Consensus cuttings of a proverbial baby in half is conservation foolery!
The concept of Consensus / cutting the baby in half is about giving
half the forest to the loggers, and half the forest to the enviros.
But it doesn’t work! With the advent of the 1994 US Northwest Forest
Plan the concept of ecosystem management was applied to the same old
consensus-based conservation routine. The 2 Key elements of ecosystem
management that were begrudgingly implemented were “Survey & Manage”
and “Aquatic Conservation Strategy.” So not only was half the baby
saved, and half the baby sacrificed, but the sacrifice zone (Matrix)
could no longer be sacrificed if it compromised the ‘ecosystem’ via
the 2 new ecosystem planning models. Point is loggers don’t like
that, they’ve opposed it every step of the way. Enclosed below is more
on how this battle’s going! –Editor, Forest Policy Research
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Managers must realize that conservation of biological diversity is not
primarily a set-aside issue that can be dealt with by reserving or
modifying management on 10 or 20% of their
landscape; rather, it is a pervasive issue that must be considered on
every acre of land that they manage. In a recent issue of PNAS, Prugh
et al. analyzed a large body of available data and made the unexpected
discovery that patch size and isolation are poor predictors of patch
occupancy for the majority of species reviewed. …the findings of
Prugh et al. are largely congruent with other analyses, such as the
extensive assessment of fragmentation experiments by Debinski and
Holt. Collectively these analyses raise significant questions about
the merits of island biogeographic theory as a basis for conservation
biology. We strongly agree with Prugh et al. that resource management
practices that maintain or improve the suitability of the matrix are
fundamental to the conservation of biodiversity. Matrix management
matters because formal reserve systems will never cover more than a
small fraction of the globe. Many conservation biologists have largely
overlooked the pivotal importance of the matrix and the habitat that
it provides for enhanced biodiversity conservation or could provide,
if it were managed differently. Rather, most conservation biologists
have focused on such topics as retention
of large patches of undisturbed habit as reserves and intact habitat
corridors as the primary strategy for providing for connectivity.
Indeed, some biologists still assert that reserves are the only way to
conserve biological diversity. — Jerry F. Franklin and David B.
Lindenmayer, College of Forest Resources, University of Washington,
Box 352100, Seattle, WA 98195-2100
— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
also to forestpolicyresearch@yahoogroups.com