Picture Credit: Wikimedia Commons. The Xerces is a recently extinct butterfly.
Picture Credit: Wikimedia Commons. The Xerces is a recently extinct butterfly.
Continued
Five Years Left to Meet Global Nature Protection Goals: How We Can Make It Happen
Natural forest ecosystems contain over 80% of the world's terrestrial biodiversity (including animals, plants, and insects), and store the most carbon on land. Therefore, forests must be prioritized within the 30% of protected lands and obtain legal and permanent protections from extractive uses such as logging and mining, and from roadbuilding and off-road motorized vehicles. Permanent protection of forests means that they must be left to “proforestation” which allows existing forests to grow to their full ecological potential, to restore their natural dynamics without human interference or management, to sequester and store the maximum possible carbon, and to restore habitat and food for biodiversity.
The additional 18% of lands and waters needed to meet the 30x30 target could be permanently protected largely through expansion of the National Park System (NPS), National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS), and National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS), in addition to state and local public land reserves. Many NWRS and relevant state and local lands also require stronger protection from intensive management that creates artificial habitats for game species that are common and in no danger. Connecting existing, strictly protected lands by expanding them, would intrinsically provide essential wildlife corridors and reduce the nature equity gap for low- and middle -income communities.
The expansion of strictly protected lands must happen rapidly if we are to reach the 30x30 target. This can largely be accomplished by upgrading protections for lands now classified as GAP 3 to GAP 1 and GAP 2 levels or such protection of private lands through public acquisition. The USGS divides lands into four different levels of protection (“Gap Analysis Project” or “GAP” categories). GAP 1 and GAP 2 lands are the only categories consistent with protected lands according to the GBF definition. GAP 3 lands have some protection, but they allow industrial extractive activities such as logging, mining, and off-road motorized vehicle traffic - all of which are detrimental to nature recovery and biodiversity restoration. Unfortunately, many states and agencies have included GAP 3 lands and waters in their protected area calculations. Referring to these lands as “conserved” leads the public to believe that we are on close to reaching the 30x30 goal, when this is not the case.
A big step in the right direction would be the proposed creation of 100 new or expanded national parks – this would signify a solution to the degradation of biodiversity and constitute an admirable legacy for any policy makers who accomplish this. About 90% of the proposed parks could be established on lands which are already in public ownership but now have weaker GAP 3 protection. These parks would triple the existing National Park System and increase 30x30 protection from about 12% now to more than 20%. Further protection, such as designating federal GAP 3 lands as national monuments or wilderness, creating new NWRS units from private lands, or strengthening protection of key state lands, could bring the amount of strictly protected U.S. lands to the needed 30%.
Time is running out to maintain wild nature as we know it and reverse the climate and biodiversity crises. Expanding the protection of natural lands and ecosystems is the only proven way to increase carbon sequestration and storage, provide needed wildlife corridors, and provide access to nature – with all the health benefits that provides - for all Americans. This process must be transparent and publicly trackable. We need urgent action now.
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DREISS 2022 GAP Codes explained:
GAP1-permanent protection from conversion and management plan to maintain the natural state.
GAP 2 - permanent protection from conversion and management plan to maintain a primarily natural state, management plan may degrade quality of natural communities (i.e. suppress disturbances.)
GAP 3 - Permanent protections in majority but subject to extractive uses (forestry, mining, and vehicle traffic including off-road vehicles.)
GAP 4 - Lacking conservation mandates - allows conversion and management is largely unknown.
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Further readings:
Birdsey, et al. 2023. "Middle-aged forests in the Eastern U.S. have significant climate mitigation potential."
Dreiss L and Malcom J (2022) Identifying key federal, state, and private lands strategies for achieving 30 × 30 in the United States. Conservation Letters 15: e12849.
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/conl.12849
Kellett et al., 2023. “Forest-clearing for Early-Successional Habitats: Questionable Benefits, Significant Costs.”
Moomaw et al., 2019: “Intact Forests in the United States: Proforestation Mitigates Climate Change and Serves the Greatest Good.”
Nunery and Keeton, 2010: “Forest carbon storage in the northeastern United States: Net effects of harvesting frequency, post-harvest retention, and wood products”