Vol. 3, No. 4 Contents
Headline Back Issues
Fall 1999
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More biodiversity, Pt. 1: Ecosystem inventoriesBy Suzy Fried, Editor Since the 1970s, a network of Natural Heritage Programs (NHP) and Conservation Data Centers (CDC) have compiled inventories of plants and animals in the western hemisphere in cooperation with the Nature Conservancy (TNC). Each US state has its own NHP, as do some national forests. The Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts NHPs are each housed in state government departments. In Canada, the CDCs are usually part of a provincial government agency, though Atlantic Canada's CDC, the newest of the programs, has been established as a nonprofit organization, according to the program's Executive Director, Rob Rainer.
Almost all of that data, however, is land-based, according to Michael W. Beck, Director of Marine Science for TNC's two-year-old Coastal Waters Program. He said TNC is consulting with NHPs and CDCs to determine how they can incorporate information on marine systems into their inventories. Barbara Vickery, Director of Conservation Programs for TNC's Maine Chapter, noted that to date, TNC's Coastal Waters Program has been working mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, though the Maine Chapter of TNC recently began working with groups in Maine's Cobscook Bay to learn more about its marine habitat and how to operate ecologically sustainable shellfish harvesting there. "We think the extraordinary diversity of marine life is every bit as important as terrestrial diversity and may, in fact, be more threatened simply because it is harder to study and harder to see the impacts of our actions. But the Conservancy hasn't been going whole hog into the marine realm in large part because of our lack of expertise," she said. Molly Docherty, Director of Maine's Natural Areas Program, which is the state's NHP housed in the Department of Conservation, said Maine classified intertidal and marine systems for about three years until it ran out of funding for that work, and turned that database over the state's Department of Marine Resources (DMR). That information has not been used for anything yet, according to Seth Barker, DMR's Geographic Information System Coordinator. In addition to compiling and distributing biodiversity inventories, some NHPs and CDCs also take on other roles. Docherty said the Maine NHP hopes to work more closely with towns on incorporating biodiversity conservation into their planning processes. New Hampshire's program is helping property owners learn about important features on their property and how they can protect them, according to David VanLuven, Coordinator of the Natural Heritage Inventory in the state Department of Resources and Economic Development. Massachusetts' Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program is quite involved in coastal issues in the Gulf of Maine, said Coordinator Henry Woolsey, who noted that the department worked on conservation of habitat for the endangered Piping Plover. He said the NHP also plays a role in environmental regulation, in land conservation and acquisition, and in educating the public about biodiversity conservation. Most of the CDCs and NHPs belong to the Association for Biodiversity Information, an international organization that is creating a network that shares biodiversity data so that users can, for example, track data on a species of seabird throughout its migratory range from South America to the Bay of Fundy. |
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Each NHP or CDC compiles its state's or province's biodiversity inventory in a standardized database, prioritizing which species and communities are most in need of protection. The system has historically tracked the status of endangered species and, more recently, has also begun tracking common ecological communities as well. The inventories are used by developers, corporations, conservationists, governments, municipalities, natural resource companies, environmental consulting firms, grass-roots organizations, land-use planners, and researchers.