The U.S. Commits to Tripling its Protected Lands: Here’s How It Could Happen In a new executive order, the president promised to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and 30 percent of U.S. oceans by 2030. by Sarah Gibbens, www.nationalgeographic.com
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n an executive order issued on January 27 to address the climate crisis, President Joe Biden ordered a pause on new oil and gas leases on public lands and created a White House office of environmental justice. He also quietly committed his administration to an ambitious conservation goal—to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and coastal seas by 2030. That target, referred to as “30 by 30” by the conservation (aka environmental) community, is backed by scientists who argue that reaching it is critical both to fighting climate change and to protecting the estimated one million species at risk of going extinct. The U.S. is currently conserving around 26 percent of its coastal waters but only about 12 percent of its land in a largely natural state, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. To reach the 30 by 30 target will require conserving an additional area twice the size of Texas, more than 440 million acres, within the next 10 years. The White House has yet to specify who will oversee the initiative at the federal level and which lands and waterways might be prioritized. Biden’s commitment to conserve 30 percent of U.S. land by 2030 will require a huge increase in protected areas. Link for maps: h t t p s : / / w w w. n a t i o n a l g e o g r a p h i c . com/environment/article/biden-commits-to-30-by-2030-conservation-executive-orders Only 12 percent of total U.S. area has sufficient protections to meet the 30 by 30 conservation goal. Protecting 30 percent of the U.S. by 2030 would require 440 million more acres to be set aside. Conservation scientists who have been advocating the idea for years, however, say the secret to pulling it off will be making decisions based on sound science, avoiding shortcuts, and ensuring voices from those most
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impacted, like rural voters and American Indian tribes, are heard. Biden’s order promises to engage a broad range of stakeholders, including local governments, in the process. “The conservation crisis is as important as the climate crisis,” says Tom Cors, government relations director for land at the Nature Conservancy. He describes the decision to tackle 30 by 30 as both “daunting and heartening.” WHAT IS IT EXACTLY? International bodies have been setting conservation targets for decades, but scientists have long debated how much nature is enough. In a book published in 2016, the renowned biologist E.O. Wilson introduced his idea of “half Earth,” arguing that protecting half the planet would save as many as 90 percent of imperiled species. The movement was energized by Swiss philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss, who donated a billion dollars to launch the Wyss Campaign for Nature, an initiative devoted to achieving 30 by 30. In late 2018, several large conservation organizations, including the nonprofit National Geographic Society, published a statement calling for 30 percent of the planet to be sustainably managed by 2030 and 50 percent to be sustainably managed by 2050. The 2030 target outlined by nonprofit groups then had three core objectives: to conserve species threatened by development, to protect ecosystems that offer services like storing carbon, and to restore degraded habitats. In his campaign platform, Biden pledged to commit to 30 by 30 for similar reasons: “protecting biodiversity, slowing extinction rates, and helping leverage natural climate solutions.” SO HOW DO WE GET THERE? Currently, the federal government owns about 640 million acres of land, about 28 percent of all the land in the U.S. But most of it isn’t managed in a way that meets the 30 by 30 standard, in part because resources are regularly extracted from a lot of it. Fossil fuels extracted from federal lands and U.S. waters contribute nearly a quarter of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. Biden’s executive order also places a moratorium on all new federal oil and gas leases; existing leases are not expected to be impacted. But a drilling ban alone is not enough to convert land into a biodiversity haven, advocates say. “If the federal government says ‘we banned oil and gas, now it’s conserved,’ a lot of the
conservation community will be unsatisfied,” says Justin Brashares, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. To understand why, says Brashares’s colleague Arthur Middleton, also a Berkeley wildlife ecologist, consider the Europeans who first colonized the U.S. “They favored places that were productive and had good soil, forests, healthy grasslands, and so forth, and that weight of historical preference for areas that are richer means by and large our public lands have not ended up being where most of the biodiversity is in our country,” he says. Meeting the 30 by 30 target will require improving conservation on land that’s now in private hands. Around 70 percent of land in the U.S. is owned by individuals or companies. “We need private landowners, livestock producers, and tribes,” says Brashares. “Let’s identify a geography and let that lead us to the table and see what levers we can pull.” As far as federal land goes, however, one of the quickest levers the Biden Administration can pull is creating and restoring national monuments. The Antiquities Act grants the president the authority to designate monuments on land or sea, and unlike national parks, they don’t have to be approved by Congress. Former President Barack Obama established the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off New England and dramatically expanded two huge marine monuments in the Pacific. He also established the 1.35-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Former President Donald Trump, however, withdrew some two million acres from Bears Ears and a nearby monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and opened the New England marine monument to fishing. Restoring those monuments is one of the first actions toward 30 by 30 that President Biden can take. He began the 60-day review process to restore the two Utah monuments on his first day in office. “Certainly [restoring] Bears Ears and Grand Staircase are at the top of the list,” says Aaron Weiss, the deputy director at the Center for Western Priorities. “Those are low-hanging fruit.” Conservationists still hope he’ll restore fishing restrictions in the New England monument. There are active campaigns underway to get more monuments designated as well. Additionally, the National Park Service has long identified more than 11,000 tracts continued on page 32 >>
