Corinne Smith 1, Shane Feire r 2 , Randy Hagenstein 2 , Amalie Couvillion 2 , Sarah Leonard 2

1 The Nature Conservancy, Anchorage, Alaska
2 University of California Davis, Hopland, California

Abstract

Because 90% of Alaska is owned by the state and federal governments, one could assume that conservation there is mostly about how these lands are managed as opposed to the need for protecting new lands through acquisition, legislation or private preserves. However, several researchers have shown that protected areas (e.g. parks and refuges) in other parts of the world are often the least productive and least desirable lands and that huge gaps in biodiversity conservation can exist in spite of a large network of protected areas. A complete gap analysis has not yet been conducted for Alaska. Here we examine the distribution of land management across Alaska and assess how well the protected areas are distributed across Alaska at a statewide scale and at an ecoregion scale. Using the framework of the USGS Gap Analysis Program, we developed conservation management status categories appropriate to the level of development and human use in the state. We found that while 43.6% of Alaska is managed for high and medium levels of conservation, total protection within ecoregions ranges from 6.9% in the Beaufort Coastal Plain to 100% in the Kluane Range.

Introduction

In 2005, Alaska celebrated the 25 th anniversary of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which protected over 100 million acres of federal land in Alaska for conservation purposes. The Act doubled the total acreage in the U.S. national park system and created or expanded national wildlife refuges and national forests across Alaska. The Act arguably made Alaska one of the most protected places in the U.S. Its network of protected areas includes 15 national parks, 2 national forests, 16 national wildlife refuges, and over 14.7 million acres (5.9 million hectares) of state-owned lands managed for conservation.

Because 90% of Alaska is owned by the state and federal governments, one might assume that conservation in Alaska is mostly about how these lands are managed as opposed to the need for protecting new lands through acquisition, legislation or private preserves. However, several studies elsewhere have shown that protected areas are often the least productive and least desirable lands (Nilsson and Gottmark 1992; Scott et al. 2001), and that huge gaps in biodiversity protection can exist in the face of what might seem to be a sufficient network of protected areas (Caicco 1995; Rodrigues et al. 2004). We examined the distribution of land management and ownership across Alaska and used ecoregions as the unit for an initial assessment of how well the protected areas capture and protect the terrestrial biodiversity of Alaska.

In the United States, much emphasis has been placed on federal public lands for their role in conserving national biodiversity (Crumpacker et al. 1988; Grumbine et al. 1990; Brussard et al. 1992). Gap analysis assesses current levels of protection and identifies ecosystems and species that are underrepresented in protected areas (GAP 1998; Jennings 2000). The U.S. Geological Survey’s Gap Analysis Program (GAP) provides a framework for assigning conservation management status to different land management types (Scott et al. 1993; Crist 1994; Jennings 2000). Conservation management status (CMS) describes the degree to which land, particularly public land, is legally designated and explicitly managed for biodiversity conservation.

A complete gap analysis has not yet been conducted for Alaska. More than a decade ago, Schoen and West (1994) called for a gap analysis of Alaska to help agencies set conservation strategies across the state. Duffy et al. (1999) began that analysis by using the GAP framework to assess the degree of protection of Alaska’s terrestrial biodiversity at a statewide scale. A gap analysis of Alaska is an important first step in determining an efficient approach to conservation in the state (Groves 2003).

Assigning conservation management status

Most of Alaska remains in federal ownership (67%), with the state owning 23%, and local governments and private entities owning 10%. Less than 1 percent of the landscape has been altered by agricultural, industrial, or urban development (Schoen and West 1994), so large-scale ecological processes continue with little human interference. For example, over 6 million acres of taiga burned in the summer of 2004 (NIFC 2004), and caribou migrate hundreds of miles annually (Paulson and Beletsky 2001).

The GAP framework assigns land management types to 4 CMS categories according to the degree to which the land is explicitly managed for conservation (GAP 1998; Jennings 2000). Criteria for CMS categories include size of area, what is protected, and overall management intent. In general, CMS 1 and 2 have a strong emphasis on conservation protections and have legal designations that are challenging to change. CMS 3 and 4 have no mandated conservation management or are used primarily for human activity. CMS 1 and 2 are assumed to provide high and medium protection, respectively, of species and landscape. In the lower 48 states, national parks, wilderness areas, and national wildlife refuges are typically classified as CMS 1 or 2.

The Nature Conservancy in Alaska and other conservation practitioners (Duffy et al. 1999) have found that the GAP CMS categories cannot be applied directly to management of Alaska lands in the same way as in the lower 48 states for several reasons. First, ANILCA allows uses of federal protected areas that are typically banned in the rest of the country. For example in Alaska (but nowhere else), motorized vehicles are permitted in wilderness areas for traditional activities, such as subsistence hunting and gathering; thus we needed to determine whether these wilderness areas should be assigned a CMS 1 as in the lower 48. Second, the management of state protected areas (e.g. forests, sanctuaries, preserves) varies from state to state. Third, national parks and preserves and wildlife refuges in Alaska tend to be managed more similarly to each other than the same units are in the lower 48 states and most have minimal levels of development. Therefore these federal management types may be assigned different conservation management status than in the lower 48 in a gap analysis.

To determine how to assign CMS to Alaska lands, we reviewed the ANILCA legislation and state laws and regulations for state protected areas and interviewed federal and state land managers to help us understand how those laws and regulations are applied to Alaska protected areas. We also reviewed GAP’s criteria (GAP 1998) and developed a dichotomous key to assist us in assigning CMS (Table 1). We focused on the following factors to determine CMS for Alaska land management types:

Permanence of protection from conversion of natural land cover to unnatural cover. We assumed that protected areas created through legislative action will be more difficult to dissolve than those created through administrative action (e.g. National Monuments created by Executive Order) and thus offer longer-lasting protection.

Relative amount of land maintained in a natural state. We looked not only at how much of the protected area has been developed but also how much of the unit is intensely utilized for human activities such as recreation or timber harvest. Most protected areas in Alaska have limited development and most federal units are very large. Thus we used the 5% limit suggested by GAP (1998) as a threshold for development and intense human utilization.

Ecosystem management versus single species or feature management. We assumed that lands managed for all species will protect overall biodiversity better than those managed for particular elements of biodiversity.

Management of natural disturbances. Management that allows natural processes such as fire to occur with no or minimal interference received a higher CMS than lands where natural processes are suppressed.

Motorized access. Most public lands in Alaska are open to some types of motorized access. We gave the most protective CMS 1 to lands where motorized access is very restricted or prohibited.

To distinguish significant differences within the four GAP conservation status categories, we defined intermediate conservation status categories for Alaska (Table 1; Table 2). The most protected lands, CMS 1 and 1.5, are managed for the entire ecosystem and have minimal development. CMS 1 lands, national parks and wilderness areas, are distinguished from CMS 1.5 lands, national preserves and wildlife refuges, by restrictions on motorized access and sport hunting. All or selected natural features are protected by law or a management plan on the cumulative CMS 2 lands, but low intensity human use occurs on more than 5% of the land. These lands include state parks and refuges, portions of national forests not used for timber harvest, wild and scenic rivers, and Bureau of Land Management conservation areas. CMS 3 lands may protect selected natural features or have minimal development, but the intent of the management is for intensive human activities like resource extraction or motorized recreation on more than 5% of the land. Recreation areas, military bases, and national forests fall into this category. We separated CMS 4 lands into public and private ownership. CMS 4 public lands are developed or the management intent is primarily for human uses, such as mining. Determining the management intent for private lands, including Native corporations’ holdings and Native allotments, was beyond the scope of this project, so we have conservatively assumed that all private lands are primarily managed for human use. For analysis in this paper, we have collapsed the Alaska CMS categories to the four GAP categories, 1 – 4.

Developing a conservation management status spatial dataset

Once we determined CMS for the different land management types in Alaska, we mapped land management types and conservation management status across the state. To develop a land management dataset for Alaska, we collected GIS datasets from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources (ADNR), BLM, National Park Service (NPS), Chugach National Forest, Tongass National Forest, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). The ADNR dataset identifies land ownership at the section level (640 acres) but does not differentiate among the various land designations managed by each agency. The boundaries of state and federal protected areas were delineated with GIS datasets from each agency. The BLM maintains a GIS dataset of Alaska Native allotments, which range in size from 40 to 160 acres. In total, we joined 36 GIS datasets to develop a statewide land management dataset. Boundary precedence was assigned in the following priority: Native Allotments, NPS, USFWS, BLM, and ADNR. We then mapped the CMS of each land management type represented in the spatial dataset.

Assessing conservation management status across the state and ecoregions

We evaluated the distribution of CMS 1 and 2 lands across the state and ecoregions in Alaska. An ecoregion is a geographic area that shares common geology, soils, climate, and vegetation. While Duffy et al. (1999) used the 28 ecoregions described by Bailey et al. (1994), we used a more recent ecoregion map developed by Nowacki et al. (2001). Nowacki et al. (2001) delineated 32 ecoregions in Alaska; these ecoregions are either wholly in Alaska or extend from Alaska into western Canada or the Russian portion of the Bering Sea (Figure 2).

Revisions to how lands were classified as CMS 1 and 2 improved the picture of conservation at the statewide scale from the Duffy et al (1999) study. Our inclusion of national wildlife refuges and some forest service lands in CMS 1 and 2 increased the amount of protected lands from less than 19% to 43.6% statewide. Of Alaska’s 365 million acres, 36.7% come under CMS 1, 6.9% under CMS 2, 9.2% under CMS 3, and 47.2% CMS 4 public and private lands (Figure 2). We found that despite the overwhelming majority ownership (90%) by federal and state government, less than half of all public lands (43.6% CMS 1 and 2) are managed for high or medium conservation (CMS 1 and 2).

At the ecoregion level, the amount of land in CMS 1 and 2 ranges from 6.9% in the Beaufort Coastal Plain to 100% in the Kluane Range (Figure 2; Table 3). Eleven of 32 ecoregions in the state have less than 30% of their lands in CMS 1 and 2. Collectively, these ecoregions comprise 40.6% of the area of the state, and thus a significant proportion of the environmental gradients represented by ecoregional differences are not captured in CMS 1 and 2 lands.

Conclusions

Conservation of Alaska’s terrestrial biodiversity is not as secure as one might guess from simply noting the total acreage under protection. If one considers the state as a whole, 43.6% resides in CMS 1 and 2 lands Compared to the contiguous United States, where only 5.1% is in CMS 1 and 2 (DellaSala et al. 2001), Alaska may be viewed as an excellent conservation achievement. But Alaska today is an area of rapid climatic change and there is a need to provide options for resilience and future evolutionary response (ACIA 2004). In practical terms this means that we should protect the ecological differences represented by ecoregions as much as possible. Lack of protection across the major environmental gradients of ecoregions increases the vulnerability of Alaska’s plants and wildlife to the long-term effects of global warming.

[Note: The Nature Conservancy has also analyzed the distribution of conservation management status across the elevational gradient of Alaska and examined representation of vegetation classes by CMS and ecoregions. Contact Corinne Smith (corinne_smith@tnc.org) for more information about this work.]

Acknowledgements

The conservation management status dataset was funded by the USGS Gap Program. Federal and state land managers from several agencies were indispensable for assigning conservation management status categories to Alaska lands. We thank Mary Gleason, Peter Kareiva, Stacey Solie, and Michael Jennings of The Nature Conservancy and Jocelyn Acryigg of GAP for reviewing this project.

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Figure 1. Land ownership in Alaska

Figure 2. Conservation management status and ecoregions in Alaska. (Ecoregion numbers correspond to Appendix 1)

Appendix 1. Area and percentage of CMS within Alaska’s ecoregions

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