The Refuge System Improvement Act directs the Service to monitor the status and trends of fish, wildlife and plants on each wildlife refuge. Most wildlife refuges do not currently have a comprehensive baseline inventory of the diversity of fish, wildlife and plants that live there. Without an understanding of the species that depend on a wildlife refuge, the capacity to delivery effective conservation is reduced. This understanding is essential in order to assess the effects of a changing world.
Effective management requires an understanding of species distributions, abundances and demographics, and their relationships to habitat composition and condition across multiple spatial and temporal scales. It also requires the ability to predict and respond to changes in these relationships brought about by rapid climate change, invasive species, habitat loss and degradation and other environmental stressors. Understanding such complexity and anticipating the affects of management will require novel, robust inventory and monitoring approaches that have appropriate statistical rigor, are scalable, and can accommodate multiple metrics and taxa.
In 2010, the Refuge System launched a national inventory and monitoring program to increase its collective ability to inventory and monitor wildlife and habitats and inform conservation. Success in conserving fish, wildlife, plants and habitats will depend on how well integrated the inventory and monitoring efforts are with those of others throughout the conservation community.
Recommendation: Institutionalize a nationally coordinated program to inventory and monitor wildlife and habitats across multiple spatial and temporal scales.
The Refuge System must employ inventory and monitoring approaches that are scalable and collect information within hierarchical frameworks to allow analysis to occur at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Inventory and monitoring designs must be robust enough to detect subtle yet critical changes in populations and landscapes before causes are known; however, statistical rigor should be commensurate with the goals of a given project, risk tolerance and the priority of the resource issue in question. Wildlife refuges should monitor non-target impacts in adaptive management designs.
Developing an effective program will include identifying, supporting and expanding centers of inventory and monitoring excellence within and outside the Refuge System. It will support the development of consistent and reliable national habitat data sets to inform strategic habitat conservation, assist implementation of State Wildlife Action Plans and other conservation plans, and establish a baseline for inventory and monitoring. The Refuge System should explore the applicability of existing inventory and monitoring programs to its needs for attaining biological information, including invertebrates and plants as well as other flora and fauna associated with respective ecosystems. Collaboration on collection of biological data that allows detection of subtle changes in environmental health will inform refuge needs and establish the Refuge System as a valued partner in supporting strategic habitat conservation.
The Refuge System is building its inventory and monitoring program in close cooperation with the National Park Service. Federal land management agencies should collaborate and integrate their inventory and monitoring programs. This would not result in identical programs in each agency, as specific needs vary. Instead, it would allow for collaboration and sharing of information where interests are shared. It can assist in building a nationwide network to help detect changes in the population and distribution in response to climate changed conditions.
Recommendation: As part of a National Conservation Strategy, collaborate with other federal land management agencies to integrate inventory and monitoring programs.
Comment below and/or move on to next section of Chapter 3- Deliberate Research
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Ira Gabrielson, the first director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, warned wildlife managers about applying “the intensive methods used on research projects” to inventory on large management areas. Inventory is neccessary to determine the success or failure of a program, he noted, but in and of itself it it does nothing for the success of a program. This section, with its emphasis on statistical rigor and causation, as well as its proximity to the section on research, comes dangerously close to crossing the line from inventory to research. There is a sentence that indicates an awareness of this pitfall – “statistical rigor should be commensurate with the goals of a given project.” There should, however, be a clearer statement differentiating both inventory and monitoring (the two are not the same) from research.
Our Research Natural Areas policy needs to be updated/revised to support the Service’s new inventorying and monitoring efforts including those associated with climate change impacts.
This section should incorporate the use of a volunteer workforce, much as was recommended in the Invasive Species section of Ch.2. Volunteers have provided valuable, reliable I&M data for many state and national programs for years in everything from bird counts to water quality. With appropriate, trained oversight, volunteer labor could provide accurate data at a significant savings of time and money for the NWRS.
The following comments are submitted on behalf of the Service’s Wilderness Character Monitoring Committee of which I am a member.
Emphasis should be added to monitoring of wilderness character. While wilderness stewardship is identified as a Service priority, wilderness character monitoring is not.
Chapter 3. Conservation Science and the Refuge System, describes the Service’s vision for a robust Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) program. Integrated into the Service’s responsibility for wilderness stewardship and scientifically sound I&M programs, is a responsibility to effectively monitor wilderness character. Monitoring wilderness character improves the effectiveness of our wilderness stewardship, and therefore should be part of our conservation science vision. Four wilderness qualities are imperative to monitor as part of the 1964 Wilderness Act’s affirmative mandate to preserve wilderness character: untrammeled, natural, undeveloped, and opportunities for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation.
In addition, these specific changes are recommended to the draft text:
• Pg 13, line 29 change “…maintaining wilderness character…” to “…preserving wilderness character…” which brings this sentence more closely in line with the language from the Act.
• Pg 21, rewrite the last sentence in the first paragraph to read “To adhere to the principles of wilderness stewardship, adapting to climate change will require resisting manipulation and embracing the Wilderness Act’s mandate to preserve wilderness character. Effective wilderness stewardship will be facilitated by the implementation of a national wilderness character monitoring program.”
• Pg 27, recommendation on lines 10 & 11, insert additional text regarding wilderness character monitoring as follows: “Recommendation: Institutionalize a nationally coordinated program to inventory and monitor wildlife, habitats, and wilderness character across multiple spatial and temporal scales.”