The Wilderness Act and climate change adaptation.

• Author: Long, Elisabeth
• Position: III. Possible Climate Change Adaptation Actions in Wilderness Areas C. Restraint through V. Conclusion, with footnotes, p. 658-690 - The Wilderness Act at 50

3. Restraint

   Restraint means "selecting certain areas in which no interventions will occur," or more simply: "leav[ing] some places alone." (273) Many legal scholars have argued that the restrictive constraints of the Wilderness Act are beneficial because the most appropriate management choice for wilderness areas is a hands-off, passive management regime. (274) Likewise, some ecologists argue that in the "rare cases when managers might have the ability to affect every part of a wilderness landscape, strong consideration should be given to restraint." (275)

   1. Passive Management in Wilderness Areas Allows for Adaptation.

      One argument for restraint is that purely passive management in wilderness areas will assist with adaptation to climate change. For instance, roadless areas, including wilderness areas, benefit watershed health. (276) Road construction damages water quality by increasing sedimentation, and existing roads concentrate and reroute water flow during times of precipitation, thereby affecting subsurface water availability by decreasing the amount of porous land available for water absorption. (277) Improved watershed health, in turn, benefits fish species. (278) As climate change affects water temperature and dissolved oxygen levels, fish populations will increasingly depend on high-quality habitat in wilderness areas. (279) Indeed, Colorado's native cutthroat trout already heavily rely on intact habitat in roadless areas for survival. (280)

      Passive management in wilderness areas may also be an important tool to protect biodiversity in a changing climate. Wilderness areas provide habitat for threatened and endangered plant and animal species. (281) They will become increasingly important as species migrations and extinctions associated with climate change increase. (282) A 2009 review of recommendations for biodiversity management in the face of climate change found that the most frequent recommendation for climate change adaptation of the surveyed scientific literature is to improve landscape connectivity to facilitate species migration. (283) This goal could be achieved by acquiring new protected lands adjacent to wilderness areas to serve as migration corridors that facilitate species movement spurred by climate change. Managers could also work across wilderness boundaries to designate migration corridors that cover a range of elevations and land designations and ownerships. One example of lands that may be suitable for management as migration corridors are Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) on Forest Service lands, which are frequently located next to wilderness areas. (284) IRAs comprise more low- and mid-elevation habitat than wilderness areas and therefore may provide connected habitat over a wide elevation range. (285)

      More generally, one of the best strategies to allow biodiversity to adapt to a changing climate is to simply protect more habitat from human intervention. Authors in the climate change adaptation literature

      encourage managers to increase the number of reserves across the landscape; improve interagency and regional coordination; protect larger areas and reserve size; create and manage buffer zones around reserves; and capture landscape and bioclimatic diversity in protected areas. (286) Likewise, researchers discuss the possibility of responding to climate change by identifying, acquiring, and protecting refugia, defined as environments that are "more buffered against climate change and short-term disturbances." (287) One study suggests that if refugia can be identified, "they could be considered sites for long-term retention of plants or for establishment of new forests." (288) Similarly, many studies recommend protecting areas projected to be future "hotspots for biodiversity" in order to provide habitat for species of high conservation value. (289) Wilderness without active management already provides vital reserves from human intervention that help achieve these goals. (290)

      Existing wilderness areas, many of which protect high elevation habitats, may become increasingly important for biodiversity protection, because as climate change creates conditions inhospitable to a particular species, species will generally migrate north and upward in elevation. (291) likewise, wilderness areas without human intervention may be more resistant to the spread of invasive species. (292)

   2. Resources May be Better Spent on Active Management in More Altered Landscapes

      Because passive management of wilderness areas already provides climate change benefits, it might be best to forgo management in wilderness areas and spend what scarce resources are available on climate change adaptation efforts where they are already needed most. (293) At a basic level, active management is expensive. (294) The realities of limited funds, staffing, and access usually mean that human intervention can only occur in "relatively small, strategically chosen parts of a wilderness landscape, focused on resources of particularly high value and vulnerability (such as a popular grove of giant sequoias or an endangered species)." (295) Additionally, it may be more appropriate to spend limited funds on management in other areas, like unprotected lower elevation forests, where human intervention has already drastically altered ecosystem structure and function. (296) Likewise, the majority of areas at risk for insect outbreak are in roaded landscapes. (297) Because wilderness areas are less disturbed by roads and logging, these areas are a lower priority for active management to reduce harm caused by these human interventions. (298)

   3. Uncertainties and Lack of Monitoring Caution Against Active Management

      There are significant uncertainties associated with projecting the potential impacts of climate change on species or systems. (299) Restricting active management in wilderness areas reduces the possibility that climate change uncertainties may lead managers to make wrong decisions. (300) Wilderness scholar Michael McCloskey cautions that active management to correct human-caused adverse impacts is "itself subject to the same hazardous consequences as the short-sighted actions it was intended to correct." (301) For example, skeptics of assisted migration draw on the checkered history of intentional species introductions and cite ecological concerns, including the possibility that assisted migration could "erode biodiversity, disrupt ecosystems, and contribute to extinctions at receiving sites." (302)

      Many management strategies for climate change response and realignment are largely experimental; their use in wilderness areas may require substantial justification and built-in monitoring. (303) Because "it's hard to talk about making an ecosystem resident if one doesn't know what it takes to kill it in the first place," (304) monitoring the effects of climate change within and outside these areas is critical for effective and appropriate adaptation strategies. (305) A well designed, fully funded monitoring program would improve the science behind land management, "build trust in the agency[,] and reduce some types of science-based political conflict." (306) However, there is a "history of unfunded monitoring programs and monitoring-related line items are often the first cut by decision makers." (307) If we are skeptical that necessary monitoring will occur, then we might be even more skeptical of pursuing active management that requires that monitoring.

   4. Political and Bureaucratic Pressures

      A final concern is that the constraints of the Wilderness Act might be essential to resist political or bureaucratic pressures to develop wilderness areas. Some commentators argue that the "lack of clear, uniform standards" governing agency decision making leads the agency to "submit to the persistent pressures of local commodity interests." (308) Relaxed standards that would allow for active management might be susceptible to these pressures, and allow for development in the guise of active management for climate change adaptation. (309)

      The political pressures for development and conservation are often asymmetric: The benefits of development often redound to a relatively small group of individuals or small interest groups, and therefore are concentrated and provide higher per capita rewards; the benefits of conservation often are public goods that are distributed across society as a whole, and the beneficiaries are often dispersed and rewards are lower per capita. (310) For instance, logging in a wilderness area might provide a small number of jobs and revenue for a few timber companies, which are benefits important to a particular community but relatively small from a societal perspective. Conservation of that same wild area would provide limited specific benefits to individuals (e.g., hikers who enjoy using the wilderness area) but would also provide broader public benefits such as protection of habitat for endangered species.

      Public choice theory would predict that in these circumstances, those who benefit from development would have substantial organizational advantages and have more success in using the political, administrative, and legal processes to achieve their goals compared to those who benefit from conservation. (311) This asymmetry can be overcome on occasion. (312) For instance, a major crisis or an active grassroots effort might succeed in mobilizing the public to push for enactment of a statute that provides substantial conservation benefits. (313) However, this is more likely to be successful on the high profile level of enacting legislation, for example, rather than in the mundane, day-to-day world of administrative determinations of whether a particular logging project should be implemented in a particular wilderness area. (314) Strict statutory standards enforced by courts might therefore be more effective in advancing conservation goals on average, and might also more accurately reflect public...