Warming Trends Alter Conservation: Experts Think Old Paradigm of Fixed Boundaries Will Not Work …

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/24/AR2009012401728.html?hpid=topnews

Warming Trends Alter Conservation

Experts Think Old Paradigm of Fixed Boundaries Will Not Work as Sea Levels Rise

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 25, 2009; Page A03

At the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Maryland's Eastern Shore, sea-level rise threatens to drown the brackish marsh on which migrating shorebirds depend. In Northern California, the shrinking snowpack has reduced stream flows that sustain the delta smelt, a federally threatened fish species. Higher summer temperatures in northern Minnesota have depressed the birthrates of the area's once-populous moose, and just 20 inhabit the Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge that was designed in part to shelter them.

As climate change begins to transform the environment in the United States and overseas, policymakers and environmentalists are realizing that the old paradigm of setting aside tracts of land or sea to preserve species that might otherwise disappear is no longer sufficient. It was an idea that worked in 1872, when one of the reasons cited for establishing Yellowstone National Park was to help preserve the few remaining buffalo.

But as temperatures rise and animals and even plants migrate to more hospitable habitats, fixed boundaries set years ago no longer provide the protection some species need. Experts are exploring new strategies, focusing on such steps as protecting migration corridors, collecting and transplanting seeds, making sanctuary boundaries flexible and managing forests in novel ways.

"We have focused on one single principle: You protect the place where the animals live," said Lawrence A. Selzer, president and chief executive of the Conservation Fund. "That's fine as long as everything's static."

…