Two items in the news underscore the importance of connectivity for preserving wildlife as the climate changes. Both are from western North America, but have implications for the East.
A coalition of conservation organizations has released a report, A New Climate for Conservation, asking the government of British Columbia to develop a joint strategy for nature conservation and climate change leading to biodiversity protection for half the province’s land base. The minimum of 50% is “necessary to give our plants and animals a fighting chance to adapt, while also keeping and drawing more carbon out of the atmosphere so that over time we can slow and reduce climate change,” the report’s author Dr. Jim Pojar writes.
In discussing management of the forest matrix, Pojar states that establishing protected areas is not sufficient; we have to make sure that the matrix in which these areas are located is hospitable to species on the move, a point also made by the Wildlands Network and the Ecological Society of America. In the forest matrix, primary forest must be preserved, protected areas buffered, and the reduction of natural forests to plantations reduced.
The report was commissioned by BC Spaces for Nature, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, David Suzuki Foundation, ForestEthics, Land Trust Alliance of British Columbia, West Coast Environmental Law, and Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. Signers of a letter to B.C. Premier Gorden Campbell, which accompanied the report, include Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Michael Soulé , and Bill McKibben.
Farther south, Paul R. Vahldiek, Jr., CEO of The High Lonesome Ranch, comprising approximately 300 square miles of deeded private and permitted Bureau of Land Management Lands, in Colorado has strong evidence that gray wolves are inhabiting the ranch. He is awaiting DNA tests as the final evidence. The wolves would have naturally migrated from Wyoming. Vahldiek is on the board of the Wildlands Network and is committed to conserving the ranch as a linkage within the Network’s “Western Wildway.” Dr. Michael Soulé, Network president, states that “The return of wolves to Colorado would be proof that safe landscape connections are key to maintaining critical, keystone species in the West.”
–Mary Byrd Davis
Sources:
Jim Pojar,, A New Climate for Conservation (Forest Ethics et. al, 2010). Available online at http://forestethics.org/downloads/NewClimate_report_FE.pdf
Michelle Nihuis, “Prodigal Dogs: Have Gray Wolves Found a Home in Colorado?, High Country News, February 15, 2010. Available online at http://www.hcn.org/issues/42.3/prodigal-dogs
The Wildlands Network. “Colorado Ranch Owner Anticipates Wolf’s Return” [News Release], February 8, 2010.
Copyright © 2010 by EcoPerspectives
Tags: British Columbia, climate change, connectivity, Ecological Society of America, Forest Ethics, High Lonesome Ranch, Jim Pojar, Paul R. Vahldiek, Wildlands Network, wolves
