Don't Give up Just Yet: Maintaining Species, Services, and Systems in a Changing World

Abstract

Sandler’s paper, ‘Climate change and ecosystem management’ (2013), takes a clear-eyed and sober look at conservation via static reserves and ecosystem restoration in the context of climate change. It is a necessary discussion; while following traditional management practices is, in some ways, comforting and simple, the consequences of climate change throw those practices into a questionable light. Climate change makes achievement of their objectives extremely unlikely, and so their goals must change—losing their speciesprotection emphasis and falling back on more general goals of human interdependence, natural settings, and the like. We must revisit the goals of ecosystem management, better align our planning with the reality of climate change, and decide how interventionist our management should be. This paper is an excellent contribution, and this commentary (and its somewhat devil’s advocate approach) is offered in the spirit of debate. Sandler’s thesis is that species-specific or restoration oriented reserve planning goals are not justified, and therefore those goals must change. This lack of justification follows from the inherent difficulty of preserving species—it is not practical in a changing climate—and a shifting ecological context which decreases the value of those species. This commentary will address the practical and valuation argument, and then talk about some limitations of this approach—namely that ecosystem processes and services are not contingent on species in the first place, leading to some overly bleak conclusions.