The Refuge System includes at least twenty million acres of wilderness, about 22 percent of lands within the nation’s National Wilderness Preservation System. Wilderness, as defined by the Wilderness Act, is relatively untrammeled (“free from man’s control”), undeveloped and natural and offers outstanding opportunities for solitude and primitive recreation. Wilderness includes some of the largest and most intact landscapes in the country. Because of their management emphasis on natural conditions, wilderness areas can serve as baseline or reference areas to be compared with similar ecosystems undergoing active management. Since natural processes are allowed to predominate without human intervention, these areas are also key components in a national strategy for monitoring long-term ecological change, such as climate change. To adhere to the principles of wilderness stewardship, adapting to climate change will require resisting manipulation and embracing the Wilderness Act provision regarding scientific purpose.
Recommendation: Update the Wilderness Stewardship Policy to address the relationship between maintaining wilderness character and addressing the threats of climate change.
In 2012, all national wildlife refuges will have completed Comprehensive Conservation Plans (CCPs). The second round of comprehensive conservation planning will begin in late 2012.
Recommendation: Complete wilderness reviews for all national wildlife refuges within two years and make recommendations for wilderness designation of appropriate areas during the second round of CCPs.
Fulfilling the Promise stated that, “central to the experience and awareness of wilderness is humility, with its corollary, restraint; restraint in what is appropriate for visitors to do, as well as managers. Restraint is the reason for the ‘minimum tool’ rule, limiting use of our mechanisms to that which is necessary, and necessary not only to manage these areas, but to manage them as wilderness.” This remains a guiding philosophy for wildlife refuge wilderness stewardship.
Comment below and/or move on to next sub-section of Chapter 2- International Connections
15 Comments in this post »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Revise the FWS Wilderness Stewardship Policy
The Wilderness Stewardship Policy needs to be revised and updated to be more consistent with the intent and language of the Wilderness Act and to better address the challenge of maintaining wilderness character in the face of climate change.
Twelve years ago, the last visioning process, Fulfilling the Promise, identified a number of needs related to the proper stewardship and preservation of refuge wilderness. Among them were: the need to elevate the status of the Refuge System’s 20 million acres of wilderness; the need to expand the Service’s commitment to effective management of wilderness; the need to enhance the Service’s understanding of the full spectrum of wilderness values and the means by which they can be protected and made available to the public.
These and other needs have not been adequately addressed, in part because of the inadequacy of the Service’s current Wilderness Stewardship Policy. The Draft Vision document’s Wilderness Stewardship section offers a good starting point for making needed changes to this important policy. It recognizes the need for humility and restraint on the part of wilderness managers. It recommends wilderness reviews for qualified refuge lands. Especially important, it recommends rectifying the current Wilderness Stewardship Policy’s lack of guidance regarding maintaining wilderness character while addressing the threats of climate change. In particular, wilderness managers need guidance in dealing with the new questions and controversies climate change is bringing. Should wilderness ecosystems and their species assemblages be allowed to evolve and adapt to changes as they will? When or where might intervention or mitigation efforts be appropriate? What research programs are necessary and what tools and techniques are permissible in wilderness?
But the Service also needs to address other shortcomings of the current Wilderness Policy. As a starting point, the Service should consider the strong public support for the provisions of its 2001 Draft Wilderness Stewardship Policy as published in the Federal Register. It should also make the changes to the weakened 2008 (current) Policy that have been recommended by the Arctic Refuge. The Service should also consider the list of changes proposed by a group of conservation organizations led by the Izaak Walton League.
In summary, if stewardship of refuge wilderness is to be consistent with the intent and language of the Wilderness Act, if it is to be visionary and bold in the spirit of Conserving the Future, and if it is to be responsive to climate change and the issues it brings, then the current Wilderness Stewardship Policy must be revised.
Wilderness Stewardship, does not mean comfort, convenience or economical decision making for either the public or the employees…It means protecting , restoring, and enhancing wilderness characteristics to highest standard possible. Wilderness Stewardship implementation means training employees and incorporating wilderness stewardship performance standards into their job descriptions and annual report cards… Wilderness Stewardship does not mean trying to manage Refuge Wildernesses as a game production arena for the sole purposes of harvesting game…(er, Kofka, Big Horn Sheep) Wilderness Stewardship means allowing nature to roll the dice…In nature ,good things or bad things do not exist, that is just the way things happen, Line Officers should appreciate that at every opportunity in their decision making………GUIDING PRINCIPLES: Fulfill the Purpose of the Wilderness Act, Strive for less Human interference, Become a Steward, Understand the Minimum Tool Concept,Resist the easy answer,.Retain elements of Surprise, , Manage Wilderness as One Resource, Ensure an inheritance…and above all remember wilderness is not recreation, one is a resource and the other is an activity TRAIN your LINE OFFICERS in Wilderness Stewardship Principles
The primary function of the refuge system should be to protect wildlife and their habitat. The best way to achieve this is to phase out agriculture and hunting and to protect and restore as much wilderness as possible.
Our refuges need the strongest wilderness policy possible to protect our invaluable wilderness areas and protect them from economic interests and state game departments that would despoil them. The policy must ensure that wilderness is preserved for all generations. Management of wilderness must avoid making changes such as increasing the number of game animals for hunters. So don’t let the state game agencies manage wildlife in wilderness. If it was up to them, our refuges would just be game farms.
….and what of Wild and Scenic Rivers? Shouldn’t the Service be conducting WSR Reviews as part of their comprehensive conservation planning processes?
While the Wilderness Stewardship Policy needs revision for several reasons, one of the most important is to provide guidance on conflicts between Wilderness Act purposes and between Wilderness and refuge purposes that have been exacerbated by climate change. Briefly, the Wilderness Act directs us to preserve both untrammeled conditions, (e.g. wildness, free from human control and manipulation) and natural conditions (e.g. existing wildlife, habitats). Not anticipating climate change, the 1964 Wilderness Act foresaw no conflict between these two purposes. Wilderness designation was proposed or supported for some refuges because it was presumed to be the best tool for protecting focal species and their habitats as specified by their purposes. However, the recently recognized “dilemma of wilderness management” is that in some areas, both wildness and natural conditions cannot be maintained. Wilderness refuges may have mandates to perpetuate certain resources that now or in the future will require management interventions that are antithetical to preserving wildness. The wilderness policy needs to be revised to acknowledge this dilemma, and provide better guidance for deciding whether, when, and perhaps which refuges should give preeminence to one quality and compromise the other. Such decisions need to be made consciously, with the fullest consideration of potential consequences, and with stakeholder involvement and debate. These decisions should not be made ad hock, thorough the tyranny of small decisions.
.
.
It is imperative that we equip our wilderness areas with a plan that can realistically deal with the impending challenges associated with global climate change. Without such provisions, the plan lacks teeth. Leaving climate change out of our wilderness stewardship plan is like leaving a small child to play on train tracks. If we are serious about preserving our wild places for the future, we must include a plan to realistically address the elephant in the room.
I ask that you update the Wilderness Stewardship Policy to address the relationship between maintaining wilderness character of the Arctic NAtional Wildlife Refuge by affording wilderness designation to the coastal plain of the Refuge. I also ask that you address the threats on the refuge posed by climate change.
Thank you
The primary objcetive of the National Wildlife Refuge system is to protect wildlife and preserve their habitat. This principle should guide all refuge management decisions. Other uses such as hunting, fishing, agriculture, etc. should only be permitted if they clearly support the this primary objective of protecting wildlife and habitat.
It is imperative that agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service revise the current wilderness stewardship policy so that it is consistent with the wilderness act and responsive to climate change. As a resident of Fairbanks, Alaska, climate change will more dramatically affect me and my community (human and otherwise) than almost anywhere else in the world. I am also personally very desirous of permenent wilderness designation for the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In my mind, the two are linked. More oil from Alaska means more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It would be beyond ironic if the oil from ANWR itself should destroy the habitat critical for the caribou which migrate there for calving. Indeed, climate change is the greatest threat to all wilderness areas and must be addressed as part of any comprehensive plan to protect the last wild places on the earth.
Thank you for considering my thoughts on this matter.
The Wilderness Act states in Section 4 (b): “Except as otherwise provided in this Act, wilderness areas shall be devoted to the public purposes of recreation, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation, and historical use.”
This is well and good, but I fear that in an attempt to enforce the ideal of wilderness, FWS policies (either in the Wilderness Stewardship Policy or in Regional interpretations of the Policy) sometimes make requirements so restrictive that they contradict aspects of the Act.
For example: “education” is stated in the Act as a devoted purpose of Wilderness, and yet FWS Wilderness policy (sections 1.16 (A) and 1.5 (D)) specifically states: “the Wilderness Act prohibits commercial enterprises [including] Commercial Photography: A visual recording (motion or still) by firms or individuals (other than news media representatives) who intend to distribute their photographic content for money or other consideration. This includes the creation of products by educational … enterprises …”
In another example, FWS policy states a number of times that science is an important aspect of wilderness, including (section 1.13 (B)(6)) “Serving as a benchmark for ecological studies.” But in other parts of the policy, it states (section 1.18): “We authorize an activity only if we demonstrate that it is necessary to meet the minimum requirements for administering the area as wilderness and necessary to accomplish the purposes of the refuge…” In some situations, this is being interpreted to mean that no scientific research can be undertaken in a refuge wilderness area unless it directly relates to managing the area as wilderness.
Because of these potential contradictions and limitations, I recommend that the Wilderness Stewardship section of the FWS’s “Conserving the Future” document include a recommendation that all the various FWS policies (National and Regional) that pertain to Wilderness and the Wilderness Act be carefully reconsidered and rewritten to more clearly support all the expressed purposes of the Wilderness Act, not just recreational opportunities. These purposes include “scientific, educational, conservation, and historical use.”
The following comments are submitted personally, not on behalf of the Service’s Wilderness Character Monitoring Committee of which I am a member.
• Currently, the National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) includes more than 20 million acres of federally-designated wilderness in 71 different units. NWRS wilderness comprises approximately 19% of the National Wilderness Preservation System (data from wilderness.net).
• The Wilderness Act of 1964 does not say that wilderness areas are “relatively” untrammeled (line 5). According to the Act, wilderness is “…an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man…” (emphasis added) meaning free from intentional human manipulation or intervention.
• The point on wilderness areas serving as natural scientific controls in the face of climate change is well taken. Precisely because wilderness areas are administered to minimize the intentional human manipulation of natural processes, monitoring conditions in wilderness is essential to developing a better understanding of climate change, other human-related stressors, and the effects of management actions in non-wilderness areas.
• Restraint and humility on the part of wilderness managers and visitors is an essential aspect of wilderness stewardship. The point (line 13) about “resisting manipulation” is also well taken. Those who crafted the Wilderness Act, however, never imagined confronting a global environmental threat like climate change. It is up to agencies, through their policies, to address this new threat. The Service should review and revise its Wilderness Stewardship Policy, as others have recommended, to explicitly address the growing tension between managing for a particular biophysical condition versus protecting the freedom of ecological processes to operate without interference. Wilderness managers require explicit, scientifically-based guidance to properly evaluate the increasingly complex tradeoffs of stewarding wilderness in an era of climate change. The intangible values of wilderness – scenic, spiritual, symbolic, etc. – are also essential considerations that must be accounted for in any wilderness stewardship decision-making process.
• The final point in lines 13-14 “…and embracing the Wilderness Act provision regarding scientific purpose” is confusing and should be clarified. In light the preceding language regarding “resisting manipulation” perhaps this sentence would be better finished as “…and embracing the Wilderness Act’s affirmative mandate to preserve wilderness character”.
• The first recommendation (lines 16-17) could also use clarification. Perhaps this recommendation might be better stated as “Update the Wilderness Stewardship Policy to emphasize the importance of maintaining wilderness character, the scientific value of wilderness areas as long-term ecological controls, and the growing tension between preserving naturalness and wildness.”
Thank you for your hard work in crafting this document. My hope is that it will serve to renew and expand the Service’s commitment to wilderness preservation and establish FWS as the world’s preeminent wilderness stewardship agency.
The recommendation should be reworked as follows:
Complete wilderness reviews for all Refuges, and establish Wilderness Study Areas where appropriate (if not already done in current CCPs – within 2 years). Then determine on a State by State basis our NWRS priorities for proposing Wilderness Designations.