Journals
Fall 2004, Vol. 44, No. 4
MANAGING BIOLOGICAL INTEGRITY, DIVERSITY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH IN THE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGES
A special issue of the Natural Resources Journal, published in collaboration with Indiana University School of Law–Bloomington and Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
Managing Biological Integrity, Diversity, and Environmental Health in the National Wildlife Refuges: An Introduction to the Symposium
Robert L. Fischman & Vicky J. Meretsky
The challenge of acting at the intersection of science and the law in environmental policy is a little bit like the weather: everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. This symposium aims both to talk and to do something about the application of biology to an area of public land law that exemplifies the difficulties of interdisciplinary inquiry. It brings together scientists, law professors, and agency implementers to find some common ground for understanding the mandate of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS or Service) to maintain biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health in the national wildlife refuges.
Ecological Concepts, Legal Standards, and Public Land Law: An Analysis and Assessment
Robert B. Keiter
As reflected in the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 and the National Forest Management Act of 1976, undefined biodiversity mandates and related ecological concepts are increasingly appearing in the federal laws governing the public lands. The question arises whether such general statutory provisions can be translated into enforceable legal standards and policies. Both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service have promulgated extensive policies and rules incorporating new biodiversity and ecological integrity obligations into their planning and decision processes. This article assesses the effectiveness of these efforts, inquiring whether the agencies have established clear management priorities, embraced well-accepted ecosystem management principles, and ensured meaningful accountability. Despite several promising steps, the agencies have thus far been reluctant to adopt a rigorously prescriptive ecological management regime. Nonetheless, these nascent legally mandated excursions into biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management are providing valuable lessons in how to translate new scientific ideas into viable planning and management protocols on the public lands.
The Meanings of Biological Integrity, Diversity, and Environmental Health
Robert L. Fischman
This article extracts from the legislative mandate to “ensure that the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the [Refuge] System are maintained,” a range of meanings that reflect scientific and legislative trends in conservation. The standard modes of statutory interpretation yield meanings that largely support the 2001 Fish and Wildlife Service policy delineating three distinct yet overlapping categories. The analysis reveals three insights applicable to other areas of environmental law. First, although diversity and health emphasize important aspects of nature protection, integrity is becoming the umbrella concept to encompass the needs of well functioning landscapes. Second, the effectiveness of an organic mandate hinges on agency implementation, and the 2001 policy—though a laudable start—does not adequately establish benchmarks to measure compliance. Third, broad spatial and temporal scales now frame nature protection. The mandate looks beyond individual refuge boundaries to the context of a watershed, region, or the entire federal land system in addressing the dynamic variation in ecological processes.
The Wildlife Refuge and the Land Community
Eric T. Freyfogle
The statutory duty of refuge managers to promote the “ecological integrity, diversity, and environmental health” of refuge lands provides a sound long-term goal for refuges themselves. But because this goal largely deems human change as undesirable, it is inappropriate and even dangerous to employ when assessing how well nearby lands are being used. For this reason and others, refuge managers need an alternative land-use vision when they talk about the ecological conditions of surrounding landscapes. What is needed, when talking about larger landscapes and about the ways well-managed refuges contribute to those landscapes, is a conservation goal that integrates human needs and aspirations into the natural landscape, something akin to the goal of land health that Aldo Leopold crafted in the 1940s and proposed to colleagues as an overarching aim for all conservation work.
National Wildlife Refuge System: Ecological Context and Integrity
J. Michael Scott, Thomas Loveland, Kevin Gergely, James Strittholt & Nancy Staus
The Refuge Improvement Act of 1997 established a statutory mission and management standards for the National Wildlife Refuge system. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service subsequently issued a policy for ensuring the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the system. This policy requires understanding the management objectives of each refuge in a local, regional, and national context. An assessment of the refuge system in a national and regional context reveals that refuges are typically smaller than many conservation holdings and are unevenly distributed across the conterminous U.S. Western rangelands, coastal wetlands, and northern grasslands; wetlands are the best-represented ecosystems while temperate forests have the poorest representation. In contrast to other agency holdings or management designations in the national protected areas network (e.g., national parks, national forests, wilderness areas), refuges tend to occupy sites at lower elevations and that have higher productivity and soil quality. This difference points to the important contribution of the refuges in providing much needed ecological balance within the national protected areas network. However, the ecological integrity of the refuge system is challenged by the proximity of individual refuges to development. Overall, the refuges are becoming islands in a landscape matrix of urban and agricultural development. This creates future challenges for meeting management objectives to ensure the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the system. If the policy to ensure biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the refuge system is to be successful, it may be more important to address issues about what happens on adjacent lands than uses within refuges.
Beyond Definitions: Maintaining Biological Integrity, Diversity, and Environmental Health on National Wildlife Refuges
James R. Karr
Throughout its century-long history, the National Wildlife Refuge System has been dedicated to the protection of living systems. For many refuges, management emphasis involved a subset of nature such as migratory waterfowl. Passage of the 1997 National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act defined a new mission but framed it with elusive terms such as biological integrity and environmental health. Although the context and meaning of these words have been explored for several decades, such as in implementation of the Clean Water Act, they remain the focus of ongoing debates. Because that controversy is unlikely to be resolved entirely, the Fish and Wildlife Service should place emphasis on moving beyond the debates about definitions to actually understand status and trends in refuge living systems. That understanding can only come with a rigorous sampling and analytical framework focused on practical and technically sound measures to track refuge condition. Defining precisely what parameters are to be measured and documenting how they behave in the face of human-induced and natural disturbances must form the centerpiece of these efforts. Equally important is the task of communicating the status and trends of living resources within refuge boundaries to Fish and Wildlife Service administrators, political leaders, and the public.
Some Suggestions for Keeping National Wildlife Refuges Healthy and Whole
Reed F. Noss
National wildlife refuges have a biological conservation mandate surpassing that of any other category of public land in the United States. The National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 forged a statutory requirement to maintain the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of refuges. Yet, considerably more guidance from science is needed if this mandate is to be interpreted in a scientifically defensible and biologically conservative manner. After evaluation of the extent to which well-accepted goals and principles of conservation biology are reflected in the wildlife refuge system mandate and in the actual design and management of refuges, it is evident that connections of refuges and other reserves across regional landscapes and better integration of refuge management with surrounding land uses are needed to enhance the conservation mission of refuges. A careful interpretation of biological (or ecological) integrity, biodiversity, and health in establishing policies for refuges and in indicator selection, monitoring, and adaptive management is essential. Integrity, the broadest of the three concepts invoked in the new mandate, incorporates notions of wholeness (or intactness or completeness), resistance to stress, and resilience—the capacity to bounce back after a disturbance. Measuring the position and movement of refuges along a complex gradient of relatively pristine to highly degraded requires well-selected indicators and a rigorous monitoring design. Finally, the spirit of the new mandate can be fully realized only when managers and policy makers embrace the land ethic of Aldo Leopold and are willing and able to think bigger in space, time, and ambition.
A Chronological Frame of Reference for Ecological Integrity and Natural Conditions
Brian Czech
Biological integrity, environmental health, and naturalness are increasingly relevant to the management of conservation lands. Biological integrity and environmental health, integrated via the concept of “ecological integrity,” imply the recognition of natural conditions. A holistic and adaptable approach to ascertaining natural conditions recognizes geological and evolutionary processes and the role of humans in modifying such processes. For policy purposes, a reasonable frame of reference for natural conditions begins with the Medieval Warm Period of approximately 800 A.D. and ends with the advent of industrial economy approximately 1000 years later. Data sources for ascertaining natural conditions are primarily ethnographic, historic, archeological, and paleontological. This pre-industrial frame of reference for natural conditions acknowledges a fundamental transformation in the relationship of humans to nature corresponding with proliferation of the human economy at the competitive exclusion of nonhuman species in the aggregate. Ecological integrity remains at its highest level in areas where natural conditions have been least compromised, but some level of ecological integrity exists everywhere and may be maintained accordingly. Ultimately, ecological integrity relies on macroeconomic prudence.
Maintaining the Biological Integrity, Diversity, and Environmental Health of the National Wildlife Refuge System
Noah P. Matson
By 1984, selenium contamination from agricultural runoff had become so acute at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in California that waterfowl were dying, bird embryos were deformed, and aquatic species were disappearing. The incident raised questions about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS or Service) ability to address resource issue emanating from beyond refuge boundaries and whether the FWS had an affirmative duty to sustain wildlife on a national wildlife refuge. The landmark 1997 National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act clearly mandates affirmative stewardship responsibilities for the FWS, including a provision to maintain the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the refuge system. While these terms are generally understood by the scientific and resource professional community, detailed prescriptions for management are less clear. I propose a simple framework that allows for integration with the existing refuge management planning process to address management issues that are clear (like the contamination at Kesterson) while establishing a longer-term research oriented approach to better understand and maintain the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the refuge system.
Biological Integrity, Diversity, and Environmental Health Policy and the Attainment of Refuge Purposes: A Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Case Study
J. Gregory Mensik & Fred L. Paveglio
National Wildlife Refuges are established with a range of management purposes as a result of a variety of acquisition authorities including legislative mandate, executive order, and establishing memorandum. The National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 mandates that each refuge shall be managed to fulfill the System mission and its establishing purposes, as well as to maintain the System’s overall biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health. We offer the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge as a case study demonstrating the challenges a refuge staff faces when implementing management practices that achieve refuge purposes while also maintaining and, where appropriate, restoring biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health as well as complying with a multitude of other legislative mandates and policies.
Managing National Wildlife Refuges for Historic or Non-Historic Conditions: Determining the Role of the Refuge in the Ecosystem
Richard L. Schroeder, Jeanne Holler & John P. Taylor
The 1997 Refuge Improvement Act mandates that National Wildlife Refuges (NWR) develop Comprehensive Conservation Plans and that the Refuge System be administered in a manner that ensures the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the System are maintained. Refuges must determine their role in the landscape and decide if refuge lands will be managed for historic or non-historic conditions. This decision should be based on an understanding of the Refuge Purpose and supported by available science. Case studies for Sherburne NWR and Bosque del Apache NWR illustrate two possible approaches to determining future management.
Leaving Wildlife out of Wildlife Refuges: The Irony of Wyoming v. United States
Stanley Fields
During the twentieth century, the federal government has engaged in an increasing number of conflicts with state governments over the management of wildlife. Many of these conflicts have concerned the management of wildlife that is sometimes on federal land. This article uses Wyoming v. United States as a prism with which to analyze the application of the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act (Improvement Act) and its impacts on wildlife management. The Tenth circuit’s application of the Act is examined in the framework of law and science. Legally, the article considers the Tenth Circuit’s application of the Improvement Act in the context of the Tenth Amendment, related sovereignty issues, case law, and the Act itself. Scientifically, the article considers the impracticalities of the court’s opinion in the context of wildlife and disease management. Possible alternatives to the Tenth Circuit’s interpretation and application of the Improvement Act are also presented. The ultimate conclusion is that the court’s interpretations and rulings regarding the Improvement Act provide confusion and inconsistency in the interpretation and application of the Act.
