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| Titel |
Can Nature Protection be Unsustainable? Models Behind Nature Protection in New Zealands National Parks |
| VerfasserIn |
Michael Hauhs, Christina Bogner |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2013
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 15 (2013) |
| Datensatznummer |
250074583
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Nature protection can be justified by intrinsic values of life. Western culture sees nature as an
autonomous system. Thus, nature protection is often synonymous with refraining from
human interference as much as possible. This, however, can pose at least technical problems.
Indeed, historical human impacts such as introduced species are often irreversible. In such
cases refraining from human interference to protect threatened species is not an adequate
management response.
Nature protection in New Zealand is a prominent example. Many introduced
species make a non-interventionist attitude infeasible to protect endemic species
such as kiwis. Actually, active human interference is necessary to attain this goal.
Therefore, one may consider nature protection as another form of land use. As any other
form of land use, it needs standards of proper management (i.e. explicit goals,
assessment, intervention etc.). In other words, it has to be shown to be sustainable.
However, sustainability may rigorously be defined as an attribute of past land use only.
Instantaneous positive indicators of sustainability may be elusive. At best it can be
decided by observation whether or not a land use has been (not) sustainable until
now.
Stakeholders of nature protection have often different (implicit) concepts or models of
nature in mind. This can lead to conflicts when it comes to management decisions. For
example, the methods by which conservationists in New Zealand seek to re-establish
historical species assemblages (e.g. aerial drop of poison into national parks) have
come under criticism of animal rights groups as non-humane. We propose to use
abstract modelling language to classify these concepts of nature protection and related
issues.
We show that from modelling perspective these conflicts pose a basic science problem
rather than an applied science problem. This makes the delegation into existing
disciplines so hard. We discuss possible implications for nature protection: depending
on the concept, it may be sustainable or not. In addition, we show how models
can help organising learning and communication about land-use conflicts more
reasonably. |
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