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Linking Cultural Diversity And Biodiversity Conservation On The Colorado Plateau

By Gary Paul Nabhan

There is a debate raging today about biodiversity hotspots and what their identification and protection means to how conservation science is broadly practiced in the future. Conservation biologists such as Russ Mittermeier and Norman Myers have argued in favor of diverting more conservation dollars to land purchases for protected areas in well-defined hotspots. Other eminent conservation biologists, including David Ehrenfeld and Mark Plotkin, have argued that this strategy is reductionistic, and filled with its own perils and pitfalls. Does this lead governments and corporations to assume that if protected areas in a few hotspots are purchased, then (resource-depleting) business-as-usual can occur elsewhere? Can the critical habitats in hotspots actually be purchased, or are they common lands held in trust by indigenous peoples or other communities? If the investment needed for capacity building in resource management on common lands and Indian reservations is diverted exclusively to land purchases of private lands in hotspots, does biodiversity conservation gain or lose momentum?

These issues are actively being played out on the Colorado Plateau of the southwestern United States, which ranks among the top five ecoregions of North America in terms of its species richness of flowering plants, butterflies, and mammals. It is also the richest of the 114 North American ecoregions recognized by World Wildlife Fund in terms of its cultural-linguistic diversity, with at least 12 tribes maintaining their indigenous languages in the region, in addition to English, Spanish, and Basque-speaking communities. More than half of all speakers of Native American languages remaining in the U.S. reside on the Colorado Plateau.

By even the most conservative estimates, Native American communities manage a quarter of the Colorado Plateau's 108 million acres, roughly the acreage protected by the 27 National Park Service units on the Colorado Plateau. These Indian lands have not received even a small fraction of the conservation investment from government agencies or private foundations that park lands, wildlife refuges, or private reserves have received. The 24% of the Colorado Plateau's human population that is of Native American ancestry has hardly benefited from the conservation interest in the Plateau, even though their communities have informally protected many habitats and species from the detrimental effects of land conversion and development. The poverty level on the Colorado Plateau, in part because of the lack of conservation-oriented investment in Indian country, is nearly twice the national average.

I would argue that the best investment to be made in the Colorado Plateau "biodiversity hotspot" is not the purchase of more private lands, but conservation capacity building within Native American communities. Two programs based within Northern Arizona University's Center for Sustainable Environments (CSE) are doing just this: the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, and its Environmental Education and Outreach Program aimed at encouraging Native American students to undertake careers in environmental sciences and policy. In addition, the CSE is developing programs for "green certification" of sustainably harvested native plant products from the ecoregion, and "para-ecologist" training for Native Americans who wish to inventory, monitor or recover endangered species on tribal lands. These programs create capacity as well as income.

True environmental justice can come only when the dominant culture is no longer the only player in shaping ecological restoration, endangered species recovery, and sustainability initiatives. The traditional ecological knowledge and values of a diversity of resident cultures must be factored into the future of conservation biology. The links between biodiversity conservation, native language maintenance, and environmental health must be underscored.

If most biodiversity hotspots are also refuges of linguistic and cultural diversity, how can we afford to have an ethnocentric conservation biology in the future?

Gary Paul Nabhan is Director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University. He received a 2000 Distinguished Service Award from SCB in recognition of his contributions to conservation and to the public appreciation of biodiversity and cultural diversity through his research and unparalleled achievements as a storyteller.

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