While the nation has amassed impressive lands that benefit wildlife, including national wildlife refuges, national parks, national forests, state protected areas, and others, current human population and development trends threaten to overwhelm the value many of these habitats currently hold for wildlife and ecosystem integrity. By 2050, the U.S. population is expected to reach nearly 400 million, each of who require water, housing, roads, stores, and huge tracts of land to grow food and to recreate. Many of America’s natural areas exist as parcels surrounded by land or water unsuitable for most wildlife; an arrangement that is not sustainable if the goal is to conserve as many species and habitats as possible. In recognition of these serious threats, the Refuge System embraces and is enthusiastically committed to the progressive language of the Refuge System Improvement Act, which calls for “the continued growth of the System in a manner that is best designed to accomplish the mission of the System, to contribute to the conservation of the ecosystems of the United States, to complement efforts of States and other Federal agencies to conserve fish and wildlife and their habitats, and to increase support for the System and participation from conservation partners and the public.”
Moving forward, the Service’s attention to strategic growth will be on a scale commensurate with the seriousness of the development trends that threaten to undermine more than a century’s worth of conservation efforts. In the context of land acquisition and other on-the-ground conservation strategies, the people of the Service will act with a sense of urgency, as critical pieces of the conservation estate are disappearing with each passing day. The Service must move quickly toward a collaborative landscape-level strategy that can effectively address the most challenging and pervasive 21st century threats to biodiversity.
Strategic growth of the Refuge System begins with creating a prioritized blueprint for acquisition based on a combination of completing existing refuge acquisitions and developing new acquisition projects in focal areas. New acquisition projects will be developed in conjunction with partners and with a commitment to focus conservation in the highest priority areas.
The Refuge System will develop an adaptive prioritization model that considers the various and oft-changing factors that affect the most important conservation targets. This need, which is currently filled by the Land Acquisition Prioritization System (LAPS), will be better met by including evaluations of a potential acquisition parcel’s role in a regional and ecological context, analyses of the changes an area may experience due to climatic shifts, and a sort of “urgency index,” or how imminent the threat is to any particular parcel. These, along with other important considerations, such as the opportunity for partnerships and public education, and any perceived social or economic barriers, will help the Refuge System develop an indispensable decision analysis model that informs a truly national conservation vision.
The results of this prioritization model will be used to implement a new progressive policy and implementation plan that guides the land conservation approaches of the Refuge System. Species, water, fire, and other crucial ecological services do not recognize human land boundaries. National wildlife refuges serve as anchors for biodiversity and often represent the last stronghold for an endangered species or a diminished habitat type, such as tallgrass prairie. Minimizing threats to species of conservation concern and key ecosystem processes requires strategies of preserving large areas and maintaining landscape connectivity, in addition to creating and maintaining biological redundancies throughout the system. Refuges must look beyond their borders, work with partners, and think critically about the pressing issues affecting the species and ecosystems the Service and its partners strive to conserve. The time to act is now.
Recommendation: Finalize a policy and implementation plan to guide land conservation efforts of the Refuge System.
Recommendation: Complete an overhaul to the Land Acquisition Prioritization System to develop an adaptive prioritization model that helps determine the relative importance of potential land acquisition projects, both in completing existing acquisition projects and in beginning new ones.
Comment below and/or move on to next section of Chapter 2 - Protecting Wildlife: The Role of Conservation Law Enforcement
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I would be surprised if you can do better than the existing LAPS. Many FWS regions do not prioritize refuges in a regional context, and no matter what the priority, we cannot often acquire the lands we want until someone wants to sell them.
Test comment
It is not clear what the weakness of the current LAPS is. Has it lead to poor acquisitions? Does it just not meet new criteria that you think will come of this strategic visioning? these models are always plagued with shortcomings, and it would be unfortunate to spend lots of time/effort revising something that will do little to improve outcomes. As the other comment noted, we can only buy if there is a willing seller, and that is a real limitation. That being said, if LAPS needs revising, suggest making a stronger case for why.
The LAPS has always been an adaptive system taking into account many of the issues mentioned. The new model will likely always need tinkering as it’s will not be all inclusive nor static to meet the most important needs/opportunities. (This section seems to have a lot of nice words but one wonders how much improvement can actually be made.)
We need support to easily acquire inholdings for existing refuges, particularly in the northeast where undeveloped land needs to be protected now or it will not be there in 2050. LAPS does a poor job of providing support for land acquisition on existing refuges which still have land that needs to be acquired to complete the refuge, unless there are many Federally listed species. Failure to acquire land within and directly adjacent to existing refuges will ultimately lead to a diminishment of the value of the smaller, more “urban” refuges.
I applaud the USFWS for discussing the need for strategic protection of fish and wildlife habitat. However, other agencies and organizations own land throughout the U.S, and obviously, private landowners are of utmost importance. There was mention of land acquisition as one of several methods that can be utilized as land protection, but much of the section was devoted to improving the FWS’ land acquisition process. I challenge the USFWS to work more closely with state agencies and other landowners to use these other conservation lands as focal areas for habitat acquisition/protection initiatives and not just focus on acquiring more federal lands.
The recommendation to overhaul (or revise) the LAPS is good, although the projected/likely effects of climate change on the prioritization process should be given greater emphasis. The changes should be concurrent with needed revisions to several Service policies, especially the Planning and the Biological Integrity, Diversity, and Environmental Health policies.
Before deciding which lands to acquire, the Service needs a more clear understanding of whether or to what degree refuges should strive to maintain population levels of preferred species where their habitats are becoming less suited to them. Or should more emphasis be on maintaining refuges’ capacity for evolutionary and ecological change in self-sustaining ecosystems, accepting that some favored or “trust” species will be replaced by other species more suited to a changing climate?
Among other things, LAPS needs to provide better guidance as to which should have priority—acquiring habitats that are now most important to priority species but perhaps more vulnerable to ecological regime shifts, or acquiring “climate change refugia” lands composed of more resistant vegetation and assemblages of species that are more resilient, but perhaps less preferred.
Good job on this section. The impacts of climate change are expected to exacerbate the spread of invasive species, disease, and parasites; produce extended droughts; increase the severity of storms; and amplify the effects of habitat fragmentation. Many refuge habitats are already affected. Some are unique habitats of international or global importance, including Wilderness, Marine Protected Areas, RAMSAR Wetlands, Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Sites, Important Bird Areas, and designated Critical Habitat for endangered and threatened species. Nothing comes close to permanent protection. Support is needed to speed up land acquisition processes so that we can effectively respond to these changes. I agree as well that LAPS should be revised to ensure that the impacts of climate change are included in the ranking process. Equally important are solutions to address organizational barriers to land acquisition, reduced LWCF funding, support for land protection planning, GIS mapping, and NEPA processes.
We do not need to make a new land acquistion program, just fix the current one. I am tired of new programs starting up every couple of years. I think acquiring new lands is a great idea, but who will manage them? We are continuing to grow as a refuge system, except with staff. New lands, when acquired, are protected from development, but not from other threats (ex. invasive species). The lack of staff on refuges is amazing. We are tasked with more and more, given less and less resources. During the last workforce planning, we were told to do more with less. We are a passionate workforce and already do more with less. We need to conserve what we have as we are being spread too thin.
It might be beneficial for the NWRS to develop a systematic approach (and related guidance documents) for the development of land acquisition planning documents (i.e., preliminary project proposals and decision packages) to ensure they reflect the concept of a national system. Our Land Protection Planning and Strategic Growth policies are in need of updating/revision as well.
See my comments in the previous section related to Strategic Growth and Planning
The Service developed LAPS in close coordination with multiple program offices and our partners, and it received the benefit of a public review and comment. It is one of the few federal land acquisition priority systems developed through regional consensus. This is something to keep in mind when considering proposals to overhaul the system.
The Draft Vision recommends that the Service develop an “urgency index” to assess the threat to specific parcels. The original version of LAPS (pre-2002) had an “urgency index,” but it proved ineffective because each region classified their own projects as the most urgent and imminently threatened. Whereas other bureaus’ priority systems rely almost exclusively on subjective scoring (e.g. someone in Washington assigning a numeric score to a regional write-up, etc.), LAPS objectively ranks all projects with willing sellers using the same set of biological criteria.
As Dale noted, LAPS is an adaptive system. Each year, the Service re-evaluates and updates the LAPS components to reflect new biological data and information, additional experience, project accomplishments, and input from the field, regions, and our partners. One problem faced by the LAPS team is the limited availability of national data sets (lower 48, AK, HI). Many biological data sets are region-specific. Scoring criteria for LAPS must be consistent and nationwide in scope. The LAPS team is interested in incorporating climate change criteria as soon as the data exists to do so.
The Draft Vision also recommends that the Service evaluate “a potential acquisition parcel’s role in the regional and ecological context.” The current budget process makes it difficult to evaluate and rank specific parcels for the annual budget request. Eighteen months or more may pass between the development of the budget justification for OMB and the receipt of the appropriation. There is also a high degree of uncertainty about the outcome of the appropriations process. For these reasons, many landowners are unwilling to enter into a sales contract. Consequently, when the Budget Request is sent to the Congress, the Service has information on willing sellers, but has not ordered an appraisal or entered into a sales contract (some ownerships, such as private hunting clubs, may be more willing to enter into long-term sales contracts for conservation easements).
A region typically has one or more parcels in mind during the development of the annual budget justification. However, in the absence of a sales contract, there is no commitment from the landowner to sell their property to the Service and there is nothing to stop a landowner from selling to another party. An unfortunate reality of the budget process (much of which is beyond FWS’ control) is that many parcels targeted for acquisition by a region are no longer available by the time the Service obtains both the appropriated funds and an appraisal. In other cases, the property is available, but the landowner is unwilling to accept the value in the Service’s appraisal. That is the primary reason why the Service ranks refuge projects first and tracts second.
Some smaller refuges may not have the biological values necessary to score well on LAPS. About $5 million per year of the Service’s annual land acquisition appropriation is allocated for Emergencies and Inholdings. This funding is used for smaller acquisitions as those opportunities arise throughout the year, with turnarounds measured in weeks as opposed to months or years. These funds are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. LAPS scores are not a factor for these funds, which are typically reserved for refuges that do not make President’s budget request for either the current fiscal year or the next fiscal year (exceptions are evaluated on a case-by-case basis).
Something to incorporate would be a specific cleanup of cumbersome land acqusition procedures or policies that often interfere with the ability to expand Refuge lands.
For instance, many of the financial procedures surround the donation of land or money provided by a Last Will and Testament, trust, etc. are often cumbersome or in-flexible. The policies regarding these should be more flexible to allow individuals to give their donations under their specifications but also make the donations acceptable and flexible for the Refuge staff or those receiving the money or land.
Additionally, there should be a recommendation to cleanup or provide procedures for manuevering acquisition parcels or pieces of land we no longer need through the process. Currently, in order to remove a piece of land, their either needs to be a land exchange, a GSA process or Congress needs to pass legislation allowing for the land to be released. In several cases I have dealt with, these lands are not of interest to be exchanged with other parties and the GSA process sells the land and gives the check to Treasury (not FWS), but the simpler process for moving these lands through to Congress is convoluted. If this process could be streamlined, a large amount of resources could be used for other pieces of land and money would be saved by not continuing management of areas the refuge system does not need.
I agree that the Service could certainly benefit from an improved prioritization/decision analysis model for land protection planning. However, I also think that the Service could improve on its outreach and communication during land protection planning. Perhaps an additional recommendation would be to: Require the development an Outreach and Communication Plan concurrently with any land protection planning process.
This section of the vision needs to be better integrated with the previous section (Delivering F&W Conservation). The previous section recommends developing National Conservation Strategy for the NWRS (which is a great idea) but it’s not even mentioned in this section. Wouldn’t such a strategy be the basis for strategic growth of the system?