by Alan R.P. Journet, Conservation Chair,Trail of Tears Group
There is no doubt that the natural world offers a tremendous opportunity for spiritual renewal. John Muir eloquently argued this over a century ago, and generations of Sierrans have agreed ever since.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the main concern that environmentalists had was for the loss of beautiful and spiritually renewing wilderness. At that time there was little or no thought given to the possibility that human activity might push species in the U.S. towards and over the brink of extinction. It was for this reason, I suspect, that wilderness was the focus of Muir’s concern. Certainly we could not argue that there now exists an excess of wilderness across the land, but unlike a century ago, we now realize that human activities pose a serious threat to the continued existence of many of the species with which we share the planet. Conservation has thus become a concern of the Sierra Club along with preservation and recreational beauty.
It seems to me that the most critical question that we need to ask ourselves in addressing the management dilemma of the Roaring River wilderness and its glades, is whether we are now first conservationists and second preservationists, or vice versa. This question might be answered differently by each of us.
Generally, as John Karel suggested, “most of the time the(se) priority missions (of Missouri’s state parks: natural resources, cultural resources, and recreation) reinforce and complement one another but on occasion initiatives from one mission conflict with values from another. Then we must use prudence as we sort out the most critical resources and the most important long-term benefits….” While we may have individual concerns about cultural resources, our primary focus as a club concerns management of the natural resources and the spiritual recreational opportunities provided. In these discussions, we are forced to identify our priorities among these missions, and respond accordingly.
As Karel further noted: “An unusually large number of native plant and animal species make their homes at Roaring River, including many that are rare, threatened, or endangered - in the nation, the state or the park system.” If this is the case, and some of these species of concern are glade dwellers, then the conservationist in us would argue that we should manage to retain and restore glade habitat in order that the survival potential of these species might be enhanced. But, even if these specific glades contained no species of conservation concern, glade habitat conservation is important. This is because at the hands of human resource managers, glades comprise a rapidly dwindling habitat throughout the state. As we know, the goal of conservation should be to do more than address rare and endangered species already on the brink; rather we should be managing natural resources such that species do not drop in numbers to a level that renders questionable their future existence.
While an important habitat, glades are often generally short-lived, becoming encroached by woody species that eliminate the glade characteristics and thus the glade habitat. Assuredly, this is a natural process. If we had sufficient forest in Missouri that natural processes were at work re-creating glades through fire, there would be no concern that we need to manage to restore and retain those glades that we have. Unfortunately, this is not the case – forestry and development have seen to that. The Roaring River area is targeted for this restoration because it contains a significant number of glade areas.
Karel and Flader suggest that glade management should be restricted to the state park allowing the glades in the wilderness to undergo whatever transformations they will. Unfortunately, the majority of recoverable glade area of the region is actually in the wilderness (668 acres in the Wild Area vs 370 acres in the State Park). If our goal is glade conservation, it makes sense to undertake restoration where the potential for glade recovery is greatest.
The available evidence suggests that the only effective way to maintain glades that are becoming heavily encroached by cedars is to remove the cedars. An effective way to do this is to subject to prescribed, controlled fire the area being encroached while the cedars are still young and susceptible. This is the natural unmanaged technique (maybe with Native American help) that resulted in a mosaic of glade habitats through the Ozarks prior to European settlement.
Unfortunately, fire prevention policies such as the Smokey Bear campaign have been so successful that fires have been largely eliminated in the forests that remain, thus allowing cedars to grow to maturity in many glade areas. This result is a consequence of a human management decision. Even the forests that we now like to think of as pristine wilderness have not escaped the heavy human hand – but have been subjected to human management probably continuously since they arrived in the state several thousand years ago. Unfortunately, the kind of fire intensity necessary to eradicate mature, established cedars would be quite hazardous from the perspective of control, and potentially damaging to the system that we are trying to conserve and restore.
A far more controllable approach would be to clear the cedars manually. Admittedly this has the consequence of breaching management principles, and might be somewhat unsightly to some folks in a way that fire scorching is not – but this constitutes a personal aesthetic value judgment rather than a management judgment. The question here deals with priorities again. Is the semi-pristine nature of the wilderness so critical that management beyond fire is not permissible?
The problem now, as it is in many cases where human (mis)management has produced extensive habitat loss, is to apply what knowledge and understanding we have regarding threatened systems to restoring them. Inevitably, our lack of total knowledge means that practitioners in the fields of conservation biology and ecological restoration must apply the best available wisdom to decisions. This does not imply arrogance on their part, or pretence of complete knowledge. It merely represents a desire to do the best that can be done to restore structure and function to endangered habitats with the knowledge available. Adaptive management can then be applied, allowing modifications to management regimes in the light of experience gained from techniques already applied.
What we are faced with, it seems to me, is a toss up between preservation and conservation. In a nutshell, the dilemma to me is this: On one hand we have a shortage of wilderness with its inherent right to exist and its spiritual values. On the other we have a shortage of glade habitat rendering endangered an unknown number of habitat specialist species that can never be recovered once extinct. Meanwhile, the pure wilderness nature of the area so designated is a little trammeled by the recognition that all forests in Missouri have been exposed to human management since their arrival in the area probably some time between 5 and 10 thousand years ago.
There are abundant examples of federal and state agencies attempting to undermine environmental protection and conservation; we can agree on many of these and oppose them with a concerted coordinated front. But here, there seems to be a desire to stand in the way of an agency that is fundamentally attempting to achieve goals with which we agree because we disagree with their tactics.
It is unfortunate that the environmental community seems to be divided on this issue. I hope, however, that we can discuss it amicably and acknowledge the legitimacy of opposing views rather than split vocally and visibly into opposing camps.
In light of these considerations, I suggest that we not endorse the proposals of John Karel and Susan Flader since I judge them to be weighted more heavily than I like towards non-conservationist preservation goals as opposed to my major concern, which is conservation of biodiversity. I suppose that in this context, I am more of a pragmatist than an idealist, and feel that the best way to achieve the conservation ends in this region is to follow the plan proposed by DNR.