Keeping protected areas dynamic

For protected areas like national parks to be most successful and beneficial to wildlife, scientists say they should be managed to embrace natural landscape dynamics rather than keeping static conditions. A team of researchers recently asserted that conservation models often resist natural ecosystem processes like wildfire. They propose that these models take dynamic factors into consideration, which will involve more intentional human action. The researchers stress including traditional ecological knowledge, since Indigenous people have successfully maintained ecosystem dynamics for millennia. “Protecting a place and embracing change are not mutually exclusive,” the authors wrote. “We must consider reducing our focus on conserving landscapes and move toward the conservation of landscape dynamics.”

Read the paper in BioScience.

Header Image: To protect national forests, scientists recommend keeping them dynamic. Credit: Deborah Lee Soltesz, U.S. Forest Service Coconino National Forest. Sycamore Canyon is Arizona’s second largest canyon. The Wilderness was Arizona’s first designated Wilderness Area, originally set aside as a Primitive Area. Wilderness areas are set aside by an act of the U.S. Congress to preserve wild areas in their natural state in order to provide a primitive, natural experience and protect the beauty of these areas. See the trail guide for Parsons Trail No. 144 to learn more about how to hike this easy trail into Sycamore Canyon Wilderness.