Chapter 13Preserving and Restoring Nature

Elizabeth Cutolo

Parks and Nature Preserves

Since ancient times, sacred groves have been set aside for religious purposes and hunting preserves or pleasuring grounds for royalty

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant established the first national park, Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone is 800,000 ha and was made to protect the natural wonders of geysers, hot springs, and canyons. It also encompasses and preserves wild life.

As people began to realize that wild nature and places of scenic beauty were disappearing, more parks were created

Parks in U.S. and Canada

The United States and Canada have the greatest amount of protected areas, followed by Australia, Greenland, and Saudi Arabia

The U.S. national park system has grown to more than 280,000 km2 in 388 parks, monuments, historic sites, and recreation centers

Why Are They Important?

National parks and monuments have many purposes:Provide sanctuaries for natureOffer space for recreation and solitudeRecreation and entertainment for visitorsHave valuable natural resources that can be

extracted

Parks and Monuments in Trouble Park budgets have fallen by 25 percent. Number of park visitors has risen by 1/3 Air pollution and acid rain originating from coal-fired

power plants threaten the parks Inholdings- (land already in private ownership

when a park is established) are a threat to the environment because land owners work to develop hotels, mines, and oil and gas wells deep in parks

Traffic congestion in parks Extractive industries (logging, mining, gas drilling)

threaten parks and nature preserves

Protecting the Wildlife Many argue about the wildlife inside of the parks People want parks to be a safe haven for wildlife Ecologists want naturally balanced populations of

predators, but residents surrounding the parks often dislike the idea of the grizzlies and wolves in the neighborhood

Public lands only occupy as portion of the biogeographical area (regional ecosystem) within which parks occur. Wildlife will range past the park boundaries

Wilderness is American Idea

The U.S. has established a system of 264 wilderness areas. Wilderness- an area of developed land affected primarily by

the forces of nature, where man is a visitor who does not remain

Environmentalists want more wilderness. Loggers, miners, and ranchers want less wilderness Wilderness provides:

-a refuge for endangered wildlife-an opportunity for solitude and primitive recreation-a baseline for ecological research-an area where we have chosen simply to leave things in their natural state

Wildlife Refuges

Wildlife refuge- a protected area set aside to preserve the habitats of some types of wild animals

In 1901 Teddy Roosevelt established 51 national wildlife refuges

Roosevelt and Harold Ickes took advantage of low prices during the Depression to add additional areas

Over the years refuges have been used wrongly. (Ex: Oil drilling, cattle grazing, snowmobiling, motorboating, off-road vehicle use, timber harvesting, hay cutting, trapping, and camping)

Global Parks The idea of setting aside nature preserves has spread

rapidly over the past 50 years, as people become aware of the growing threats to wildlife and ecological systems

More than 100,000 protected areas now encompass some 18.8 million km2 of biological habitat

In 1992, the World Parks Congress called for preservation of 10 percent of every major biome by 2000

World conservation strategy- The IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) has developed: 1) to maintain essential ecological processes and life-support

systems on which human survival and development depend 2) to preserve genetic diversity essential for breeding programs to

improve cultivated plants and domesticated animals 3) to ensure that any utilization of wild species and ecosystems is

sustainable

Differences in Biome Protection

Some biomes have a high level of protection. Montane grasslands and shrublands, temperate

conifer forests have as much as 26% of their total area in some sort of sheltered status

Temperate grasslands of North America’s Great Plains and Mediterranean climate areas have relatively little protected area

(Biomes that have been most highly converted to human uses tend to have smaller percentages of their land area set aside for nature sanctuaries than the biomes that are less valuable to humans)

Should People Even BEBE in Parks?

International conservation organizations have been criticized for being “insensitive” to the rights of indigenous and traditional people who live in areas being designated as national parks

Some conservation groups have been accused of condoning and trying to force removal of local residents from parks

We want parks and nature reserves to be “virgin” wilderness (as if humans never existed)

Native people argue that nearly every place on the planet has been home to someone

Marine Ecosystem Protection Ocean fish stocks are becoming increasingly

depleted globally Biologists want protected areas where marine

organisms are sheltered from destructive harvest methods

Coral reefs are among the most threatened marine ecosystems in the world

90% of all reefs face threats from sea temperature change, destructive fishing methods, coral mining, sediment runoff…ect

Aquatic reserves make up 10% of all the world’s protected areas, but 70% of the earth’s surface is water

Conservation and Economic Development Many of the most seriously threatened species and ecosystems are

in developing countries People are not provided with land, jobs, and food, so citizens turn to

legally protected lands, plants, and animals for their needs In 1986, UNESCO initiated its Man and Biosphere (MAB) program

that encourages division of protected areas into zones with different purposes Critical ecosystem functions and endangered wildlife are protected in a

central core region where limited scientific study is the only human access allowed

Ecotourism and research facilities are located in a relatively pristine buffer zone around the core \

Sustainable resource harvesting and permanent habitation are allowed in multiple-use peripheral regions.

Preserving Functional Ecosystems and Landscapes Effective conservation of functioning ecosystems

requires understanding the environment at landscape scale

Landscape ecology- the study of how ecological processes shape these diverse environments, and how mosaic landscapes, shape ecosystems processes

Human actions are important elements of landscape processes

Patchiness of Landscapes

Forests are not made up a continuous, unchanging expanse of trees of shifting patches of different tree types

Landscape heterogeneity can exist across a wide range of scale

Patches of “island” of habitat becomes reduced and fragmented as vegetation gaps, or other human disturbances, expand until only small fragments remain

Size and Design of Parks

Ideally, all parks should be large enough to: Support viable populations of endangered species Keep ecosystems intact Isolate critical core areas from damaging external

forces Given human needs and pressures, big

preserves aren’t always possible With small preserves, establishing corridors of

natural habitat allows movement of species from one area to another can help

Restoration Ecology

Restoration Ecology- a new discipline that seeks to repair or reconstruct ecosystems damaged by humans or natural forces

Conference called Restoring the Earth was held in Berkeley, California, drew a crowd of more than 800 scientists, policymakers, and activists

There is now a society for restoration ecology

Degrees of Restoration Restoration- to bring something back to a former condition Rehabilitation- refers to attempt to restructure or function

in an ecological system without necessarily achieving complete restoration to its original condition

Remediation- process of cleaning chemical contaminants from a polluted area by physical or biological methods as a first step toward protecting human and ecosystem health

Reclamation- typically is used to describe chemical or physical manipulations carried out in severely degraded sites, such as open-pit mines or large-scale construction

Re-creation- attempts to construct a new biological community on a site so severely disturbed that there is virtually nothing left to restore

Restoration Tools and Strategies

Sometimes the key to rebuilding a community is to remove alien intruders

Successional restoration depends on natural succession to determine outcome. (ex: seeds spread out similar to the natural process of wind dispersal)

Sometimes all that needs to be done to reestablish a healthy ecosystem is simply walk away and let organisms decolonize an area

Goals of Restoration

Humans take charge of ecosystems, but usually without an exact goal.

Sometimes humans alter an area but there are more than one states that they are able to restore it to

Scientists often wonder: -If change is natural and inevitable, who is to say that present conditions- whatever they are or however the may have come about – are bad?- How should be distinguish between desirable and undesirable changes?

Preserving Wetlands

In 1972, the Clean Water Act began protecting wetlands by requiring discharge permits for discharging waste into surface waters

Because of ecological and economic benefits of wetlands are gaining recognition, wetland mitigation (creating wetlands to restore those lost to development) is now one of the most active areas of restoration ecology

Some wetland ecologists argue that we can never create a functional wetland. They feel wetland ecosystems are too complex to be fabricated effectively

Preserving Floodplains

Floodplains are also responsible for holding floodwaters

Floodplains- low-lying land along river banks and lakes subjected to periodic inundation

Floodplains are often seasonally flooded forests, rich breeding grounds for fish and water birds

They have rich soils, built up from centuries of silty flood deposits

They are flat and make prime farmland, and are convenient for building houses and cities

Ecosystem Management

Ecosystem Management- a relatively new discipline in environmental science that attempts to integrate ecological, economic, and social goals in a unified, systems approach

Principles and Goals of Ecosystem Management

1. Manage at multiple scales- a focus on any one level of the biodiversity hierarchy is insufficient. Ecosystem managers must see interconnections between all levels

2. Use ecological boundaries- rather than divide administrative units by political boundaries, the watersheds, ecosystems, or other natural units should be managed in an integrated fashion

3. Monitor the ecosystem- to function correctly, ecosystem management requires ongoing research and data collection so that successes or failures may be recognized and evaluated

4. Use adaptive management- As scientific knowledge is gained, it should be towards the overall management

5. Allow organizational change- implementing ecosystem management requires changes in agency structure and ways of doing business

6. Consider humans in nature- people cannot be separated from nature. Humans inescapably affect ecological patterns and processes and are in turn affected by them

7. Identify values- regardless of the role of scientific knowledge, human values play a dominant role in ecosystem management goals

THE END!