Geography 101 Lab Series: #4

Did you know that there is a UN Department that can (and does) suggest to the US government which areas without our sovereign boundaries should be made in to a “Preserve Area”? Also, that our government could designate an area a Preserve but that without UN sanctioning it wouldn’t count as one to the rest of the world because of an obscure treaty?

I didn’t either until this essay.

The Assignment: Preserves and Reserves

The textbook points out that 6.4 percent of all land area is nationally protected, most by way of biosphere reserves. But the authors warn that “the degree of protection … and level of enforcement, varies considerably.”

What are the mechanisms of protecting a natural area? How are the biosphere reserves chosen, and by what national or international agency? What national agencies in the United States protect natural areas? How well—and from what—are the reserves, wildernesses, national parks, and such actually protected?

Use library or Internet resources to answer as many of these questions as possible.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) helps nations worldwide establish biosphere reserves within their borders through their group, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUNC). Once a nation brings the idea of designating a reserve to the IUNC’s attention via their application, the group investigates to make sure the host nation has the means to maintain and protect the area.

However, not all reserves get the protection they deserve. In most cases, news of the designation draws the attention of people whose way of life was exactly what the process was supposed to protect against. Miners, poachers and other gangs of individuals haul their operations into the remote parts of the area and carry on their business. In some countries, it is even people within the government itself who commit the destruction.

In the U.S., we have two Cabinet level agencies which serve to manage and protect biosphere reserves: The US Department of the Interior, which encompasses the National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the US Geological Survey, and the Bureau of Reclamation. We also have the US Department of Agriculture, who controls the US Forest Service, and the National Resources Conservation Service. The are also multiple agencies throughout the nation run by the individual states who manage their respective designated biospheres.
The protection a biosphere actually receives depends upon its designation. For example, a biosphere with the designation National Forest is managed by the government, but draws some of the agency’s funding through the sale of logging and mining permits. There also numerous roads built in and through the area, as well as campgrounds for recreation. Hunting and fishing are also allowed.

A National Park is almost entirely different. There are plenty of roads and campgrounds, but almost no logging, mining, hunting or fishing is allowed. The Parks are set up as tourist attractions with some having reservation lists years long. Some people worry that the use of the Parks by so many people will eventually lead to serious degradation of the areas.

Lastly, the most protective of the designations for biospheres in the US is the Wilderness Area. These biospheres are protected from almost all exploitation. No mining or logging is permitted and no roads are built to service the area. Even the use of bicycles is banned. Visitation is generally limited to small groups of a dozen or less, including “companion animals”.

A couple of years ago, a friend I was hiking with through the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area didn’t treat his drinking water properly, contracted Giardiasis, and could not hike the 26 miles back to the trail head. I hiked to the truck, drove home and returned with a “Pack Mule”, which is a kind of flatbed wheelbarrow with a single bicycle tire. I disassembled it and hiked it back in and was using it to pack him out the next day when we were stopped by a USFS employee who wrote me an official citation for having a mechanical device in a designated Wilderness Area. To this day I still believe that it was my burying the tools in my backpack and not my friend’s disease that keep him from demanding I disassemble it.

Despite that infraction, and as was mentioned earlier, even the protection of these biospheres in the U.S. is also less than optimal. While they don’t particularly suffer from bandit mining or logging operations like in other nation, they do suffer from a moderate amount of poaching and use by criminal elements as laboratories for the growing and manufacture of illicit drugs. This has made certain areas unusable by law-abiding citizens due to the caustic nature of the drugs and the criminals’ propensity for violence.

Once again, both of these problems are because of there is simply too much area and too few people available for law enforcement. Though with the help of state, county and city jurisdictions, some areas are seeing marked improvements.

Grade: 100%

I was told that I was the only to bring up the manufacturing/growing of drugs in parks and wilderness areas. This supposedly put me over the top on this one.

Personally, I’d have liked to go on for a couple more pages about how the government shouldn’t own any land, but I couldn’t find a away to justify it within the assignment.