February 3, 2021 โ President Joe Biden last week unveiled an ambitious conservation goal, unprecedented for the United States: conserving 30% of the countryโs lands and waters by 2030, which would require more than doubling the area of public and private holdings under heightened protections.
Conservation scientists welcomed the so-called 30-by-30 goal, announced in an executive order on climate released 27 January. โThe ambition is fantastic,โ says ecologist Joshua Tewksbury, interim executive director of the nonprofit Future Earth.
But Bidenโs order also raises a thorny practical question: Which swaths of land and sea should be the top targets for enhanced protection or management? The order says the effort should aim for a number of outcomes, including preserving biodiversity, curbing climate change, and even creating jobs and reducing social inequality. But researchers warn that difficult trade-offs lie ahead, because few chunks of territory are likely to provide all of the desired benefits. โThe balancing act [will be] the hardest part of this work,โ Tewksbury says.
Observers say the Biden administration could make rapid progress and contain costs by enhancing protections for territory already owned by the federal government. โWe can make really huge gains on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands,โ says Jacob Malcom, a conservation biologist with Defenders of Wildlife. That could mean reducing logging, mining, drilling, and grazing. โThere will be vested interests who are not happy about that,โ Malcom notes. โSo I donโt want to make it seem like itโs going to be easy.โ Fishing associations, for example, have already reacted with concern to proposals to ban commercial fishing in 30% of U.S. waters. โThirty-by-thirty is a campaign slogan, not a scientific proposal,โ Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, wrote last year.