Protected Areas

Our North America protected areas work is both comprehensive and strategically focused on key areas of biodiversity and climate importance. In the US, we were the first science-based NGO to advance a mature-old-growth forest protection strategy nationwide which, upon working with a core group of partners (Natural Resource Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity, the Larch Company), eventually led to the formation of a coalition of some 140 groups dedicated to new mature/old-growth forest and large tree protections on federal lands (climate-forests.org). Our science also is leading the way for forest protections advocated for by forestcarboncoalition.org and several regional conservation groups from the Tongass rainforest, PNW, and Sierra to the Rockies, southwest, and eastern forests.

Our main strategy is to get the Biden Administration to enact far-reaching national mature/old growth and large tree protection policies on federal lands that are codified in national rulemaking like what was done for the roadless conservation rule that we also participated in the 1990s to 2000.

We are also working on promoting forest protections in our priority ecoregions, including the Tongass rainforest in Alaska, the PNW region, the Klamath-Siskiyou region, the Sierra Nevada region and the southwest region. Basically, NGO partners in each of these and several other regions have requested our assistance in providing science support for their conservation goals in those regions.

In Canada, we completed the first ever inventory of the region’s primary forests in the inland rainforest of BC that our local partner, Conservation North, is using to team with First Nations in proposing new forest protected areas that capture carbon, biodiversity, and cultural values. With assistance from NRDC, we are working on mapping primary forests in the Ontario and Quebec regions with an eye toward completing Canada’s boreal and other primary forest mapping in the year ahead.

The bottom line in all our work is this – protected areas in North America and elsewhere are absolutely critical to sustaining Earth’s life support systems and traditional cultural values of Indigenous Peoples that are even more important in a rapidly changing and dangerous climate. We support efforts to protect 30% of the Earth’s lands and waters by 2030 and 50% by 2050 in order to reach a sustainable relationship with the Earth’s critical life support systems and the atmosphere. We do all of our work with an emphasis on science, communications, outreach, and respect for traditional cultural Indigenous Peoples values.

The Interior Wetbelt of British Columbia harbors one of the world’s rarest and least known rainforests: the Inland Rainforest (See Mongabay article). This unique rainforest is home to some of the oldest trees and most carbon-dense forests on Earth, but is under massive threat from logging, including removal of 1,000+ year old cedars which are converted to carbon-polluting bio-pellets and shipped overseas as “clean, renewable, energy.”

Our goal is to extend primary forest protection levels from the current and inadequate 3% to all primary forests. By comparison, the coastal Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia faced similarly dire prospects in the 1990s with only 5% in protection. Decades of efforts and partnerships between conservation organizations and First Nations resulted in over 80% of the Great Bear Rainforest old-growth now in some form of protection. With an infusion of conservation investment, the Inland Rainforest of BC can become the next great conservation victory for Canada and the world. Wild Heritage is working towards this goal with Conservation North.

The United States has some of the most carbon-dense forests in the world, much of which are concentrated along the west coast, from the iconic redwoods to Alaska’s temperate rainforests. If protected in a new, “national carbon reserve” network of federal lands, these forests could play a key role in helping us transition to a climate-safe economy. These forests already store the equivalent of 7 times US annual emissions: protecting them is vital to a safe climate.

Wild Heritage is working with scientists at Woodwell Climate Research Center and Griffith University (Australia) in assessing carbon values of U.S. forests and proposing a national carbon reserve that would protect over 50 million acres coast to coast, including the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.

This bioregion extends from California to Washington with several smaller ecoregions nested within (see Klamath-Siskiyou and Sierra Nevada below), some of which have world-class biodiversity status as WWF Global 200 ecoregions and as Biodiversity Hotspots.

These forests need to be protected for climate and biodiversity benefits. The Northwest Forest Plan is a global model of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management on 10 million hectares (25 million acres) of federal lands with roughly one-third of the forests in reserves

The plan will soon be revised by the U.S.D.A. Forest Service and there are efforts to undermine it. We are providing technical expertise to local conservation groups working to safeguard the Northwest Forest Plan.

Wild Heritage has a particular focus on two world class ecoregions – the Klamath Siskiyou of southwest Oregon/northern California and the Sierra Nevada Conifer Forests – which also form part of the California Floristic Province Biodiversity Hotspot.

The Klamath-Siskiyou ecoregion is a critical climate sanctuary for hundreds of imperiled plants and wildlife facing unprecedented climate change losses and land use impacts. We are working with partners to expand the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, the nation’s only monument focused on biodiversity protection. Our expansion proposal is for climate concerns as the monument is too small to accommodate climate forced wildlife migrations.

The Sierra Nevada ecoregion of California also has extraordinary levels of biodiversity and the most massive trees on Earth (giant sequoia) which store vast quantities of carbon. In this ecoregion we are supporting conservation groups working to protect a Yellowstone-size area between Yosemite and Kings Canyon Parks as a national monument.

In both ecoregions, we work with land managers, conservation groups, and decision makers in providing ways to co-exist safely with wildfires given the very nature of these fire-adapted forests depends on periodic fires of mixed intensities that rejuvenate ecosystems. Our work includes defending bedrock environmental laws, policies, and protected areas from inappropriate proposals to increase logging in response to forest fires.

The Tongass rainforest in southeast Alaska is at the northern limits of the North Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest biome that extends from the coast redwoods in California to southcentral Alaska. The nearly 7 million hectare forest is the crown-jewel of the USDA National Forest system and one of the world’s last remaining relatively intact temperate rainforests. Ancient cedars and hemlocks tower into the Alaskan sky, prolific salmon runs resemble rush hour traffic jams, brown bears, wolves, and bald eagles feed on spawned out carcasses that supply critical nutrients to rainforest trees.

Wild Heritage is working with dozens of conservation groups and Native American tribes to prevent rollbacks on protections on nearly 4 million hectares of intact and carbon dense roadless areas. We are working with the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts to map out the carbon in these forests so that they can be considered for future protections as a carbon-wildlife rainforest reserve.