Lessons from the Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve, Oregon, USA
Bruce A. Byers, PhD
Bruce Byers Consulting
405 Timber Lane
Falls Church, VA 22046 USA [email protected]
Abstract
Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve is Oregon’s only biosphere reserve. It was one of the first group of U.S. biosphere reserves established in 1976 and is one of only two administered by the
U.S. Forest Service among the 28 biosphere reserves that remain in the U.S. MAB network. With its complex social and ecological landscape, Cascade Head is a perfect place to test the biosphere concept. It is a microcosm, and its lessons learned about how to create a resilient relationship between humans and nature apply anywhere. Five themes describe the evolving relationship between people and nature at Cascade Head: resistance, research, restoration, reconciliation, and resilience. Unique aspects of the history of UNESCO biosphere reserves in the United States are not widely recognized in the literature, but can help explain their current relationship to the rest of the world network. Cascade Head provides lessons about the periodic review process required by the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Program, the problems with rigid models of zonation in biosphere reserves, and the complexity of stakeholders and governance. Three overarching
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lessons from Cascade Head stand out. One is the critical role of individuals and the importance of inspired, value-based, individual action. A second is that despite decades of research, ecological mysteries still abound, and the need for research to underpin decisions will never end.
Finally, the Cascade Head story shows the importance of worldviews – how we think about the human-nature relationship – in shaping individual and collective actions.
Keywords: Biosphere reserves, history, U.S. Forest Service
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Introduction how people could conserve and sustainably
The international network of biosphere use the coastal temperate rainforest reserves coordinated by the United Nations ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest.
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) Man and the With its complex social and ecological
Biosphere (MAB) Program, and the concept landscape, Cascade Head is a perfect place of the “biosphere” from which it arose, are to test the biosphere concept, which holds important achievements in the history of that biodiversity conservation and human ecology, conservation, and sustainable development are two sides of the same coin. development. Biosphere reserves are The mosaic of multiple-use public lands supposed to be laboratories for managed by the Siuslaw National Forest and understanding the human-nature relationship private timberlands in the 75 square mile and models for other places to learn from as watershed of the Salmon River demonstrate we all struggle toward a resilient the linkages between forest management and relationship between humans and our home restoration of wild salmon. Endangered planet. Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve is species like spotted owls, marbled murrelets,
Oregon’s only biosphere reserve. It is one of and the Oregon silverspot butterfly share the only 28 areas in the United States that landscape with vacationers, hikers, hunters, remain part of the growing international fishers, and mushroom pickers. One of network of 701 biosphere reserves in 124 Oregon’s five marine reserves is one of the countries. It was established in 1976, among core areas in the biosphere reserve, the first group of 28 biosphere reserves in conserving the essential links between land the U.S. MAB network, as a place to learn and ocean. Lincoln City and Neskowin, hubs
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of a thriving tourist industry, bookend the implementation of the concept of biosphere biosphere reserve geographically on the reserves in the United States. The Forest south and north. Native American tribes are Service is now largely “missing in action” in slowly restoring their cultures in the the US-MAB network, but it still has highly
Cascade Head area. relevant experience and lessons to teach.
The Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve, like The idea behind the development of the every biosphere reserve, is a microcosm. It UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Program is only a tiny part of our planet’s thin and was that we need a network of places fragile living skin, but the efforts of many dedicated to monitoring and understanding dedicated people to defend a balance the diverse ecosystems of the Biosphere and between humans and nature there are developing models and strategies for illustrative and instructive. The lessons from maintaining or restoring their resilience
Cascade Head apply anywhere. The Cascade while still meeting human social, cultural,
Head Biosphere Reserve provides a case and economic needs. (I capitalize study that illustrates some important aspects “Biosphere” here and hereafter when used as of the unique history of the U.S. MAB a proper noun for the singular and unique program. It is a place where the original living skin of planet Earth.) Although each concept of biosphere reserves in the United biosphere reserve is unique, they all face
States was implemented, then neglected, but similar challenges and provide lessons for survived and is being restored. It provides an all the others. example of how important the U.S. Forest
Service (USFS) was in the initial
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This article grew from research conducted in This is partly because descriptions of the the Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve from history of the MAB program often begin in
October 2018 to January 2019, while I was the mid-1970s, when the first biosphere the Howard L. McKee Ecology Resident at reserves were designated, and earlier the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis, foundations of the biosphere concept and its
Oregon. As an international ecological implementation are left out of the story consultant, I have worked in 34 biosphere (Ishwaran et al., 2008; Price et al., 2010; reserves in 17 countries, and I brought a Matar and Anthony, 2018). Some scholars comparative, global perspective to the have reached somewhat deeper into the experience at Cascade Head. Some material history of the concept and its presented in this article is adapted from my implementation (Reed and Massie 2013, forthcoming book, The View from Cascade Reed 2016), but not from an explicitly U.S.
Head: Lessons for the Biosphere from the perspective. Key aspects of the unique
Oregon Coast, which will be published by history of the U.S. MAB program are
Oregon State University Press in the fall of illustrated by the experience of Cascade
2020. Head, and that history holds important
lessons for other UNESCO biosphere
Historical Context of Cascade Head and reserves. the U.S. Biosphere Reserve Network
The relatively sparse scholarly literature on A brief review of the history of the
UNESCO biosphere reserves does not biosphere concept will first be useful. The adequately recognize or reflect the unique term “biosphere” was first used in aspects of their history in the United States. something like its modern sense by the
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Austrian geologist Eduard Seuss, in his book translated as “nature preserves.” Through
Das Antlitz der Erde, or The Face of the the 1890s, Dokuchaev argued that setting
Earth, published in 1885. The term and aside areas of pristine natural ecosystems concept were promoted by a Ukrainian that can be compared with managed biogeochemist, Vladimir Vernadsky, in a ecosystems, such as agricultural lands or
1926 book, The Biosphere, which was managed forests, was ultimately important translated from Russian to French in 1929, for economic development because they act and soon after to English. Frank Golley, an as scientific controls to study how human
American ecologist and historian of ecology, actions affect ecological processes. describes Vernadsky’s book as “a scientific Zapovedniks should be closed to all expression of a global system of man and economic activities, he thought, and nature, which was an antidote to the virulent scientists should study their natural nationalism that was being expressed at the functioning. time, especially in Europe” (Golley, 1993).
In the United States, the zapovednik-like
Biosphere reserves owe a debt to the work model of “nature preserves” exists to a of Vasily V. Dokuchaev (1846-1903), a certain extent in U.S. Forest Service pioneering Russian geologist and Research Natural Areas and in some private geographer who laid the foundations of soil nature preserves like those of The Nature science. Dokuchaev was instrumental in Conservancy. But the philosophical creating a unique Russian conservation foundations of nature conservation in the philosophy and model of protected areas, United States are, in general, based more on called zapovedniks, a word perhaps best scenic, spiritual, and recreational values,
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growing out of the writings and philosophies efficient, root systems, as Weaver of people like Henry David Thoreau, John discovered by studying the ecological
Muir, John Burroughs, and Teddy processes in a small patch of undisturbed
Roosevelt, in contrast to the utilitarian, native prairie. Leopold expanded his vision scientific foundation of zapovedniks. of the value of preserving, studying, and
learning from wild ecosystems in his 1939
In the late 1930s, with the Dust Bowl essay “A Biotic View of the Land.” He disaster continuing, Aldo Leopold – another again cites Weaver, saying, “Professor founding father of U.S. conservation Weaver proposes that we use prairie flowers philosophy – understood the value of to reflocculate the wasting soils of the dust zapovednik-type nature reserves. In a 1938 bowl; who knows for what purpose cranes essay titled “Engineering and and condors, otters and grizzlies may some
Conservation,” Leopold cited the research of day be used” (Leopold, 1991).
John E. Weaver, a botanist, prairie ecologist, and professor at the University of Nebraska, In 1934, during the same decade as the Dust and wrote that "While even the largest Bowl and Leopold’s musings, the U.S. wilderness areas become partially deranged, Forest Service established the Cascade Head it required only a few wild acres for J.E. Experimental Forest within Oregon’s
Weaver to discover why the prairie flora is Siuslaw National Forest. One purpose was more drought-resistant than the agronomic to experiment with silvicultural techniques flora which has supplanted it" (Leopold, for the expanding timber industry. Part of
1991). The answer was that wild prairie the experimental forest was further protected plants had more complex, and more as the Neskowin Crest Research Natural
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Area in 1941 – a “reference” ecosystem for on the legacy of the conference (UNESCO- learning how coastal temperate rainforests MAB, 1993) stated that “The single most function. The Neskowin Crest Research original feature of the Biosphere Conference
Natural Area was, in essence, an American however was to have firmly declared that zapovednik, perfectly in line with the utilization and the conservation of our
Dokuchaev’s concept. land and water resources should go hand in
hand rather than in opposition, and that
The International Council of Scientific interdisciplinary approaches should be
Unions launched a ten-year program of promoted to achieve this aim.” The international cooperation to better biosphere concept was used to argue against understand the functioning of ecosystems at the idea that biodiversity conservation and large scales in 1964. Called the International human development are incompatible or
Biological Program (IBP), it was modelled contradictory. on the success of the International
Geophysical Year of 1957-58. Science was Following the Biosphere Conference, coming to be seen as a tool for easing the UNESCO established the Man and the tensions of the Cold War, and chipping Biosphere Program in 1971. It combined the away at geopolitical and ideological walls. environment-and-development perspective
In 1968, with concern about environmental of the conference and the large-scale, long- threats exploding, UNESCO organized a term, ecosystem-ecology research of the
“Biosphere Conference” in Paris, using the IBP, and sought to establish a network of word “biosphere” for the first time in places, distributed around the diverse international deliberations. A retrospective ecosystems of the Biosphere, where we can
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monitor, study, assess, and respond to the Franklin, who had risen through the ranks of changes that humans are causing. the U.S. Forest Service, was posted to
Washington, DC, to serve as director of the
Two events in 1972 significantly affected Ecosystem Studies Program at the National
U.S. participation in the MAB Program. Science Foundation. At NSF, Dr. Franklin
One, the U.N. Conference on the Human was chosen to lead a U.S. delegation to work
Environment, was held in Stockholm, with the Russians to establish biosphere
Sweden, where international deliberations reserves in the two countries. He and his about how to save the Biosphere continued. Soviet counterparts (grounded in the
The second, the Moscow Summit between zapovednik concept) had a similar
President Richard Nixon and Soviet General conception of what “biosphere reserves”
Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, was a major should be about, Franklin told me in an step toward Cold War détente. Following interview. “We didn’t want to establish the Summit, U.S. and Soviet scientists were more of the same old ‘protected areas,’” but tasked with finding ways to work together rather places to test models of the biosphere on issues of mutual interest. The ecosystem concept. The U.S. Forest Service’s network research already mounted under the IBP and of experimental forests, ranges, and research the proposal for an international network of natural areas, spread across the diverse biosphere reserves seemed to be a place to ecological landscapes of the United States, start. were logical places to anchor some
biosphere reserves, in Franklin’s view.
It just so happened that in 1973, a forest ecologist from Oregon named Jerry
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The Cascade Head Experimental Forest, The first group of 28 biosphere reserves in
Research Natural Area, and private lands to the United States, including Luquillo in the the south, including the Salmon River U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, were estuary, were designated as the Cascade designated in 1976. Of those, 12 were on
Head Scenic Research Area (CHSRA) in lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service,
1974 – a unique designation within the and three more on experimental ranges,
National Forest System – by the U.S. formerly managed by the Forest Service
Congress. The management objective of until their management was passed to the
CHSRA was: “To provide present and future U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) generations with the use and enjoyment of Agricultural Research Service. Those 15 certain ocean headlands, rivers, streams, biosphere reserves comprised a bit more estuaries, and forested areas, to insure the than half of the original group. The protection and encourage the study of remaining 13 were centered around national significant areas for research and scientific parks or wildlife refuges managed by the purposes, and to promote a more sensitive U.S. Department of Interior. The relationship between man and his adjacent predominance of Forest Service sites among environment.” As such, the goals for the first group of 28 U.S. biosphere reserves
CHSRA meshed well with the objectives of shows Dr. Jerry Franklin’s fingerprints on the UNESCO-MAB Program, just at the their selection. Two sites in Oregon, time the first US biosphere reserves were Cascade Head on the coast and the H.J. being selected. Andrews Experimental Forest in the
Cascades – at both of which Franklin had
worked and conducted research since the
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late 1950s – were among the initial group of some members of the U.S. Congress alleged
U.S. biosphere reserves. that biosphere reserves were part of a
conspiracy by the UN and the White House
In 1995, at its meeting in Seville, Spain, the to take control of lands in the U.S.” This
UNESCO MAB Program adopted the sensationalized campaign gained support in
Seville Strategy and Statutory Framework, Congress, which attached amendments to which formalized the requirements for being appropriation bills that “prohibited agencies considered a biosphere reserve and from funding the MAB program, and it was mandated a periodic review every ten years essentially abandoned” (Gilbert, 2016).
(Price, et al. 2010; UNESCO-MAB, 1996).
This development, standardizing and At the 4th World Congress of Biosphere formalizing the concept, and centralizing Reserves, held in Lima, Peru, in 2016, and tightening UNESCO oversight, is often UNESCO developed an action plan to described in the literature as a positive implement its MAB Strategy 2015-2025, inflection point in the history of the which, among other things, required all international network of biosphere reserves biosphere reserves to implement “… an
(Price et al., 2010; Reed and Massie, 2013; effective periodic review process so that all
Reed, 2016). It came, however, at a bad time members of the network adhere to its for U.S. biosphere reserves. As Vernon standards.” Only a handful of US biosphere
(Tom) Gilbert, a former National Park reserves had ever undertaken a periodic
Service scientist and proponent of the U.S. review at that point. Eighteen of the 47 then-
MAB Program explained, “In the mid-1990s existing US biosphere reserves chose not to opponents of the United Nations (UN) and conduct a periodic review when pressured to
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do so after the Lima meeting, and were administered by the Agricultural Research withdrawn from the UNESCO-MAB World Service.
Network of Biosphere Reserves. Of the 18 that withdrew, a disproportionate share – The story of how the U.S. Forest Service two-thirds (12/18) – were USFS or came to play such an important role in the
Agricultural Research Service-led biosphere early history of the U.S. MAB program reserves. raises questions about some of the
generalities expressed in the literature about
Among the 28 U.S. biosphere reserves that the history of the international MAB remain in the program, about two-thirds now network. For the U.S. at least, it is probably are centered on landscapes or seascapes not accurate to conclude that biosphere administered by the Department of Interior reserves were “…essentially designated
(mainly the National Park Service). After through identifying existing sites of high initially playing a major role in the U.S. biodiversity value(s)” or that the biosphere
MAB program, the U.S. Forest Service can reserve concept initially had a “conservation now only count Cascade Head in Oregon focus” (Matar and Anthony, 2017; Ishwaran and Luquillo in Puerto Rico as its et al., 2008). In fact, the first U.S. biosphere contribution to the network. It can lay a reserves were selected to integrate nature partial claim to two other US biosphere conservation, human and economic reserves that were originally established on development, and scientific research – and
USFS Experimental Ranges, Jornada in New especially, perhaps, those sites centered on
Mexico and San Joaquin in California, now U.S. Forest Service lands.
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The Five “Re”s: Themes from Cascade overexploit valuable species, and otherwise
Head threaten biodiversity. Resistance to actions
The important milestones in the evolving that would have damaged or destroyed the relationship between people and nature in natural ecosystems of Cascade Head was an the Cascade Head ecosystem can be initial, critical element in its story. First described by a handful of words with the came resistance against the greedy, prefix “re”: resistance, research, restoration, unsustainable logging being promoted by reconciliation, and resilience. These five Oregon companies and politicians, which themes are common elements of efforts to motivated President Theodore Roosevelt and heal the human-nature relationship his first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, anywhere. They represent another way of Gifford Pinchot, to protect the area as part of telling the story of biosphere reserves and a new national forest in 1907. In 1974, describing their three intertwined functions: resistance to unregulated vacation home and conservation; development; and research, tourism development motivated the creation monitoring, and education. (For reasons that of the Cascade Head Scenic Research Area. are not clear, the MAB Program calls the And, in 1976, resistance to the view that third of these “the logistic function” or human social and economic development
“logistic support.”) and the conservation of nature are opposed
and contradictory led to Cascade Head being
Resistance designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve.
Conservation of nature always requires Resistance to the decline in populations of resistance to human actions that destroy or gray whales that use the marine environment degrade natural habitats, overharvest or at Cascade Head led to their protection by
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the United States in 1937. The Oregon discoveries made at Cascade Head. silverspot butterfly, which lives in the Examples of the curiosity of scientists and coastal meadows of Cascade Head, and the serendipity of their research are populations of coho salmon that inhabit the common, and the long-term ecological streams and rivers of the area were protected monitoring that has occurred provides a by the U.S. Endangered Species Act. valuable baseline for future research,
including research to understand the effects
Research of climate change.
Research at Cascade Head has led to some important and widely relevant discoveries. Restoration
That research was only possible because the Restoration of natural ecosystems is another forces that had damaged ecosystems in hallmark of the Cascade Head story. The many other places had been resisted there. A Cascade Head Scenic Research Area Act of large part of Cascade Head, already within 1974 provided a legal framework and some the Siuslaw National Forest, was designated funding for the U.S. Forest Service to begin an experimental forest in 1934, and part of removing dikes and tide gates and restoring that was further protected as the Neskowin natural tidal flows to areas of the Salmon
Crest Research Natural Area in 1941 – a River estuary that had been converted to
“reference” ecosystem for learning how dairy pastures starting in the 1930s. This coastal temperate rainforests function. The estuarine restoration, carried out in stages role of red alder in fixing atmospheric beginning in 1978, created a kind of nitrogen and banking it in forest soils is only ecological experiment through which, one of many economically important decades later, fish biologists could study the
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use of the restored salt marshes by juvenile coho and Chinook salmon. When the salt Reconciliation marshes were reopened to the tides, juvenile Reconciliation is a term more commonly salmon of both species began to feed in associated with social justice – such as in the them immediately and to an unexpected post-apartheid racial healing process in extent, and those fish made a significant South Africa – but a lot of healing is needed contribution to the numbers of adult salmon between humans and the Biosphere too. returning to spawn years later. The natural “Biosphere reserves are about reconciling all life-history diversity in Salmon River people with the lands and waters,” Eleanor salmon began to re-emerge because of the Haine-Bennett, director of the Canadian restoration of the estuary. Ecological National Committee for the UNESCO-MAB restoration and research at Cascade Head Program, told me in an interview. From were linked in a positive feedback loop. Cascade Head we can begin to actually see
some ecological “restorative justice.” For
The Cascade Head area is also a case study example, beavers have come back to Fraser of cultural restoration among the indigenous Creek, now restored to its old channel after peoples of the area. The Confederated it was rerouted around Pixieland, a short-
Tribes of Siletz Indians and the lived amusement park built on filled
Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde both marshland along the Salmon River in the present remarkable stories of determination late 1960s. From Cascade Head, we can and persistence in restoring and reviving envision how restoration of the functioning their cultural practices and indigenous natural ecosystems of a place can lead knowledge.
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toward reconciliation of “all people with the and reconciliation can lead us on a path lands and waters.” toward a more resilient future.
Resilience Periodic Review
Resilience is a final “re” word in the lexicon The periodic review process, part of the of Cascade Head. Our home planet is Seville Strategy and Statutory Framework, dynamic and changeable, and old ideas of was introduced two decades after the first ecological “stability” have given way to a U.S. biosphere reserves were designated more sophisticated view of the dynamic (UNESCO-MAB, 1996). The current balance – the resilience – of ecosystems. version of the process, dating from 2013, is
Think of resilience as the kind of balance it rigorous and detailed; the current periodic takes to ride a wave on a surfboard, not to review form runs to 43 pages and more than stand still on a rock. On a planet prone to 100 questions (UNESCO-MAB, 2013). The chaos, life has so far found adaptive process can be expensive and also time- pathways to survival, but humans have consuming, especially if serious stakeholder caused and accelerated global changes that consultations are conducted. “Determining now stress ecosystems in ways that threaten compliance [with UNESCO-MAB statutory our own existence. If we are to survive requirements] appears to be the dominant much longer, we must rebuild the resilience purpose of periodic reviews…” (Reed and of the ecosystems we have degraded. At Egunyu, 2013) and many biosphere reserves
Cascade Head, as everywhere else in the see it as “an imposed procedure to overcome
Biosphere, resistance, research, restoration, by BR [biosphere reserve] stakeholders”
(Matar and Anthony, 2017). Perceptions like
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these, combined with a lack of clear positive Forest. He was overextended with incentives for conducting a periodic review responsibilities and saw no benefits from, or and remaining in the MAB network, may incentives to, conduct a periodic review; but partly explain why 18 of 47 U.S. biosphere he checked with the District Ranger at the reserves chose not to conduct periodic Hebo Ranger District in the Siuslaw reviews and to drop out of the MAB National Forest, in whose administrative program in 2017. territory the experimental forest and
Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve were
Why did Cascade Head submit a periodic located. The District Ranger discussed the review and stay in the MAB network, and issue with her staff, and two hydrologists the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a who had been involved in estuarine former biosphere reserve, decline and drop restoration in the Salmon River estuary out? I discussed this issue with stakeholders wanted to take on the periodic review task. at Cascade Head, and with senior scientists The local Salmon Drift Creek Watershed from the USFS Pacific Northwest Research Management Council was willing to
Station and the Andrews Experimental contribute to the effort. Through a
Forest. combination of pride and persistence, a
small team completed the Periodic Review
At Cascade Head, the letter requesting a Report, which was approved by UNESCO- periodic review from the U.S. State MAB in September, 2016 (Cascade Head
Department’s point-of-contact for the Biosphere Reserve, 2016). The team was
UNESCO-MAB program was sent to the clearly motivated by their desire to share manager of the Cascade Head Experimental what they perceived as a wealth of
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knowledge that had been accumulated at within and beyond the national and
Cascade Head over the past 40 years. international networks.” Echoing
Bouamrane (2007), Matar and Anthony
At H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, (2017) suggest that periodic reviews should managers and scientists saw few reasons to shift to become “a collective learning conduct a periodic review and remain in the process engaging multiple stakeholders and program. The experimental forest was used for adaptive management.” A periodic already world-famous for its research on review system that provided incentives for forest hydrology, forest biodiversity, and the biosphere reserves to share their stories and relationship of forests and aquatic lessons with other biosphere reserves, rather ecosystems; it had been well-funded for than to conform to rigid standards, would be decades by the Long-Term Ecological welcomed at Cascade Head. The fact that
Research Program of the National Science periodic reviews are not treated as public
Foundation. Preparing a periodic review was documents and are not widely available seen as a burden with little benefit, even publicly – through the UNESCO-MAB though the cutting-edge research being done website, for example – decreases their value at the Andrews was squarely at the in this regard. intersection of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Zonation
Biosphere reserves are supposed to be
According to Reed and Egunyu (2013) “… designed with the three zones, which are the periodic review process can also be supposed to reflect and/or enable their roles considered an opportunity for learning in integrating conservation and development
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(UNESCO-MAB, 2020a; Reed, 2016). As “bull’s-eye” arrangement, with the “core listed online on the UNESCO-MAB website zone” surrounded by the “buffer zone,”
(UNESCO-MAB, 2020a): which is in turn surrounded by the
• “The core area(s) comprises a strictly “transition area.” The idea underlying this
protected ecosystem that contributes model of zonation within biosphere reserves
to the conservation of landscapes, was to protect examples of undisturbed
ecosystems, species and genetic ecosystems in the midst of a human-
variation. modified, and often human-dominated,
• “The buffer zone surrounds or landscape – a worthy idea, but hard to
adjoins the core areas, and is used for implement in a simple way almost anywhere
activities compatible with sound in the world.
ecological practices that can
reinforce scientific research, Several problems arise with this idealized
monitoring, training and education. system. One is that definitions can be
• “The transition area is the part of the complicated, confusing, and can vary from
reserve where the greatest activity is country to country and place to place.
allowed, fostering economic and Although the International Union for the
human development that is socio- Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has
culturally and ecologically attempted to categorize protected areas, it is
sustainable.” still not absolutely clear what is meant by
“protected” or “strictly protected,” or what
Idealized diagrams depicting the spatial categories would manage for “activities arrangement of these zones usually show a compatible with sound ecological practices.”
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Ideally, in order to advance the biosphere in the “buffer zone,” not only the “transition concept, all zones in a biosphere reserve – area.” Matar and Anthony (2017) are correct not only the core zone – should contribute in saying that biosphere reserves “cannot fit
“… to the conservation of landscapes, into only one category [of protected area] ecosystems, species and genetic variation.” since their basic premise is inclusive of
For the same reason, all zones should be multi-management purposes within the
“used for activities compatible with sound functional zonation scheme.” They also ecological practices” (not just the buffer correctly point out that over the decades zone) and also foster “…economic and since the Seville Strategy in 1996, the MAB human development that is socio-culturally Program has supported “a larger integration and ecologically sustainable” (not just the of the zones’ functions… meaning that transition area). Research Natural Areas conservation, sustainable development, and within the U.S. National Forest System and logistic support, can be implemented in all zapovedniks in the countries of the former zones but with varying degrees, depending
Soviet Union would probably be considered on the functional focus of each zone”
“strictly protected” areas – but their (Matar and Anthony, 2017). objectives are also “scientific research, monitoring, training and education,” which Zonation within the Cascade Head is listed as appropriate for the “buffer zone” Biosphere Reserve provides a case study of of a biosphere reserve. Even ecologically the complexity of a real-life, not an sound timber harvest, hunting, or fishing idealized, situation. It is, in turn, a lesson could be “compatible with sound ecological about the need for flexibility in delineating practices,” and therefore perhaps appropriate and characterizing zones within a biosphere
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reserve. When the Cascade Head Biosphere which included lands and waters under a
Reserve was established in 1976, it combination of public and private consisted only of the Cascade Head ownership. A preserve managed by The
Experimental Forest and Cascade Head Nature Conservancy was located within
Scenic Research Area, with a total area of CHSRA; its management objectives were about 8,700 hectares. Although a zonation also close to strict protection (for scheme apparently was not a requirement for biodiversity conservation, research, biosphere reserves at the time, the area education and recreation). The other areas nevertheless had a complex, de facto within and adjacent to CHSRA presented a zonation, encompassing a mosaic of complicated map of ownership and multiple-use management objectives management authority. implemented by a score of land owners and land managers. The Neskowin Crest The periodic review form used for Cascade
Research Natural Area, then 35 years old, Head Periodic Review in 2016 (UNESCO- was essentially strictly protected for MAB, 2013) required information about scientific research. It was surrounded by the zonation, and that it be organized according
Cascade Head Experimental Forest, whose to the three-zone system. The periodic management objectives were to understand review team updated and analyzed the land silvicultural and timber harvesting practices use and land management situation, and in order to foster both environmental redefined the zones of the biosphere reserve. sustainability and economic development. The entire seventy-five-square-mile
Both of those entities were located in the watershed of the Salmon River was included larger Cascade Head Scenic Research Area, in the overall boundaries, as were the new
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Cascade Head Marine Reserve and adjacent Stewardship Group land that is under a
Marine Protected Areas. In explaining this conservation easement, and the Cascade dramatic expansion of the biosphere reserve, Head Marine Protected Areas, where fishing the Periodic Review Report noted that the and other activities are less strictly regulated evolution of watershed-scale conservation than in the Marine Reserve itself. The efforts and a recognition of the important Salmon River watershed, and parts of linkages between ocean and land argued for Lincoln City to the south and Neskowin to
“a more integrated reserve area that includes the north of Cascade Head, were designated a broader array of ecological and economic a “Zone of Cooperation and Partnership” – a interests.” name chosen as an equivalent of “transition
area,” and which indicates the aspirations of
In updating the zonation of the Cascade those who prepared the Periodic Review. In
Head Biosphere Reserve, the Neskowin all, the Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve
Crest Research Natural Area, the Reference now encompasses about 34,000 hectares, or
Marsh (a never-drained area of saltmarsh), 130 square miles – relatively small for a restored saltmarshes of the Salmon River biosphere reserve. The spatial arrangement estuary, and the Cascade Head Marine of the zones bears little resemblance to
Reserve became the “core” protected areas. UNESCO-MAB’s idealized bull’s-eye
Rather than using UNESCO’s term “buffer diagram, with “core” surrounded by “buffer” zone,” the Periodic Review adopted the term surrounded by “transition” zones.
“Zone of Managed Use,” and included
CHSRA and the Experimental Forest, Stakeholders and Governance
TNC’s Cascade Head Preserve, Westwind
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The mosaic of land ownership and timber companies such as Miami management authority described above leads Corporation and Hancock Timber Resource to a complicated situation regarding Group. And then there are the nearby stakeholders and governance; what might be academic and research institutions with called the “stakeholder landscape” is very important roles and interests, including complex. One category of stakeholders Oregon State University and its Hatfield includes agencies with administrative and Marine Science Center. This complexity legal responsibilities, such as the U.S. Forest isn’t unusual. Every biosphere reserve I
Service, the Oregon Department of Fish and have worked in around the world has a
Wildlife, Salmon Drift Creek Watershed similarly complex ownership and
Council, the City of Lincoln City, Lincoln management context. and Tillamook counties, Oregon State Parks, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Although the U.S. Forest Service is the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve’s official
Administration (NOAA), the U.S. administrative point-of-contact with the
Environmental Protection Agency, and the UNESCO-MAB program, it does not see
Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and itself as the “management authority” for the
Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. Other biosphere reserve. In fact, at least in the landowners and land managers are also United States, biosphere reserves are multi- important stakeholders: The Nature stakeholder, multi-landowner, multi-agency
Conservancy, Cascade Head Ranch, the collaborations, and it is questionable
Westwind Stewardship Group, the Sitka whether any of their constituent
Center for Art and Ecology, and commercial organizations could be called a
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“management authority.” Each review form does ask for a justification of administrative or land-owning partner in the how the biosphere reserve meets this and biosphere reserve is bound by its own other criteria, and it explicitly asks about institutional mandates, which are often legal “mechanisms for implementation,” ones, and they do not and cannot operate including mechanisms to manage human use under a single authority. and activities, a management policy or plan,
and the authority or mechanism to
Matar and Anthony (2017) concluded that, implement this policy or plan. The 1976 in general, “… it is unclear whether local Cascade Head Periodic Review Report
BR [biosphere reserve] authorities are using addressed this question by stating that one of
PR [periodic review] reports for any the key partners, the Salmon Drift Creek management purposes besides reporting to Watershed Council, would “… lead a
UNESCO-MAB Secretariat.” That is partnership effort. This effort will result in a certainly true for Cascade Head; the periodic Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve working review was completed mainly to satisfy group. This group will generate a
UNESCO-MAB requirements, and never management plan for the Biosphere Reserve intended for management purposes. The area” (Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve, current periodic review form used to guide 2016). Broad participation by local the process stipulates that one criterion for stakeholders was stated as an aspiration for qualification as a biosphere reserve is that it the process. should have “a management policy or plan for the area as a biosphere reserve” Given the reality of multi-stakeholder
(UNESCO-MAB, 2013). The periodic ownership and management authority,
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creating a management plan for the Cascade area, generally don’t know much about the
Head Biosphere Reserve seems unrealistic. Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve, if they
While it may be possible to strengthen are even aware of it. During various communication and coordination among the presentations I made as the Sitka Center’s diverse array of biosphere reserve Ecology Resident in the fall of 2018, stakeholders, imposing hard objectives on including at the University of Oregon and at them would be impossible. A softer goal, the Hatfield Marine Science Center, I such as developing a collaborative, shared conducted an informal poll of the knowledge
“vision” or “mission,” seems more suited to about the biosphere reserve. In a sample of reality than a “management plan.” approximately 50 people, half were not
aware that Cascade Head was a biosphere
A necessary first step in generating broad reserve. Of the half that were aware of its stakeholder collaboration in the Cascade existence, only ten percent said they knew a
Head Biosphere Reserve is simply to raise lot about it. public awareness of its existence. If you stopped an Oregonian on the street and The 2007 UNESCO-MAB report Dialogue asked them if they know about the Cascade in Biosphere Reserves (Bouamrane, 2007)
Head Biosphere Reserve, the probability is points out that: high that you would draw a blank look, and Many biosphere reserves a question: “The what?” Most local created before the Seville residents, and even many state and federal Strategy (1995) were not agency representatives who manage the fish, rooted in the participation or forests, and other natural resources in the consultation of local and
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native communities. … In Cascade Head one of the first U.S. biosphere
such cases, initiative for the reserves, the U.S. MAB Program
creation of a biosphere piggybacked on the process among local
reserve usually comes from a stakeholders that had already begun. Now,
state institution (top-down even though Cascade Head Biosphere
approach)… In order to Reserve is one of the oldest in the U.S.
initiate the process of MAB network, a robust stakeholder
sustainable management, the engagement and collaboration process is just
construction of dialogue must beginning – but that does not negate the
be oriented towards the local value of the experience gained in the 44
legitimation of the biosphere years since Cascade Head was designated as
reserve. a biosphere reserve.
Cascade Head does not quite fit this It will take a great deal of work to enable description, but does not quite escape it Cascade Head to live up to its potential as a either. At Cascade Head, the designation of laboratory and model, but there are several the biosphere reserve built on the foundation hopeful developments that may help. One is of a political process that had led to the that in Oregon, the U.S. Forest Service has creation of the Cascade Head Scenic become a national leader in experiments in
Research Area in 1974. That process was “collaborative management” on its lands pushed by local stakeholders and led by (Butler, 2013; McLain et al., 2014; Davis et
Oregon politicians in the U.S. Congress, not al., 2015; Davis et al., 2017). Although the by the U.S. Forest Service. In naming U.S. Forest Service does not see itself as the
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management authority for the Cascade Head Conservation Assistance Program. This
Biosphere Reserve, it does manage a large group would be the logical foundation or proportion of its area, and could bring its nucleus for a steering or advisory committee experience with collaboration elsewhere in for the biosphere reserve, if and when such a the state to planning and decision-making in body is developed. Another recent positive the biosphere reserve. In fact, a collaborative development is the formation of a support process, convened by the USFS Hebo group for the Cascade Head Biosphere
Ranger District, The Nature Conservancy, Reserve, whose objectives include raising and the Westwind Stewardship Group, has awareness about it, advocating for actions to been underway for the past two years at strengthen it, and conducting educational
Cascade Head. It is a forum for a diverse activities within it – much-needed tasks group of relevant government agencies from given the current low level of awareness of federal, state, and local levels, along with its existence. interested NGO and private stakeholders, to discuss issues concerning public access, Conclusion: Lessons from Cascade Head trails, camping, parking, and related topics, Several of the lessons from Cascade Head and to generate management options that have been discussed above. One is that would solve concerns about resource understanding the unique aspects of the protection and growing recreational use. history of U.S. biosphere reserves can help
This informal planning process has been explain their current relationship to the rest facilitated by an outdoor recreation planner, of the World Network of Biosphere funded through a grant from the National Reserves. Another lesson is that the current
Park Service’s Rivers, Trails, and periodic review process is often seen as
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burdensome and may have deterred some Three additional overarching lessons from former U.S. biosphere reserves from Cascade Head stand out. One is the critical remaining in the network, and reorienting role of individuals, whose commitment, hard the process toward shared learning among work, and love of place over many decades biosphere reserves would be beneficial. Still have made it such a rich laboratory and another lesson from Cascade Head is that model. Their stories are unequivocal in rigid models of zonation do not often fit on- showing the importance of inspired, value- the-ground (or sea) reality, and ideas about based, individual action. The second lesson zonation should move toward a more is that although ecologists now understand sophisticated and integrated view of how to much about how nature works, ecological manage landscapes and seascapes for social mysteries still abound. We don’t fully and ecological resilience. Finally, at understand the migratory traditions of gray
Cascade Head there is no single whales, the causes of Sea Star Wasting management authority, and never will be. Syndrome, the genetic diversity of the
Governance there and in other biosphere Oregon silverspot butterfly, the life histories reserves requires adaptive flexibility and of salmon, or the ecohydrology of forests. collaboration among diverse stakeholders. More research is needed to strengthen the
The need is for principles and visions of scientific knowledge that underpins resilience, not rigid requirements imposed decisions about restoring ecosystems and from a “top down” level, whether maintaining their resilience in the face of the international or national. changes our species is creating in the
Biosphere. A third big lesson is the
importance of worldviews – how we think
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about the human-nature relationship – in Forest (Blue River, Oregon), a former shaping our individual and collective UNESCO-MAB biosphere reserve, in actions. At Cascade Head we can read the October, 2019. history of changing worldviews in the landscape, and begin to imagine how a new, References ecocentric worldview could create a resilient Bouamrane, M. (Ed.). (2007). Dialogue in relationship between humans and nature biosphere reserves: references, here, and everywhere. practices and experiences. Biosphere
reserves – Technical Notes 2. Paris: Acknowledgements UNESCO. The author would like to thank the Sitka http://www.biosfaromrade.org/wp- Center for Art and Ecology (Otis, Oregon) content/uploads/2014/11/118_Dialog for the opportunity to spend four months ue-in-BR.pdf living and working in the Cascade Head
Biosphere Reserve as the Howard L. McKee Butler, W. H. (2013). Collaboration at Ecology Resident in Fall, 2018, and the Arm’s Length: Navigating Agency McKee family for their financial support of Engagement in Landscape-Scale that residency. He also wishes to thank the Ecological Restoration Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and Collaboratives. Journal of Forestry, the Written Word, a collaboration between 111(6), 395–403. the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State
University, for selecting him as a Visiting Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve. (2016). Scholar at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Periodic Review for Biosphere
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