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From Texas to California to Montana, new land protections and partnerships are showing the way to protecting 30 percent of America's lands and waters by 2030. The latest entries in the Center for Western Priorities' Road to 30: Postcards multimedia series take us to the Frank and Joan Randall Preserve in California and the San Bernhard National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.
At San Bernard, an acquisition of nearly 5,000 acres adds protections to critical habitat for millions of migratory birds that depend on the Columbia Bottomlands, some of the only forested wetlands along the Gulf of Mexico. While the Bottomlands once covered over a thousand square miles of floodplain, today there are just 150 square miles of Columbia Bottomlands forest that are not impacted by agriculture and development.
In California's Tehachapi Mountains, the new preserve will cover 112 square miles, creating a protected wildlife corridor that links a patchwork of lands to the Sierra Nevada. The 72,000 acre preserve is owned by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), which used a record-setting $50 million gift to pay for most of the project. Creating the preserve has been a 15-year project for TNC.
In Montana, the nonprofit American Prairie is using private conservation to increase access to public lands. The acquisition of the 73 Ranch along the Musselshell River not only protects 12,000 deeded acres and 20,000 leased acres along the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, it also unlocks access to more than 9,300 acres of land that were previously inaccessible to the public.
These land protection efforts demonstrate the variety of public and private tools that will be necessary to protect 30x30, the ambitious conservation goal set by President Biden based on the recommendation of scientists including the late E.O. Wilson.
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The industry’s business actions, political demands, and charitable giving simply don’t match the urgency and magnitude of the climate crisis. We should be the loudest advocates for protecting 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030, but we’re not. We have this incredible economic might, we create more jobs than the oil and gas industry, and yet outdoor companies and affiliate groups have been largely mute on the climate crisis and hesitant to push on local, state, and federal governments. The time for backdoor diplomacy is over. We have this giant stick—our economic might—and we act like we’re carrying a toothpick.”
