Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
populations poses challenges and opportunities. Even if today's people were
willing to make this investment, which I agree is necessary, it is only part of
the change needed to conserve our biological diversity.
But reserves, while necessary, are alone insui cient for conservation. Be-
ing place-bound, today's reserves may not be in the best locations given to-
morrow's conditions. The iconic spotted owl knows this lesson only too well.
In the 1990s, a team appointed by then-President Bill Clinton designed a se-
ries of reserves to protect the owl's old-growth timber habitat in the North-
west. Unfortunately, these reserves are failing today, because the spotted owl's
larger and more aggressive cousin, the barred owl, has found them to its lik-
ing. A native to eastern North America, the barred owl has invaded the West,
in part because of the trees that settlers planted in the northern Great Plains.
Competition with barred owls was not anticipated when the old forest re-
serves were designated, so they have been unable to provide the safe refuge for
the spotted owl that policymakers expected. Limitations such as this may
be especially important as climate and settlement patterns change.
Reservation also does not guarantee protection for all. Most reserves are
too small and too widely separated to sustain their riches. Today, many are
still overly exploited for wealth or food, a trend that is expected to grow with
increasing human populations. Where reserves protect the species that do not
thrive in our presence, they may not protect the vast diversity of adapters, those
animals that seek frequently disturbed, yet lightly settled, edgy lands that
fringe our cities. For these reasons, conservation strategies built solely on re-
serves are inadequate.
There is another, more fundamental reason that reserves will fail to con-
serve biological diversity; most people will never experience their grandeur.
By their very design, reserves seek to separate people from nature. Conserva-
tion, however, is a human enterprise that depends on the value humans put on
nature. When humans live in the city and nature lives in distant reserves, na-
ture becomes less relevant and more fearsome to people. This process has
