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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

New Report Indicates 12% for Protected Areas Not Enough

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

6/20/97

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

Many countries have a 10-12% goal for land preservation of native

ecosystems. A report commissioned by Greenpeace indicates what many

Conservation Biologists and others have been aware of for some time,

that up to half of the world's biological heritage is threatened with

extinction unless current caps on protected areas are lifted. The

report states "The 12% target is a political construct that is not

borne out by good science." The implications of these findings are

presented for British Columbia, Canada. Much larger networks of

native ecosystems arrayed across landscapes, than previously thought,

are needed to maintain ecosystem functionality and native

biodiversity.

g.b.

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/* Written 12:53 AM Jun 17, 1997 by nobody@xs2.greenpeace.org in

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/* ---------- "Protected Areas Target Not Enough -" ---------- */

From: "Greenbase" <greenbas@gb.greenpeace.org>

Subject: Protected Areas Target Not Enough - Mass Extinction Forseen

Groundbreaking Science Report Reveals 12% Protected Areas Target

will Lead to Mass Extinctions

Vancouver, B.C. June 16 1997. At 10:00 a.m. today PST at Robson Media

Center - (800 Robson Street, downtown Vancouver), world renouned

scientists, Drs M.E. Soule, and M. A. Sanjayan, released a report

assessing the biological implications protecting only 10 or 12 per

cent of their native ecosystems. The report, commissioned by

Greenpeace, and released on the verge of the Special Session on

Environment of the UN General Assembly (Earth Summit 2), highlights

that up to half of the world's biological heritage is threatened with

extinction unless current caps on protected areas are lifted. British

Columbia's endangered temperate rainforests were used as the case

study within this preliminary report.

"The 12 per cent target for land area protection is not sufficient to

maintain viable populations of species in British Columbia", said Dr.

M.A. Sanjayan.

"The 12% target is a political construct that is not borne out by good

science. Even more disturbing is the fact that over 60 per cent of

what has been protected in B.C. since 1992 has been rock and ice."

Leading conservation organisations in British Columbia responded by

urging the BC provincial government to remove the 12% limit on

protected area status. Morethan 40 NGOs noted that BC is home to the

largest undisturbed tract of ancient temperate rainforest in the

world, but 36 of the 76 unprotected intact valleys in BC's Great Bear

Rainforest are scheduled to be logged in the next five years.

"International organisations and governments that recommend national

targets for protection, of say, ten percent are implicitly justifying

an extinction of roughly fifty per cent, on average, of each nation's

biotic heritage,'said Dr Michael Soule, founder of the Society for

Conservation Biology. "We are left to wonder whether history will

judge the current guidelines as examples complicit with the major

environmental catastrophe in the last 60 million years."

Based on this report, Greenpeace is calling on world governments to:

1) Triple the existing area of protected forests by the year 2000,

towards a goal of ecologically-representative protected areas that are

large enough to maintain viable populations of associated species and

natural dynamics; 2) Restoration of underrepresented forest ecosystems

to meet the protected areas species conservation objectives and

ensuring adequate connectivity between protected areas; 3) Eliminating

the conversion of natural forests to semi-natural or monoculture

plantations; 4) Continuing the process of respecting and demarcating

all indigenous peoples' lands and implementing adequate extractive

reserves and non-resource extraction zones; 5) Participation of

indigenous peoples in conservation measures, based on the recognition

of their rights to manage and use their traditional forest arrears.

Specifically to British Columbia's endangered coastal temperate

rainforests, Greenpeace demands:

1) No logging in any of the remaining pristine rainforest valleys; 2)

No new roads in the temperate rainforest; 3) An immediate end to

clearcutting; 4) Deferral on 45% of each representative ecosystems in

B.C. until proper conservation needs assessments have been completed

and implemented. Additionally, Greenpeace calls for the Canadian

federal government to draft and implement an endangered species act

which applies to all of Canada's landbase and ensures the protection

of critical species habitat.

Contacts:

Greenpeace in Canada: Tzeporah Berman, Patrick Anderson and

Alison Turner (604) 253-7701 or (604) 220-7701.

Greenpeace International: Holger Roenitz: 31-20-523-6555

About the Authors:

Biologist Michael Soule' is the author more than 100 scientific

publications including several groundbreaking books on conservation

and conservation biology. He was a founder and first president of the

Society for Conservation Biology, was a co-author of the original

draft of the biodiversity convention , was one of the founders

and currently President of The Wildlands Project, is a Fellow of

the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has

consulted for many agencies and organizations, including UNEP, FAO,

UNESCO, WWF-US, NAS/NRC, and the now defunct Office of Technology

Assessment. He graduated from San Diego State University in 1959, then

received his advanced degrees from Stanford University, studying

closely with Paul R. Ehrlich. He is currently Research Professor

(emeritus) of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz. He also serves

on the science advisory boards of several organizations, including La

Sierra Foundation, The Defenders of Wildlife, and The Nature

Conservancy.

Biologist M.A. Sanjayan has authored four publications on the

relationship between genetic variation and species fitness in nature,

especially as species become isolated through habitat fragmentation.

He has consulted to the World Bank on a number of projects, including

the Global Environment Facilities grant portfolio and Integrated

Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs), as well as organizing

workshops to bridge the gap between indigenous peoples and the

conservation community. Dr. Muttlulingam received his BS and MS at the

University of Oregon and his doctorate under Michael Soule' at the

University of California, Santa Cruz.

BACKGROUND TO THE REPORT, MOVING BEYOND BRUNDTLAND - The

Conservation

Value of British Columbia's 12 Percent Protected Area Strategy

PROBLEM STATEMENT

An estimated 50-90% of the world's plant and animal species depend on

forests, with the IUCN reporting that the percentage of "Red List"

species endangered globally by loss of forest and other natural

habitat is: 75% of mammals, 42% of birds, 53% of amphibians and 66% of

reptiles. This report was commissioned to identify concrete steps that

governments can take to slow or prevent this global catastrophe. It

focuses on the case study of British Columbia's rainforests, the

region with the highest number of old growth-dependent species in

North America - which is scheduled to have half of its intact

watersheds logged or roaded in the next five years. The Provincial

Government of B.C. has been adamant in capping province-wide

protection at 12%. Greenpeace sought an independent analysis of the

scientific basis of this cap and what the consequences might be for

B.C.'s rainforests and its associated species.

KEY FINDINGS OF MOVING BEYOND BRUNDTLAND

* A number of historic international meetings, most notably the 3rd

World Congress on National Parks - which led to the 1981 Bali Action

Plan - and the U.N. World Commission on Environment and Development -

which led to Our Common Future (the Brundtland Report), have set

targets towards global protected areas. These have generally been set

artificially low to avoid seeming "unrealistic". Across the board,

there was acknowledgment that creation of protected areas has been

driven as much or more by political considerations than well-reasoned,

scientifically-based ecosystem planning.

* It is unclear, however, how useful such fixed targets are in

promoting actual conservation. The question remains whether such

protection targets actually do more harm than good in maintaining the

integrity of the ecosystem and the viability of the component species

because they are too low and have commonly been mis-interpreted,

notably by British Columbia's provincial Government on its 12% limit

and by governments responding to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature's

call for an interim protected area target of 10% by the year 2000.

* A review of the literature of the field of conservation biology

estimates that protecting between 25 and 45% of the temperate regions

is likely necessary to fully conserve the planet's temperate

terrestrial biological diversity, although not all as national parks.

That proportion is higher in tropical areas and perhaps lower in the

boreal zones. This figure is based on an empirically established

principle referred to as the 'species-area relationship" from the

field of island biogeography.

* A corollary of the species-area relationship is that a 90% loss of

habitat will precipitate a 50% loss of species within the remnant of

natural habitat, assuming that the remnant itself is unfragmented. In

other words, reaching only the protected areas target set by a number

of the world's governments, while allowing widespread conversion in

the remaining areas, would represent the single greatest ecological

catastrophe of the past 60 million years.

* The best way of protecting species is through the comprehensive

protection of ecologically-representative core areas that are fully

off-limits to industrial resource extraction, connected by biological

corridors and large enough to maintain all associated species and

natural dynamics.

* In British Columbia, the 12% ceiling is a result of the current New

Democratic Party's initial acceptance of the interim target of WWF's

"Endangered Spaces" campaign, but eventual caving-in to timber, mining

and other resource extraction interests to set this as an immovable

cap. This ceiling is not the result of scientific gap analysis by B.C.

government agencies, and in fact preceded some of the baseline

scientific studies by those agencies that would have helped to

determine a more realistic protected areas strategy.

* Big mammals need big protected areas. In the United States, the goal

of the official recovery plan for grizzly bears is a population of 500

breeding individuals, which represents an actual population size of

about 2000 individual grizzlies, requiring a connected territory of

129,500 km2. This territorial estimate supports the call by groups

such as Greenpeace and the Canadian Rainforest Network who have called

for a moratorium on logging the intact watersheds of the "Great Bear

Rainforest" - the midcoast region of B.C. which supports one of the

healthiest populations of grizzly bears in the world.

* While gaining international attention for its recent park creation,

B.C. parks are generally too small. About 30% of the terrestrial

ecosections defined by the province of B.C. continue to have

essentially no representation, and half of the ecosections have less

than 6% of their areas designated for protection. Even more disturbing

is that as of 1996, 61.2% of the total new protected area designated

since November 1991 was classified as alpine or sub-alpine,

perpetuating the bias in favour of "rock and ice". This means that

only 2.8% remains to be designated in a manner that would compensate

for the imbalances of the past.

GREENPEACE's CALL TO ACTION

Greenpeace calls for the world's governments to stop endangering

forests and the diversity of life that depend on them through

comprehensive forest protection, restoration and connection, and

to ensure the rights of traditional forest-dependent cultures through

the following policies:

- tripling the total global area of ecologically representative

networks of protected forest areas by 2000, making progress towards a

goal of global protected areas that are large enough to adequately

maintain viable populations of associated species and natural

dynamics;

- restoration of under-represented forest ecosystems to meet the

protected area species conservation objectives and ensuring adequate

connectivity between protected areas;

- eliminating the conversion of natural forests to semi-natural or

monoculture plantations;

- continuing the process of respecting and demarcating all indigenous

peoples" lands and implementing adequate extractive reserves and

resource extraction-free zones;

- participation of indigenous peoples in conservation measures, based

on the recognition of their rights to manage and use their traditional

forest areas.

Specifically for British Columbia's endangered coastal temperate

rainforests, Greenpeace demands:

- no logging in any of the remaining pristine rainforest valleys;

- no new roads in the temperate rainforest;

- an immediate end to clearcutting;

- Deferral on 45% of each representative ecosystem in B.C. until

proper conservation needs assessments have been completed and

implemented. Additionally, Greenpeace calls for the Canadian federal

government to draft and implement an endangered species act covering

all of Canada.

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