Depaving the Way: Multiple Levels of Connectivity

Shortly after Wildlands CPR was founded in 1994, The Wildlands Project (now the Wildlands Network) became our fiscal sponsor. It was a natural fit – Wildlands Network (WN) was working with grassroots groups around the country to create plans for rewilding North America. They were supporting multiple large scale landscape connectivity projects, and Wildlands CPR was working on getting roads removed. The two efforts went hand in hand, since roads are one of the major causes of habitat fragmentation and loss of connectivity. In those areas where our work overlapped, the idea was that they would help determine where priority protection and restoration was needed, and we would help implement the road reclamation portion of that work.

While this made a lot of sense in theory, it was not so simple to implement. First, people had barely even heard of road removal, so we had to start with basic education about its importance before we could accomplish much on the ground. Second, we began assisting grassroots groups all over the country in fighting road construction and off-road vehicle abuse as part of basic wildland protection, regardless of whether it was part of coordinated large landscape efforts. And third, habitat mapping was still in its early phases, and not everything was ready for prime time.

A few years after we were founded, Wildlands CPR became an independent organization, and though we continued to work with WN and many of their partners, we also took on our own campaigns, such as roadless protection, off-road vehicle planning, and most recently, road rightsizing (see  cover story). But our work has always been rooted in the same science that underpins WN’s efforts – the idea of creating large landscape and watershed connectivity, protection and restoration. As the science has evolved, so has our work, expanding the places where restoration makes sense and introducing mitigation into the mix in areas where full restoration may not be possible due to ongoing human use.

Wildlands CPR isn’t the only organization that has been influenced by these ecological concepts – WN has had an enormous impact on land-based conservation in North America, regardless of whether they have been directly involved with every project. Landscape connectivity and habitat based planning took off in the 1990s, with projects like the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (a federal wilderness bill that would designate wilderness in 5 different states, while funding restoration in the corridors between the core areas to secure wildlife connectivity across the landscape); the Yellowstone-to-Yukon Conservation Initiative (which advocates for conservation across multiple states and Canadian provinces, again with a focus on landscape connectivity); and numerous other landscape-scale projects.

In addition to these nonprofit efforts, the concepts of landscape and watershed connectivity  have now become popular with elected officials. The Western Governor’s Association, for example, has created a wildlife council that is identifying crucial habitat and connectivity areas that  should be protected from development. Each state is supposed to develop a decision support system to help guide future energy, transportation and residential development away from crucial wildlife habitat (see RIPorter Vol.14 No.4).

In November all of this work came full circle again. I attended a workshop co-hosted by Wildlands Network and the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER). The topic: how to make large landscape conservation and restoration a reality on the ground. This time, both the mapping and the advocacy work are more advanced. Participants included restoration ecologists, GIS experts, wildlife biologists and policy wonks like me. We met in western Colorado, thanks in part to the generosity of the owners of the High Lonesome Ranch, who are working to restore their ranch and the wildlife habitat and connectivity it provides. Their involvement illustrates some of the advances in this work, as they could look at rewilding maps and see that their land was ideally situated for protection and restoration to benefit wildlife movement at the landscape level.

While meetings like this have happened before, the urgency is only increasing as development continues to threaten wildlife habitat and interconnectedness at the very same time that climate change is potentially forcing wildlife to migrate in ways they have not for millennia. The large landscape connectivity theories long-advocated by WN are now considered mainstream, with private consultants, federal land managers and university researchers all participating in the meeting because their work is all moving towards the same objectives.

It was fascinating to learn about advancements in GIS technologies that are providing new methodologies for identifying habitat protection and restoration priorities to secure wildlife movement over the long-term. However, though GIS mapping visually presents the physical connectivity needs and opportunities for wildlife, policy change is the vehicle we need to bring this work together.

The WGA wildlife connectivity work is one way to start integrating public policy with nonprofit advocacy and university research. The Forest Service’s recently announced initiative to identify a minimum road system (see our cover story) is another way. The agency, after all, is responsible for nearly 200 million acres of federal land. The “rightsizing” initiative, as we call it, is one of the best opportunities in decades to directly restore both terrestrial and watershed connectivity. If we can apply the excellent GIS mapping tools from the many different participants in the SER/WN workshop to the rightsizing process, we can start to identify and prioritize places where the Forest Service can focus their road reclamation efforts.

So after 15 years, the science and the advocacy have reached a level where we can integrate them in new and very exciting ways. While advocates will have to work outside of the Forest Service rightsizing process as well, national forest lands provide some of the most important terrestrial and aquatic habitat in the country, especially in the western US. If we can use this rightsizing process to ensure that roads are having the least possible impact on wildlife and water quality, then we can create a foundation upon which to build larger landscape connectivity efforts. That foundation will enable advocates to work with private and public landowners to implement the visions depicted in their maps, through a variety of land  protection, mitigation and restoration efforts.

By integrating rightsizing efforts with ongoing large landscape planning, we can also help  prioritize limited restoration and mitigation dollars to ensure that the most important habitat is protected and restored. Reclaiming unneeded roads will be a key activity in that process. Reclaiming roads can benefit highly interactive species, ensure that wildlife can move from one place to another, restore aquatic connectivity for migrating salmonids and other anadramous species, and reconnect local people to the land, by providing highwage, high-skill jobs in their backyards.

Linking aquatic and terrestrial issues, connecting big wildlife and small, understanding the roles different species of wildlife have on a cascading set of factors in the natural world, integrating economics and ecology… these multifaceted issues will dictate the conservation and restoration practices of the future. Rightsizing the Forest Service road system can be the first step in that process, and provides, perhaps, the best opportunity in at least a generation to truly reconnect wildlife and watershed habitat, as first envisioned so many years ago.