How Should We Measure Conservation Progress?
Hurricane, Utah. Photo credit: Joshua Hoehne. Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) land.
Outdoor Alliance recently shared its feedback with the administration on how to best measure and advance progress toward the goal to protect 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.
As you might remember, last January, the Biden administration released an executive order committing the U.S. to protecting 30 percent of its land and water by 2030. In the spring, the administration released a longer “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful” report, which detailed its approach and included a recommendation that agencies develop a Conservation and Stewardship Atlas, which would measure and guide future conservation. This spring, Interior gathered feedback on developing this Atlas, which is intended to measure the progress of conservation efforts across the country.
Outdoor Alliance has been enthused about the idea that we can pursue climate protection, biodiversity conservation, and recreation access together for some time now, because it offers some win-win-win opportunities for conservation and benefits to outdoor recreationists and local communities.
Click to read the full letter to Interior.
The Department of the Interior recently solicited feedback on its development of a Conservation and Stewardship Atlas that would work to measure progress toward conservation goals. There are many opportunities to conserve land and water that will improve outdoor recreation experiences and provide benefits for biodiversity and climate.
You can read our full letter to Interior here, but below are a few takeaways:
The most important aspect of the Atlas is that it is a tool for action. The Atlas will be most successful if it guides and facilitates on-the-ground restoration and protection.
There are many ways the Atlas can support efforts to improve biodiversity, address climate change, and also benefit recreation access and underserved communities. In mapping important landscapes, we can measure not just land but also surrounding communities and recreation assets, to better identify how to close gaps in outdoor access while also contributing to conservation.
One possible way to pursue this is through Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs). OECMs are a new conservation approach, a way of accounting for protections that might be focused on something other than biodiversity. Land that is protected for recreation, cultural, or other reasons might also have biodiversity benefits that could contribute to overall 30x30 goals. We support ways of incorporating more diverse protections into the Atlas, including OECMs, which offer an opportunity to embrace holistic, flexible, and inclusive approaches to conservation.
While we won’t reach 30x30 by focusing on federal lands and waters alone, they are a critical place to begin making significant contributions. One important way to do this is through land planning, but land management agencies, like the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, need resources to update their land management plans. Given that the agencies manage public lands and waters for a diversity of uses—recreation, timber, conservation, development—it’s crucial that staff have support to pursue conservation objectives.
Federal land can also contribute meaningfully to 30x30 work and benefit the outdoor recreation community, through protections like Wild & Scenic Rivers, National Scenic Trail corridors, and Recreation Emphasis Areas.
Stewardship, including trail maintenance, dam removal, watershed restoration, and wildfire resilience, can also meaningfully contribute to conservation goals.
The Atlas will be most effective if it views conservation as a continuum. There is a spectrum of protections and benefits ranging from backcountry Wilderness to urban parks and frontcountry trails near population centers.
As a tool, the Atlas should meaningfully increase the pace, scale, and impact of conservation across the country by helping land managers, local communities, Congress, and the administration pursue conservation and make it a priority.