A Manager's Perspective on the Role of Ecosystem Intactness in Conservation

Land managers are responsible for some of the “last great places” in the United States, large natural landscapes that we hope to pass on to our children.  Our management aims to maintain intact landscapes, ensure sustained yield, and provide for responsible resource use and development.  Managers often struggle to make smart management choices that respond to climate change and development pressures while maintaining sustainable and intact landscapes.  Decision-making would benefit from a more robust understanding of what constitutes an intact landscape and an intact ecosystem; what criteria to consider in evaluating resiliency; and how climate change might affect intactness and resiliency.  In most western states, management has focused on maintaining core habitat areas (wilderness and other protected areas) and trying to stitch these together with corridors.  The Alaskan landscape is largely intact and managers are considering how and where to provide for development without breaking landscapes.  Should conservation management continue to focus on “the last best areas” - maintaining areas that are most resilient and focusing development in areas that are already compromised?  Should conservation management focus on areas that are least resilient and most vulnerable to change and focus development in areas that are most resilient and can absorb change while still maintaining a level of intactness? Is the right approach in the lower 48 the right approach in Alaska? Managers continue to make decisions that have long-term resource effects.  Our ability to define, understand, and manage intact ecosystems today will have ramifications long into the future.