Subject: BIOD: 12% in Protection Not Enough
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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
New Report Indicates 12% for Protected Areas Not Enough
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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
http://forests.org/
6/20/97
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
Many countries have a 10-12% goal for land preservation of native
ecosystems. A report commissioned by Greenpeace indicates what many
Conservation Biologists and others have been aware of for some time,
that up to half of the world's biological heritage is threatened with
extinction unless current caps on protected areas are lifted. The
report states "The 12% target is a political construct that is not
borne out by good science." The implications of these findings are
presented for British Columbia, Canada. Much larger networks of
native ecosystems arrayed across landscapes, than previously thought,
are needed to maintain ecosystem functionality and native
biodiversity.
g.b.
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/* Written 12:53 AM Jun 17, 1997 by nobody@xs2.greenpeace.org in
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/* ---------- "Protected Areas Target Not Enough -" ---------- */
From: "Greenbase"
Subject: Protected Areas Target Not Enough - Mass Extinction Forseen
Groundbreaking Science Report Reveals 12% Protected Areas Target
will Lead to Mass Extinctions
Vancouver, B.C. June 16 1997. At 10:00 a.m. today PST at Robson Media
Center - (800 Robson Street, downtown Vancouver), world renouned
scientists, Drs M.E. Soule, and M. A. Sanjayan, released a report
assessing the biological implications protecting only 10 or 12 per
cent of their native ecosystems. The report, commissioned by
Greenpeace, and released on the verge of the Special Session on
Environment of the UN General Assembly (Earth Summit 2), highlights
that up to half of the world's biological heritage is threatened with
extinction unless current caps on protected areas are lifted. British
Columbia's endangered temperate rainforests were used as the case
study within this preliminary report.
"The 12 per cent target for land area protection is not sufficient to
maintain viable populations of species in British Columbia", said Dr.
M.A. Sanjayan.
"The 12% target is a political construct that is not borne out by good
science. Even more disturbing is the fact that over 60 per cent of
what has been protected in B.C. since 1992 has been rock and ice."
Leading conservation organisations in British Columbia responded by
urging the BC provincial government to remove the 12% limit on
protected area status. Morethan 40 NGOs noted that BC is home to the
largest undisturbed tract of ancient temperate rainforest in the
world, but 36 of the 76 unprotected intact valleys in BC's Great Bear
Rainforest are scheduled to be logged in the next five years.
"International organisations and governments that recommend national
targets for protection, of say, ten percent are implicitly justifying
an extinction of roughly fifty per cent, on average, of each nation's
biotic heritage,'said Dr Michael Soule, founder of the Society for
Conservation Biology. "We are left to wonder whether history will
judge the current guidelines as examples complicit with the major
environmental catastrophe in the last 60 million years."
Based on this report, Greenpeace is calling on world governments to:
1) Triple the existing area of protected forests by the year 2000,
towards a goal of ecologically-representative protected areas that are
large enough to maintain viable populations of associated species and
natural dynamics; 2) Restoration of underrepresented forest ecosystems
to meet the protected areas species conservation objectives and
ensuring adequate connectivity between protected areas; 3) Eliminating
the conversion of natural forests to semi-natural or monoculture
plantations; 4) Continuing the process of respecting and demarcating
all indigenous peoples' lands and implementing adequate extractive
reserves and non-resource extraction zones; 5) Participation of
indigenous peoples in conservation measures, based on the recognition
of their rights to manage and use their traditional forest arrears.
Specifically to British Columbia's endangered coastal temperate
rainforests, Greenpeace demands:
1) No logging in any of the remaining pristine rainforest valleys; 2)
No new roads in the temperate rainforest; 3) An immediate end to
clearcutting; 4) Deferral on 45% of each representative ecosystems in
B.C. until proper conservation needs assessments have been completed
and implemented. Additionally, Greenpeace calls for the Canadian
federal government to draft and implement an endangered species act
which applies to all of Canada's landbase and ensures the protection
of critical species habitat.
Contacts:
Greenpeace in Canada: Tzeporah Berman, Patrick Anderson and
Alison Turner (604) 253-7701 or (604) 220-7701.
Greenpeace International: Holger Roenitz: 31-20-523-6555
About the Authors:
Biologist Michael Soule' is the author more than 100 scientific
publications including several groundbreaking books on conservation
and conservation biology. He was a founder and first president of the
Society for Conservation Biology, was a co-author of the original
draft of the biodiversity convention , was one of the founders
and currently President of The Wildlands Project, is a Fellow of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has
consulted for many agencies and organizations, including UNEP, FAO,
UNESCO, WWF-US, NAS/NRC, and the now defunct Office of Technology
Assessment. He graduated from San Diego State University in 1959, then
received his advanced degrees from Stanford University, studying
closely with Paul R. Ehrlich. He is currently Research Professor
(emeritus) of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz. He also serves
on the science advisory boards of several organizations, including La
Sierra Foundation, The Defenders of Wildlife, and The Nature
Conservancy.
Biologist M.A. Sanjayan has authored four publications on the
relationship between genetic variation and species fitness in nature,
especially as species become isolated through habitat fragmentation.
He has consulted to the World Bank on a number of projects, including
the Global Environment Facilities grant portfolio and Integrated
Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs), as well as organizing
workshops to bridge the gap between indigenous peoples and the
conservation community. Dr. Muttlulingam received his BS and MS at the
University of Oregon and his doctorate under Michael Soule' at the
University of California, Santa Cruz.
BACKGROUND TO THE REPORT, MOVING BEYOND BRUNDTLAND - The Conservation
Value of British Columbia's 12 Percent Protected Area Strategy
PROBLEM STATEMENT
An estimated 50-90% of the world's plant and animal species depend on
forests, with the IUCN reporting that the percentage of "Red List"
species endangered globally by loss of forest and other natural
habitat is: 75% of mammals, 42% of birds, 53% of amphibians and 66% of
reptiles. This report was commissioned to identify concrete steps that
governments can take to slow or prevent this global catastrophe. It
focuses on the case study of British Columbia's rainforests, the
region with the highest number of old growth-dependent species in
North America - which is scheduled to have half of its intact
watersheds logged or roaded in the next five years. The Provincial
Government of B.C. has been adamant in capping province-wide
protection at 12%. Greenpeace sought an independent analysis of the
scientific basis of this cap and what the consequences might be for
B.C.'s rainforests and its associated species.
KEY FINDINGS OF MOVING BEYOND BRUNDTLAND
* A number of historic international meetings, most notably the 3rd
World Congress on National Parks - which led to the 1981 Bali Action
Plan - and the U.N. World Commission on Environment and Development -
which led to Our Common Future (the Brundtland Report), have set
targets towards global protected areas. These have generally been set
artificially low to avoid seeming "unrealistic". Across the board,
there was acknowledgment that creation of protected areas has been
driven as much or more by political considerations than well-reasoned,
scientifically-based ecosystem planning.
* It is unclear, however, how useful such fixed targets are in
promoting actual conservation. The question remains whether such
protection targets actually do more harm than good in maintaining the
integrity of the ecosystem and the viability of the component species
because they are too low and have commonly been mis-interpreted,
notably by British Columbia's provincial Government on its 12% limit
and by governments responding to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature's
call for an interim protected area target of 10% by the year 2000.
* A review of the literature of the field of conservation biology
estimates that protecting between 25 and 45% of the temperate regions
is likely necessary to fully conserve the planet's temperate
terrestrial biological diversity, although not all as national parks.
That proportion is higher in tropical areas and perhaps lower in the
boreal zones. This figure is based on an empirically established
principle referred to as the 'species-area relationship" from the
field of island biogeography.
* A corollary of the species-area relationship is that a 90% loss of
habitat will precipitate a 50% loss of species within the remnant of
natural habitat, assuming that the remnant itself is unfragmented. In
other words, reaching only the protected areas target set by a number
of the world's governments, while allowing widespread conversion in
the remaining areas, would represent the single greatest ecological
catastrophe of the past 60 million years.
* The best way of protecting species is through the comprehensive
protection of ecologically-representative core areas that are fully
off-limits to industrial resource extraction, connected by biological
corridors and large enough to maintain all associated species and
natural dynamics.
* In British Columbia, the 12% ceiling is a result of the current New
Democratic Party's initial acceptance of the interim target of WWF's
"Endangered Spaces" campaign, but eventual caving-in to timber, mining
and other resource extraction interests to set this as an immovable
cap. This ceiling is not the result of scientific gap analysis by B.C.
government agencies, and in fact preceded some of the baseline
scientific studies by those agencies that would have helped to
determine a more realistic protected areas strategy.
* Big mammals need big protected areas. In the United States, the goal
of the official recovery plan for grizzly bears is a population of 500
breeding individuals, which represents an actual population size of
about 2000 individual grizzlies, requiring a connected territory of
129,500 km2. This territorial estimate supports the call by groups
such as Greenpeace and the Canadian Rainforest Network who have called
for a moratorium on logging the intact watersheds of the "Great Bear
Rainforest" - the midcoast region of B.C. which supports one of the
healthiest populations of grizzly bears in the world.
* While gaining international attention for its recent park creation,
B.C. parks are generally too small. About 30% of the terrestrial
ecosections defined by the province of B.C. continue to have
essentially no representation, and half of the ecosections have less
than 6% of their areas designated for protection. Even more disturbing
is that as of 1996, 61.2% of the total new protected area designated
since November 1991 was classified as alpine or sub-alpine,
perpetuating the bias in favour of "rock and ice". This means that
only 2.8% remains to be designated in a manner that would compensate
for the imbalances of the past.
GREENPEACE's CALL TO ACTION
Greenpeace calls for the world's governments to stop endangering
forests and the diversity of life that depend on them through
comprehensive forest protection, restoration and connection, and
to ensure the rights of traditional forest-dependent cultures through
the following policies:
- tripling the total global area of ecologically representative
networks of protected forest areas by 2000, making progress towards a
goal of global protected areas that are large enough to adequately
maintain viable populations of associated species and natural
dynamics;
- restoration of under-represented forest ecosystems to meet the
protected area species conservation objectives and ensuring adequate
connectivity between protected areas;
- eliminating the conversion of natural forests to semi-natural or
monoculture plantations;
- continuing the process of respecting and demarcating all indigenous
peoples" lands and implementing adequate extractive reserves and
resource extraction-free zones;
- participation of indigenous peoples in conservation measures, based
on the recognition of their rights to manage and use their traditional
forest areas.
Specifically for British Columbia's endangered coastal temperate
rainforests, Greenpeace demands:
- no logging in any of the remaining pristine rainforest valleys;
- no new roads in the temperate rainforest;
- an immediate end to clearcutting;
- Deferral on 45% of each representative ecosystem in B.C. until
proper conservation needs assessments have been completed and
implemented. Additionally, Greenpeace calls for the Canadian federal
government to draft and implement an endangered species act covering
all of Canada.
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