Biodiversity Conservation: An Unrealized Aspiration

• Author: A. Dan Tarlock and Andrew Zabel
• Pages: 269-284

Chapter 18

Biodiversity Conservation: An Unrealized

Aspiration

A. Dan Tarlock and Andrew Zabel

Biodiversity conservation remains an elusive goal in the United

States. The most that one can say is that our biodiversity loss is less

pronounced than in tropical regions.1In addition to the inherent tech-

nical and institutional obstacles, conservation has not been a priority

of the administration of President George W. Bush, although it re-

mains a formal domestic and policy objective.2The 1992 Biodiversity

Convention remains unratified by the United States, and the Bush Ad-

ministration has been generally hostile to environmental protection

and mandatory greenhouse gas reduction. Further, its successful ef-

forts to open large amounts of public lands, much of them important

wildlife habitats, to energy exploration and production have compro-

mised the country’s public and private biodiversity.

The federal government has actively diluted its biodiversity conser-

vation duties in many crucial areas. For example, in 2005 the Forest

Service eliminated the duty to assure the survival of “viable popula-

tions” because the focus on viability diverted attention from ecosys-

tem management.3A similar effort to weaken the Endangered Species

Act is underway in the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Still, there are several bright spots. The most promising prospect is

the conservation of marine biodiversity. Large new state and federal

marine reserves have been established in territorial waters and in the

200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone.4Another bright spot is the accel-

eration of the private acquisition of large amounts of undeveloped

land and the dedication of this land to uses that are generally consis-

tent with biodiversity conservation.

This chapter surveys efforts since 2002 to conserve biodiversity in

the United States. It concentrates on four areas: the evolving rationale

for biodiversity conservation and new developments in the relevant

science; federal legislation and administrative regulations; federal ju-

dicial decisions; and state actions.

269

What Is Sustainable Development and Why Does It Matter to

the United States?

Biodiversity conservation should be understood as an integral com-

ponent of sustainable development rather than, as it often is in prac-

tice, merely a factor to be considered and traded off against economic

development. Otherwise, sustainable development is simply develop-

ment that leaves no natural legacy for the future. Despite advances in

understanding the impacts and effects of humans, the succinct defini-

tion from the 1987 Brundtland Commission report remains a bench-

mark: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs

of the present without compromising the ability of future generations

to meet their own needs.”5

The evidence suggests that we are far from the goal of effective

biodiversity conservation. No standard, systematic assessment of the

state of biodiversity exists in the United States.6The most ambitious

and closest effort is the 2002 Heinz Center survey of the state of our

ecosystems.7This survey, which was updated in 2008, is a scientific

work in progress and applies a wide range of disciplines and technolo-

gies to identify the major characteristics of ecosystems and the avail-

able information as well as crucial information gaps. Even without a

comprehensive assessment, the clear message from a variety of

sources is that we are squandering our rich heritage of species and

ecosystem diversity through continued habitat destruction. The

degradation of freshwater aquatic ecosystems8and the spread of

exotic species9remain especially challenging, but ineffectively ad-

dressed, problems.

The science of biodiversity assessment continues to evolve but not

always in ways that make it easy to apply the findings to actual efforts

to conserve biodiversity. Article 2 of the Convention on Biological

Diversity defines biodiversity as “the variability among living organ-

isms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other

aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are a

part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of

ecosystems.” Despite this broad legal definition, biodiversity remains

an artificial construct with no coherent meaning. Scientists continue

to struggle both to define and to measure biodiversity.These scientific

debates have important consequences for law and policy. For exam-

ple, if two or more species perform the same ecological function, do

we conserve the individual species or the function?10 Species viability

270 AGENDA FOR A SUSTAINABLE AMERICA