Managing for Naturalness in a Changing World

• Author: Gordon Steinhoff
• Pages: 95-108

95

Chapter 5

Managing for Naturalness

in a Changing World

Within Beyond Naturalness, David Cole, Laurie Yung, and other

management experts emphasize the threat to protected areas

presented by acid ra in, invasions of non-native species, climate

change, and other huma n-caused stresses.1 Increased management exibil-

ity is needed, they argue, to counter such stresses. Again, they recommend

abandoning naturalness as a mandatory goal in the management of protected

areas. Yet, as discussed in Chapter 4, amphibians, ra re and endemic plants,

and other organisms are adapted to highly specic environmental conditions,

and are highly sensitive to habitat alteration. Certain management inter-

ventions in protected areas—introducing predatory trout into historically

shless la kes, introducing non-native mountain goats into wilderness areas,

etc.—have resulted in losses or threatened losses of such species. Indeed, all

organisms are adapted to more-or-less specic environmental conditions.2

is suggests that within protected area policies there should be a proper bal-

ance: a mandate to maintain natural conditions in these areas, along with the

exibility to intervene as needed to maintain natural conditions and protect

native biodiversity.

In fact, agency policies currently provide managers much exibility. e

authors of Beyond Naturalness praise specic agency projects for demonstrat-

ing the need to go “beyond naturalness,” but these projects actually demon-

strate the need to maintain natural conditions within protected areas. ese

projects are required by agency policies, which provide the exibility needed

to carry them out.

1. D N. C  L Y, B N: R P  W S-

   E  R C xi, 1, 2-9, 23, 50-64, 179-93, 252-53, 258-59 (2010).

2. T M. S  R L. S, E  E 68-69 (8th ed. 2012).

Note: is chapter is adapted from Naturalness and Biodiversity: Why Natural

Conditions Should Be Maintained Within Protected Areas, 37 W.  M E.

L.  P’ R. 77 (Fall 2012).