Are protected areas the solution to conservation in the face of climate change?
Setting aside land to protect wildlife and natural habitats has been a basic tool of conservationists for well over 100 years. The acceleration of climate change, however, has thrown a monkey wrench into the effectiveness of this strategy.
The reason is that this practice is based on the premise that such lands can be managed so as to produce habitats favorable to the target species for which they were set aside. With each passing year, that premise becomes less and less valid. Due to increasingly irregular weather conditions causing unexpected droughts, floods, fires, mega-storms and the like, managing protected areas is becoming an increasingly uncontrollable and consequently, an ineffective exercise.
So, what is the solution? How species around us respond to changing environments provide some clues. Dandelions are one of them. They reproduce very differently depending upon the level of disturbance they face.
Fundamentally, conservationists must move away from setting aside specific chunks of land as a central element of conservation practice and rather, manage the entire landscape in a much more holistic way. Dandelions have shown us that this the most effect strategy in an increasingly unpredictable environment.