This commentary is by Jon Leibowitz of Middlesex, executive director at Northeast Wilderness Trust, a regional land trust with a mission to conserve forever-wild landscapes for nature and people.
In late January, President Biden signed an executive order committing the United States to “30×30” — a global initiative that calls for 30 percent of the planet’s lands and waters to be conserved by 2030.
30×30 is a science-based effort to protect biodiversity, combat climate change, and conserve nature’s resiliency and wonder. As recently articulated in The New York Times and elsewhere, indigenous partnership and leadership will be key to the success of this audacious goal.
Our future relies on a biodiverse world. In New England, witness to one of the great global stories of reforestation, the continued restoration of the region’s full diversity of life depends on conserving connected and protected areas, the heart of which must be forever-wild strongholds: wilderness.
Just 5 percent of New England is “protected” using the framework cited by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s House Resolution to Save Nature. We have a long way to go.
In the coming months, there will be many conversations about what should count towards the 30 percent. Some will argue that all categories of undeveloped land, from intensely managed forests to farmland, should count. Every category of conservation is essential and all conserved lands help make our communities healthier and stronger. We need all of it.
However, as far as meeting the specific goals of 30×30, not all categories of conservation are equally useful or effective; permanently protected wild landscapes must be central to the effort. Wilderness areas have long been underutilized as a conservation strategy across New England, but they are in fact vital and are the most logical path to address the dual and entwined climate and biodiversity crises.
What are wilderness areas? They are places free of extractive uses, such as logging. They are places afforded the time and space to grow old and complex while giving natural processes the freedom to create and shape life’s diversity . Wilderness areas (sometimes called wildlands or natural areas) offer myriad benefits.
When it comes to supporting a diversity of thriving species, maximizing carbon storage, and providing clean water, conserving land as wild is indispensable. Older, unmanaged forests contain massive carbon stocks stored in various pools — soils, litter, above-ground wood — that grow and diversify over time. If lost, the carbon is often irrecoverable over the next century — an amount of time we simply don’t have.
Old, unmanaged forests’ complex architecture and ample deadwood support higher densities of forest-breeding species, especially interior forest songbirds, snag-dependent creepers and woodpeckers, salamanders, arthropods and mosses. Additionally, water quality is best maintained by a well-developed canopy and organic-rich soils, both of which are reduced by soil compaction and herbicides often associated with logging.
It will require bold action to meet the goals of 30×30 in New England. Most of all, it will require an unprecedented dedication to increasing the amount of permanently protected wild places by land trusts, government agencies and the general public.
The bold action required to meet 30×30 also offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to diversify the conservation sector itself for the betterment of the planet and our collective future. Arguably, seizing this opportunity is as crucial as the conservation work.
There is cruel irony in the fact that the original people of New England, removed from much of their homeland, have subsequently been left out of the very movement that arose as a direct counterforce to Euro-American manifest destiny. We cannot change history, but we can learn from it.
Now is the time for the conservation community to embrace Indigenous partnership — and all underrepresented communities that have been left out of or excluded from this vital conversation — and, together, support a broader notion of what conservation stands for and who it benefits. This new conservation must encompass the entire life community and deepen our relationship with and commitment to the more-than-human realm.
The durability of conservation achievements that occur today wholly rely on the invested partners who will carry the burden of caring for and defending the land tomorrow. These partners must be as diverse as New England itself.
All of humanity relies on a healthy biosphere. At the same time, the future of warblers, newts and cougars — all of our wild cousins — relies on humanity to acknowledge the intrinsic value of Earth, beyond its utility as a resource.
Under the framework of 30×30, there is room for myriad strategies that center on nature-focused conservation while adding seats to the decision-making table. If we proceed with humility and collectively recognize that we must share this planet with millions of other species — our kin — rather than dominating and exploiting them, we may just have a shot at continuing this grand human experiment.
Let’s rise to the challenge, for wild nature, for our future, together.
