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  This is a 400 year plan...  Some say; the ultimate conservation plan.
  Some will recognize some of these people's names.   Comments?
  --Doug

 * Xposted --  Re: GIS


   Yep, alanm@hpdocp16.cup.hp.com wrote on 23 Mar 95  04:03:05 
    about:   Re: Land and Natural Capital..:

 > [The biological
 > purposes and general principles of the maps are discussed in Reed Noss'
 > paper on the Wildlands Project Strategy, available online from the 
 > csf WWW server.]

   A snippet therefrom, to give the gist of the idea [THE WILDLANDS
   PROJECT  LAND CONSERVATION STRATEGY, by Reed Noss]:

   "How do we choose reserves in a regional land conservation
   strategy? The process involves field inventory, remote sensing
   interpretation, and biogeographical research to determine the
   spatial distribution of biodiversity and wild areas, followed by
   an evaluation of which areas are most important to protect. The
   next step, drawing lines on maps, is not as easy as might be
   expected. Each line on a reserve design map represents a decision
   about areas to protect and areas to leave out. Within the near
   future, unfortunately, not every acre can be protected or
   restored. Decisions must be made quickly about which areas are
   most valuable ecologically, before they are altered irrevocably.
   Such decisions should not result in any area being "trashed."
   Ideally, all lands should be managed, at least in part, for
   biodiversity. But some areas deserve and require more rigorous
   protection than others. We call this process of picking and
   choosing "conservation evaluation" (Usher 1986).

   "Conservation evaluation is legitimate because biodiversity is not
   distributed uniformly across the landscape. Certain areas, call
   them "hot spots," are unusually high in sheer number of species
   or contain concentrations of rare or endemic species or unusual
   natural communities. Areas of high physical habitat diversity,
   such as topographically complex landscapes with many distinct
   soil types, are often hot spots. Sites in a landscape also vary
   in conservation value as a result of historical influences,
   including past human activities. Roadless areas, especially when
   large (see Foreman and Wolke 1989), are of great importance
   because they harbor reclusive species and are often inherently
   sensitive to physical disturbance due to steep terrain or highly
   erodible soils (which made them difficult to exploit economically
   and explains why they are still roadless). Parking lots and corn
   fields, on the other hand, would score low in a conservation
   evaluation. Some degraded sites, however, may be priorities for
   restoration due to their locations relative to other landscape
   features, such as lying within a corridor that links hot spots
   across a landscape.

   "Core reserves and primary corridors in a regional network should
   enclose and link biologically critical areas (i.e., those that
   contribute to the goals discussed above) in a continuous system
   of natural habitat whenever possible. Some critical steps in
   selecting core reserves (the most strictly protected areas) and
   primary linkages in a wilderness recovery network, are as follows
   (Foreman 1976, Noss 1987a, 1991a,b,d, Foreman and Wolke 1989):
   1. Select areas that, on the basis of field reconnaissance and
   interpretation of maps, aerial photographs, or satellite images,
   appear to be roadless, undeveloped, or otherwise in essentially
   natural condition. Center proposed core reserves on these
   undeveloped areas. A map of land ownership will show which of
   these areas are on public lands.
   2. Add roaded landscapes that are relatively undeveloped and
   restorable, especially when adjacent to or near roadless areas.
   Addition of such areas is important to increase core reserve size
   and to link roadless areas into larger complexes or networks.
   3. Map the distribution of rare species and community types in
   your region, using state natural heritage program databases
   (these also exist for some Canadian provinces and Latin American
   countries)...
   4. Draw polygons around clusters or constellations of rare
   species and community types. If not encompassed in core reserves
   proposed in steps 1 and 2, add these polygons to the system. Some
   hot spots will be naturally isolated (for instance, caves,
   serpentine barrens, or kettlehole bogs), so linking them by
   corridors is unnecessary.
   5. Obtain information from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
   GIS gap analysis (if completed for your state or states) on
   unprotected and underprotected vegetation types and centers of
   species richness in your region (see Scott et al. 1991). The
   purpose of gap analysis is to provide information on
   representation of ecosystems and species in protected areas. A
   similar representation study is being conducted in Canada by
   World Wildlife Fund-Canada (A. Hackman, personal communication).
   Locate areas that contain vegetation types and centers of species
   richness (areas where the ranges of many species overlap) that
   are not adequately protected in existing reserves. Add these
   areas to your network of sites if not already encompassed through
   steps 1-4.
   6. You have now determined the general locations of your core
   reserves and some of the linkages between them. Next, you need to
   define boundaries more precisely, add more corridors so that all
   sites that would be naturally linked are reconnected, and envelop
   the entire network in a matrix of buffer zones (Fig. 1). To do
   these things, you must zoom in to the landscape scale (say,
   1:24,000 or larger, if feasible). Refer to detailed road maps,
   land ownership maps, land-use information including grazing
   allotments, proposed timber sales, and mineral rights, wildlife
   maps such as ungulate winter range and dispersal corridors, and
   additional data, as available (Foreman 1976, Noss 1991b,d). This
   information also tells you about threats to sites which must be
   averted. Using this information and knowledge of the land, based
   on field reconnaissance and maps, adjust proposed boundaries.
   7. As part of your final proposal, indicate specific actions
   that must be taken to secure the system. These actions include
   land and mineral rights acquisitions, Wilderness or other reserve
   designations on public lands, road closures, road modifications
   (such as underpasses to allow migration of animals beneath
   highways), cancellation of grazing leases and timber sales, tree
   planting, dam removals, stream de-channelization, and other
   restoration projects (Noss 1991d).

   "The issue of appropriate size or scope of a regional wilderness
   recovery network, some aspects of which will be discussed later
   in this article, is thorny. Each region must be assessed
   individually. I suggest that at least half of the land area of
   the 48 conterminous states should be encompassed in core reserves
   and inner corridor zones (essentially extensions of core
   reserves) within the next few decades; I also believe that this
   could be done without great economic hardship. Areas with more
   wild land remaining, such as much of Canada, Alaska, and parts of
   Mexico and Central America, should have higher targets. Some
   regions, such as the Midwestern Till Plains and Northeastern
   Coastal Zone, will take longer to restore to 50 percent
   wilderness, perhaps on the order of centuries. Nonetheless, half
   of a region in wilderness is a reasonable guess of what it will
   take to restore viable populations of large carnivores and
   natural disturbance regimes, assuming that most of the other 50
   percent is managed intelligently as buffer zone.

   "In order to stop the destruction of native biodiversity, major
   changes must be made in land allocations and management
   practices. Systems of interlinked wilderness areas and other
   large nature reserves, surrounded by multiple-use buffer zones
   managed in an ecologically intelligent manner, offer the best
   hope for protecting sensitive species and intact ecosystems. This
   article is about how to select and design such systems at a
   regional scale.

   "Below, I discuss the application of conservation biology to
   wilderness recovery and large-scale land protection strategy in
   general. After reviewing the ecological goals of such a strategy
   and discussing approaches to reserve selection and design, I
   outline the basic components of a wilderness recovery network:
   core reserves, buffer zones, and connectivity. The most important
   considerations in designing and managing such systems are
   representation of all ecosystems; population viability of
   sensitive species, especially large carnivores because they are
   usually most demanding; and perpetuation of ecological and
   evolutionary processes. My hope is that biodiversity activists
   and bioregionalists will be able to use this information in the
   design of ambitious wilderness recovery networks in their own
   regions.

   "Wilderness recovery, I firmly believe, is the most important task
   of our generation."
   ..



...     False economic assumptions are the root of all evil.