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Rethinking Habitat Conservation for Endangered Wildlife
MICHAEL BEAN, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE
If there is any self-evident proposition in wildlife conservation, it is that without habitat, conservation efforts are futile. Thus, it is no surprise that the loss or degradation of habitat is the single most important cause of wildlife endangerment.
To say that habitat is essential, however, is not to say that all areas of similar habitat are of equal importance. Some may be too small, and too isolated by changes in the surrounding matrix of lands, to support viable populations of rare wildlife associated with that habitat type. The value of other apparently undegraded areas may be negated by the presence of introduced species or diseases. Thus, for example, apparently suitable forest habitats in lower elevations of Hawaii are empty of native forest birds, because of the presence of introduced mosquitoes carrying introduced, and deadly, avian malaria.
Habitats are different in other important ways. Some can be readily restored, such as early successional oak-shinnery habitats in which endangered black-capped vireos thrive in Texas. Some require regular active management to sustain the characteristics that support rare species, like the use of frequent prescribed fire to control hardwood encroachment in the longleaf pine-wiregrass habitats where endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers are most abundant. Others require little or no active management to sustain their value and can be restored - if at all - only over very long time scales. The old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest are an example of the latter.
These differing characteristics of the various habitats upon which endangered wildlife depend suggest the need for possibly different strategies for securing the conservation values of these habitats over time. For surviving remnants of once widespread, but difficult to restore, habitats, acquisition or stringent regulation (or both) may be the only viable conservation strategies, particularly if such habitats are under strong development pressure. For those habitat types that, though scarce today, can be relatively easily restored, other conservation options may be available.
In particular, incentive strategies that encourage restoration of such habitats, and the sorts of regular management practices that sustain both existing and restored habitat areas, may offer less expensive and less contentious ways to achieve conservation objectives than either acquisition or regulation. Because restoration and active management activities are often expensive, and may not generate commensurate economic return to the landowners undertaking them, economic incentives to elicit desired management will generally be needed. Not to be overlooked, however, are regulatory incentives to ensure that landowners are not deterred from undertaking needed actions by fear of triggering unwanted regulatory consequences.
In the context of today's debate about the Endangered Species Act, and in particular about the role of "critical habitat" under that law, it may be useful to consider how the foregoing observations relate to that concept. The designation of critical habitat has had the useful and very much needed effect of identifying those particular areas that are of special value for conserving endangered wildlife. But critical habitat has never been a tool for setting acquisition priorities. Indeed, for many species, areas that have been designated as critical habitat are far more extensive than even the most ambitious conservation land acquisition efforts heretofore undertaken could accommodate. Nor has critical habitat significantly influenced land exchange policies, facilitating the exchange of non-critical public land for critical habitat not currently in public ownership.
What then of regulation? Designation of critical habitat clearly has important regulatory consequences, though they are unusual in at least two respects. First, those regulatory consequences only apply to federal agencies; for non-federal landowners who need neither federal funding nor federal permits for particular uses of their land, its designation as critical habitat is of no practical consequence. Second, the regulatory consequences of critical habitat designation overlap, to a very large degree, other regulatory constraints limiting what federal agencies may lawfully do under the Endangered Species Act. Thus, though the regulatory aspects of critical habitat are important, they are less significant than is often understood.
What then of incentives? Nothing in the Endangered Species Act, or elsewhere, offers any incentives for the management, enhancement, or preservation of areas designated as critical habitat. None of the many landowner conservation incentive programs offers either priority or preference for lands designated as critical habitat, or any sort of added bonus when such lands are enrolled in incentive programs. Yet, as we seen above, without active management, many areas that are critically important to rare wildlife today may cease to be in the future In retrospect, the failure to tie incentive programs to critical habitat designations can only be viewed as a missed opportunity to craft a thoughtful and comprehensive approach to conserving - and managing - those areas of most importance to imperiled wildlife.
Ultimately, the task of conserving rare wildlife will require that conservationists use a toolbox with as many different tools in it as possible. Acquisition, regulation, and incentive-based strategies should not be viewed as alternative ways of achieving habitat conservation goals. They are each indispensable components of almost any habitat conservation effort that aims to recover species now in danger of extinction.
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