perhaps the exception of the Allegheny (cherry) did not return receipts to the treasury from their timber programs. I know this is a complex equation and others will argue it.

I do believe in sourcing our timber from within our borders. I also believe private, commercial timber lands are the place for that and can meet the demand. You have to keep in mind the public forest system (USFS mainly) was established after the prime growing lands were already in private ownership. What remained was marginal for timber production (thus the high costs).

If there is product coming from genuine ecological management of public forests, then sure, use it locally for cottage industry, firewood, stove pellets etc. But, I do not want the commodity production driving the management of our public forest again as it did in the 70s, 80, and even into the early 90s.

At this point, we’ll transition to this thread. See comments below.

On the Lighter Side: Range Rover ad raises Forest Service hackles

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From the Washington Post today….

Pike’s pique: A Range Rover TV ad raises some Forest Service hackles

By , Published: October 9 E-mail the writer

We’ve all seen the warnings that accompany those daredevil car ads admonishing us not to try such feats ourselves or warning us that they’re being pulled off by a “professional driver on a closed course.”

Despite the warnings, they still make some stunts look pretty cool. Some folks, it seems, have a problem with a new TV commercial that they say promotes off-roading on federal lands, which is a distinct no-no.

A new ad for the 2014 Range Rover Sport shows the rugged-yet-luxurious SUV scaling the snow-crusted Pike’s Peak, which is part of the National Forest system. Up the paved roads of the mountain the truck goes. And then — as a group of impressed guys who look like a pit crew, wearing matching Range Rover jackets and hats, look on — the vehicle appears to go over the top and down the other, unpaved side.

“It clearly goes against the basic philosophy of ethical attitudes and proper driver behavior for using OHV’s [off-highway vehicles] anywhere, let alone on NFS lands,” Jack Gregory, a retired Forest Service officer, wrote to the Forest Service. (Jeff Ruch, the head of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, shared the missive with us.)

Forest Service spokesman Leo Kay, one of the few employees of the agency still in the office during the government shutdown, tells the Loop that the car did not actually go off-road on Forest Service land during filming, though it appeared to through the wonders of modern film-making.

And he says he’s unsure of the precise wording of the permit that the car company got to film the commercial there. The folks who handle those are furloughed.

“It’s kind of a ghost town around here,” he says.

But precedent exists for curtailing how film crews portray public land. When the Forest Service issues permits for crews to film in wilderness areas, for example, the agency requires them to “keep within the spirit” of the 1964 Wilderness Act, Kay explains. That might mean that they wouldn’t be allowed to depict, say, littering or tossing lit matches around.

The Forest Service isn’t up in arms over the commercial. It’s not protesting the way the National Park Service did in 2003, when a Metamucil commercial depicted a Park Service Ranger pouring some of the regularity-inducing product into Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser.

“This advertisement goes against all of the National Park Service’s efforts to encourage people not to put foreign objects into the thermal features,” NPS sniffed at the time.

In a statement, Range Rover tells the Loop that viewers needn’t take what they see so literally. “As is typical in much of advertising, there are scenes that are realistic but not meant to be taken literally, including both racing up the mountain, as well as driving off road back down, though the vehicle is more than capable of both.”

Handy-Dandy Forest Service Links

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FShomepage

The government slimdown has shuttered the Forest Service’s homepage, which is now missing most national program links. But the Forest Service is still “paying” server costs for the missing information because the web pages themselves have not been removed, only the links to them.

Here, then, are active links to some of the content I use regularly:

FS Employee Email and Phone Number Directory

Forest Service Manuals and Handbooks

Timber Cut and Sold Reports

Office Phone Directory

BTW, the Department of Interior is more convincingly shutdown. All DOI links are now pointed to DOI’s shutdown page. Which is silly, as everyone knows the data, which require no maintenance, are still on DOI’s servers.

Jewell may allow some national parks to reopen with state, private funds

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This passage stands out:

Jewell’s overture comes as a key House Republican today pledged to hold hearings to discuss how to facilitate more state and local authority over national parks. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), the chairman of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation, said that the Obama administration has shuttered parks in an “overly political manner” and that states and localities could manage them better.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Jewell may allow some national parks to reopen with state, private funds

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter, Greenwire

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is considering allowing states and private donors to finance the reopening of some national parks, in a switch from the agency’s earlier stance on such proposals that have come in during the government shutdown.

Governors in Arizona, Utah and South Dakota this month have offered state funds to reopen national parks including Zion, Arches, Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore, where government-shutdown-caused closures have harmed gateway communities.

“Responding to the economic impacts that the park closures are having on many communities and local businesses, Secretary Jewell will consider agreements with governors who indicate an interest and ability to fully fund National Park Service personnel to re-open national parks in their states,” Interior spokesman Blake Androff said in a statement. “The Interior Department will begin conversations about how to proceed as expeditiously as current limited resources allow.”

It’s likely to come as a relief to gateway communities that thrive on the business visitors to the nation’s 401 park units bring to hotels, restaurants, outfitters and gas stations.

Jewell’s overture comes as a key House Republican today pledged to hold hearings to discuss how to facilitate more state and local authority over national parks. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), the chairman of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation, said that the Obama administration has shuttered parks in an “overly political manner” and that states and localities could manage them better.

The Obama administration has said it is unwilling to cede control over federal lands to states, and conservationists have summarily rejected the idea.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) this week said the government shutdown was costing Utah — home to Zion, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef and Canyonlands national parks, among other units — about $100 million.

“It is within the power and authority of the executive branch to allow the national parks and monuments to be reopened,” Herbert said in a Tuesday letter to President Obama. “We have a solution in place. We just need, literally, the keys to the gates. I cannot overstate that time is of the essence.”

A spokeswoman said Herbert spoke with Jewell by phone this afternoon.

“We’ve had a breakthrough and are working out details now,” said Ally Isom, Herbert’s deputy chief of staff.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) late last week sent a similar letter, arguing that Interior allowed the Grand Canyon to be reopened during the government shutdown in 1995 using state and private donations and has accepted similar overtures from private groups to reopen visitors centers closed as a result of the federal sequester cuts.

A spokesman for Brewer did not say whether the governor had requested funding from the state Legislature, and if so, how much.

This week, a food bank is delivering food boxes to thousands of Grand Canyon employees who are stranded without work or pay during the government shutdown (Greenwire, Oct. 9).

South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) said last week that he is willing to raise private funds to light Mount Rushmore and use state personnel to provide security.

John Garder, a budget expert with the National Parks Conservation Association, said legal agreements need to be in place before the Park Service can accept nonfederal funds or resources to operate a park. He said it took lengthy talks in 1995 to reopen only a small portion of the Grand Canyon.

“The Park Service has diverse legal requirements and arrangements unseen by the public that can impact why certain facilities are closed while others are not,” he wrote earlier this week on the group’s website. “We know the Park Service is receiving many requests related to the shutdown, but a key challenge is that they are trying to do so with only a tiny fraction of their normal staff.”

Jewell’s consideration of nonfederal funding sources is an apparent break from the Park Service’s initial response to states.

NPS spokesman Michael Litterst on Tuesday cited possible “legal constraints” involved in operating parks during the shutdown and said “it would not be appropriate or feasible to open some parks or some parts of parks while other parts of the National Park System remain closed to the public.”

The Park Service is under intense pressure from Republicans to open parks they argue require little day-to-day maintenance or supervision. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus in a televised media appearance last week offered to pay security expenses to maintain operation of Washington, D.C.’s National World War II Memorial, a site that has become a symbol of the partisan rancor surrounding the closure of parks.

Reporter Elana Schor contributed.

Hickenlooper Asks Feds if State Can Reopen Federal Highway

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This reminded me that the Park Service can charge for you to access a federal highway, Trail Ridge Road. So when the Park closes you can’t drive the road.

Had to call CDOT, and found this out. It’s always been interesting to me that the Park Service can charge for people to “simply drive the road.” Of course, it’s different legislation, but still seems odd. IMHO.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper is vowing to do everything he can to save Estes Park from a second economic hit, even if that means staffing part of Rocky Mountain National Park with state employees.

First it was the devastating floods that hit Estes Park and the surrounding roads, but now it’s the government shutdown that threatens to sink some small businesses for good.

Trail Ridge Road through the RNMP is one of the more popular routes to Estes Park. Since the park is closed, Trail Ridge is closed, cutting Estes Park off from the Front Range and tourists.

Wednesday afternoon. Sen. Michael Bennet sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking that Trail Ridge road through the RMNP be reopened.

“Estes Park is in the midst of a massive recovery and rebuilding effort following the historic flooding that Colorado experienced early last month,” Bennet wrote. “Reopening Trail Ridge Road, if only for a few weeks, would help that effort.”

and also from Hickenlooper..

“I have to talk to the department of transportation and I have to talk to the department of public safety, but I know those guys, they work for me, so they kind of have to say yes and they will,” Hickenlooper said. “We don’t have to open the whole park up. We just have to have Trail Ridge Road open.”

Take a Breath, See the Sights and Enjoy the Scenery

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With all the controversial crossfires going on, here, lately, and the angst that goes along with it, we need to be reminded that most of us want the same outcomes and benefits for our forests and public lands.

Let us take a small break here, and smell the ….. errr…. deer poop.

P9090806-web

My last trip to Yosemite, before the Rim Fire started, was to Tuolumne Meadows, a high elevation “Mecca” for enlightened Yosemite lovers. I’ve seen big bucks here before but I didn’t think there was such a big herd of these “muleys”, who migrate over the top of the Sierra Crest from the Mono Lake area. I had seen and “shot” about 20 nice bucks before I ran into this group. For the whole day, I saw almost 40 bucks, and some of them were rather tame. In all my years of working in the woods, in many different National Forests, in many different states, I’ve never seen such a rack on a buck. I’m not a hunter so, is a buck like this very common? I’m sure that “trophy hunters” wouldn’t hesitate to shoot this guy but, I prefer to “shoot” him, this way.

Park Service cites trespassers at Grand Canyon, Yellowstone

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What do you think? Is this a political stunt, or a reasonable reaction by the Park Service?

National Forests are open to visitors, though offices are closed and most employees are furloughed. I cut firewood (with a valid permit) on the Mt. Hood NF last weekend and saw lots of folks on bikes or in cars, and lots of cars parked at trailheads. Also saw two USFS law enforcement folks. So in National Forests are open to hikers, woodcutters, and others, why not National Parks?

Steve

From Greenwire:

Park Service cites dozens of trespassers at Grand Canyon, Yellowstone

The National Park Service issued citations to nearly two dozen people entering Grand Canyon National Park amid the government shutdown.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office will handle all citations, which Grand Canyon Chief Ranger Bill Wright said were given to some people spotted at the South Rim on trails, attempting rim-to-rim hikes or attempting to sneak into the park via dirt roads.

Law enforcement is patrolling the park, but most other park workers are furloughed, Wright said (AP/New York Times, Oct. 9).

Yellowstone and Grand Teton national park officials also have cited visitors attempting to sneak in.

“We have issued nine citations,” Grand Teton spokeswoman Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles said earlier this week.

Yellowstone National Park spokesman Al Nash said there have not been “widespread” issues as a result of the closures. “I know a few citations have been written,” Nash said. “We do have a fairly robust boundary patrol in conjunction with hunting season on land surrounding the park.”

In all, about 510 National Park Service workers in both parks were furloughed (AP/Billings Gazette, Oct. 8). — WW

TMDL — Too Many Damn Lawyers?

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water

The Clean Water Act requires states (or EPA if a state refuses to play ball) to set water quality standards for each stream sufficient to protect the purposes, e.g., fish, drinking, and swimming, for which the water is used. The Act also bans dumping pollutants from a pipe into a stream without a permit. Permits set limits on the amount of each pollutant that can be dumped. The pollution allowance must ensure that the water quality standards are met throughout the stream.

But, many pollutants, like turbidity, come from other sources than pipes, such as run-off from farms and forests. Congress has been unable to agree upon a regulatory tactic for dealing comprehensively with these so-called non-point pollution sources. Instead, the Clean Water Act requires states to do planning.

The “Total Maximum Daily Load” planning process has three steps. First, states identify streams where water quality standards are not being met. Second, for these “water quality limited” streams, the state calculates a ceiling on the amount of each problem pollutant that can enter the stream. Third, the state gives each source, both point and non-point, a pollution allocation, the sum of which must be less than the ceiling. Fourth, the state writes up a “TMDL report” for EPA’s approval. The report must explain the activities the state will carry out to reasonably ensure that the TMDL allocations are not exceeded. These actions can include clamping down on point-source discharges, imposing “best management practices” on non-point source activities, land use restrictions, or the writing of more plans.

The TMDL planning process is rife with fascinating politics and backroom dealings. Point-source polluters, such as factories and sewage treatment plants, know that their pollution is measured and the limits enforceable in federal court by the state (or private citizens if the state or EPA fails to do so). But most non-point source polluters face no such regulatory hammers because most states have few, if any, mechanisms to enforce best management practices, and EPA has none.

This imbalance in regulatory enforcement means that point-source polluters take the hindmost. For example, if a stream is already at its maximum load for temperature, it will be almost impossible for a new power plant, such as a biomass boiler, to be built if it discharges hot water to the stream. If a stream is at its limit for E. coli bacteria, it will be very tough for an animal feed lot to renew its permit to discharge manure-laden waste water, which will force the feedlot to find other disposal strategies such as spraying its cow crap on cropland (note that the non-point source run-off from cropland is not as tightly regulated and not subject to Clean Water Act citizen suits).

The TMDL process goes on unnoticed by the general public and is of interest to only a handful of citizen-based organizations. But the process is tightly scrutinized by point-source polluters who lobby for better BMPs so that more pollution load can be allocated to new factories, while non-point polluters (primarily farmers, ranchers and timberland owners) seek to keep BMPs lax.

Dr. Michael Soule: The “New Conservation”

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Conservation Biology, October 2013
Volume 27, No. 5, 895-897
(c) 2013 Society for Conservation Biology
DOI: 10.1111/cobi.12147

Editorial: The “New Conservation”
By Dr. Michael Soule

A powerful but chimeric movement is rapidly gaining recognition and supporters. Christened the “new conservation,” it promotes economic development, poverty alleviation, and corporate partnerships as surrogates or substitutes for endangered species listings, protected areas, and other mainstream conservation tools. Its proponents claim that helping economically disadvantaged people to achieve a higher standard of living will kindle their sympathy and affection for nature. Because its goal is to supplant the biological diversity-based model of traditional conservation with something entirely different, namely an economic growth-based or humanitarian movement, it does not deserve to be labeled conservation.

Institutional allies and supporters of the new conservation include the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Long Now Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, and the social-justice organization The Breakthrough Institute (Nordaus & Shellenberger 2011). The latter write – in the style of the Enlightenment – that, “We must open our eyes to the joy and excitement experienced by the newly prosperous and increasingly free [persons]. We must create a world where every human can not only realize her material needs, but also her higher needs.”

The manifesto of the new conservation movement is “Conservation in the Anthropocene: Beyond Solitude and Fragility” (Lalasz et al. 2011; see also Kareiva 2012). In the latter document, the authors assert that the mission of conservation ought to be primarily humanitarian, not nature (or biological diversity) protection: “Instead of pursuing the protection of biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake, a new conservation should seek to enhance those natural systems that benefit the widest number of people, especially the poor” ). In light of its humanitarian agenda and in conformity with Foreman’s (2012) distinction between environmentalism (a movement that historically aims to improve human well-being, mostly by reducing air and water pollution and ensuring food safety) and conservation, both the terms new and conservation are inappropriate.

Proponents declare that their new conservation will measure its achievement in large part by its relevance to people, including city dwellers. Underlying this radically humanitarian vision is the belief that nature protection for its own sake is a dysfunctional, antihuman anachronism. To emphasize its radical departure from conservation, the characters of older conservation icons, such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Edward Abbey, are de-famed as hypocrites and misanthropes and contemporary conservation leaders and writers are ignored entirely (Lalasz et al. 2011).

The new conservationists assume biological diversity conservation is out of touch with the economic realities of ordinary people, even though this is manifestly false. Since its inception, the Society for Conservation Biology has included scores of progressive social scientists among its editors and authors (see also letters in BioScience, April 2012, volume 63, number 4: 242-243). The new conservationists also assert that national parks and protected areas serve only the elite, but a poll conducted by the nonpartisan National Parks Conservation Association and the National Park Hospitality Association estimates that 95% of voters in America want continued government support for parks (National Parks Conservation Association 2012). Furthermore, Lalasz et al. (2011) argue that it should be a goal of conservation to spur economic growth in habitat-eradicating sectors, such as forestry, fossil-fuel exploration and extraction, and agriculture.

The key assertion of the new conservation is that affection for nature will grow in step with income growth. The problem is that evidence for this theory is lacking. In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction, in part because increasing incomes affect growth in per capita ecological footprint (Soule 1995; Oates 1999).

Other nettlesome issues are ignored, including which kinds of species will persist and which will not if the new economic-growth agenda replaces long-term protection in secure protected areas?

Related questions include:

Would the creation of designated wilderness areas be terminated? Would the funds to support the new conservation projects be skimmed from the dwindling conservation budgets of nongovernmental and government agencies? Is conservation destined to become a zero-sum game, pitting the lifestyles and prosperity of human beings against the millions of other life forms? Is it ethical to convert the shrinking remnants of wild nature into farms and gardens beautified with non-native species, following the prescription of writer Marris (2011)? Will these garden-like reserves designed to benefit human communities admit inconvenient, bellicose beasts such as lions, elephants, bears, jaguars, wolves, crocodiles, and sharks-the keystone species that maintain much of the wild’s biological diversity (Terborgh & Estes 2010; Estes et al. 2011)?

The new conservationists assume the benefits of economic development will trickle down and protect biological diversity. Even if that assumption were borne out, I doubt that children growing up in such a garden world will be attuned to nature or that the hoped-for leap in humanity’s love for the wild will occur once per capita consumption reaches a particular threshold.

Most shocking is the dismissal by the new conservationists of current ecological knowledge. The best current research is solidly supportive of the connection between species diversity and the stability of ecosystems. It has firmly established that species richness and genetic diversity enhance many ecological qualities, including productivity and stability of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, resistance to invasion by weedy species, and agricultural productivity; furthermore, research shows that greater species and genetic diversity reduces transmission rates of disease among species (Tilman 2012).

In contrast, implementation of the new conservation would inevitably exclude the keystone species whose behaviors stabilize and regulate ecological processes and enhance ecological resistance to disturbance, including climate change (Terborgh & Estes 2010). For these reasons and others, conservationists and citizens alike ought to be alarmed by a scheme that replaces wild places and national parks with domesticated landscapes containing only nonthreatening, convenient plants and animals.

The globalization of intensive economic activity has ac- celerated the frenzied rush for energy and raw materials and is devouring the last remnants of the wild, largely to serve the expanding, affluent, consumer classes in industrialized and developing nations. At current rates of deforestation, dam construction, extraction of fossil fuels, land clearing, water withdrawal, and anthropogenic climate change, it is expected that the 2 major refugia for biological diversity on the globe–the wet, tropical forests of the Amazon, and Congo Basin– will be gone by the end of this century (Mackey et al. 2013).

Is the sacrifice of so much natural productivity, beauty, and diversity prudent, even if some human communities and companies might be enriched? No. The worth of nature is beyond question and our obligation to minimize its gratuitous degradation is no less.

There is no evidence for the proposition that people are kinder to nature when they are more affluent, if only because their ecological footprints increase roughly in proportion to their consumption. We also know that the richer nations may protect local forests and other natural systems, but they do so at the expense of those ecosystems elsewhere in less affluent places. A third thing we know is that anthropogenic climate change is probably the greatest threat to civilization (Gleick et al. 2010).

I must conclude that the new conservation, if implemented, would hasten ecological collapse globally, eradicating thousands of kinds of plants and animals and causing inestimable harm to humankind in the long run.

Finally, I believe that those who donate to conservation organizations do so in full confidence that their gifts will benefit wild creatures and their habitats. The central issue is whether monies donated to the Nature Conservancy and other conservation nonprofit organizations should be spent for nature protection or should be diverted to humanitarian, economic-development projects such as those proffered by the new conservation on the dubious theory that such expenditures may indirectly benefit biological diversity in the long run.

Traditional conservationists do not demand that humanitarians stop helping the poor and underprivileged, but the humanitarian-driven new conservationists demand that nature not be protected for its own sake but that it be protected only if it materially benefits human beings.

A more literary version of this essay that highlights the intrinsic value of biological diversity can be accessed at www.michaelsoule.com.

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