Q&A: The Role of State Agencies in Large Landscape Management and Ecosystem Connectivity | Article

Nature has little regard for geopolitical boundaries, and as human development expands or intensifies in wild spaces, keeping large swaths of land connected is critical to protecting biodiversity so that species can navigate historic migration routes and adjust habitat locations to a changing climate. State wildlife agencies are faced with unique challenges as they coordinate with other state, federal, and international government agencies to manage species that can travel thousands of miles.

EESI sat down with Tony Wasley, director of the Nevada Department of Wildlife and president of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, to discuss the role that state agencies can have in large landscape conservation. Wasley has worked for the Nevada Department of Wildlife since 1997 and has been its director since 2013. This interview complements EESI’s March 29 briefing, Building a Durable National Framework for Large Landscape Conservation.

EESI: You were a mule deer staff biologist for some time at the Nevada Department of Wildlife. How did focusing on this species inform your thinking on large landscape conservation?

Mule deer

Wasley: Mule deer helped me to appreciate large landscape conservation from the perspective of a landscape-scale species. As humans, we are really constrained in the way that we think about habitat and home range, because we can regulate our environments so readily, whereas wild animals are forced to change latitude or elevation for thermal regulation and food. Mule deer may migrate 120 miles or more, with significant elevation changes, to follow favorable temperatures and forage availability.

EESI: What are the benefits of large landscape management that you see in Nevada?

Wasley: A major benefit of large landscape conservation, or connectivity, is providing gene flow. Genetic diversity in a population translates directly to resilience and adaptability of that population to things like climate change or disease. Connectivity is important and only attained through large-scale efforts.

EESI: What role can state fish and wildlife agencies and their associations play in supporting nationwide landscape conservation efforts?

Wasley: They can provide a durable framework to capture programs, priorities, and partnerships in ways that can then be applied across jurisdictional boundaries—whether the framework is a policy or programmatic approach to something like the National Environmental Protection Act. Species do not respect jurisdictional and geopolitical boundaries, so it would be redundant and inefficient to have multiple species recovery or conservation plans across geopolitical boundaries.

EESI: How has the Nevada Department of Wildlife collaborated with local or state agencies or nonprofits to achieve goals related to large landscape conservation?

Wasley: We are the seventh-largest state, but 85 percent of the 110,000 square miles of Nevada are administered by the federal government, primarily by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Federal land management agencies have their own policies and laws, such as multiple-use mandates, that apply to federally administered lands.

Since so much land is managed by the federal government, there is not a lot of opportunity for acquisition of more land by the state—and there is some opposition to that thought. Nevertheless, the Nevada Department of Wildlife has acquired key wildlife lands from private citizens and implemented a number of conservation easements with the help of nonprofits. Conservation easements essentially provide the landowner with financial compensation to surrender certain land development rights, with the landowner maintaining land under such conservation easements as open-space working lands (i.e., farms or ranches). And that is what they want to do anyway, so they are essentially getting compensated to continue doing what they are doing.

Wildlife overpass construction in Nevada. Photo Credit: Nevada Department of Wildlife

The Nevada Department of Wildlife has also worked with the mining industry, which as an industry is the single-largest private landowner in Nevada. Their primary business is not ranching, but they do maintain some ranches. Because it is private land, there is more flexibility to try new practices. We have been able to experiment with various vegetation treatments and grazing regimes; cutthroat trout have been a huge beneficiary of this work.

The Nevada Department of Wildlife also worked with the Nevada Department of Transportation to ensure connectivity, primarily to benefit mule deer. But there are a whole host of ancillary benefits created by wildlife overpasses and underpasses, which ensure that the animals can move freely and are kept off roadways.

EESI: How can state-level decision makers ensure there are inclusive processes that engage those who are affected by conservation decisions?

Wasley: There must be awareness of the diversity of stakeholders desiring to have input in these processes, and there needs to be processes that identify points of input. There is a unique mission and authority of state wildlife agencies in managing public trust species.

States are entrusted with managing these species, and every state has open-meeting structures into which input can be received. But there needs to be different levels of input—not only at the state level through a state wildlife agency, but blended across jurisdictional boundaries.

There are additional and ongoing opportunities to include representation of a diverse group of stakeholders such as private landowners and indigenous peoples. Multiple levels of input in a transparent and readily accessible process are crucial.

EESI: Could you share one or two large landscape conservation success stories that you have seen so far in your career?

Wasley: The 2018 Department of Interior Secretarial Order 3362 (“Improving Habitat Quality in Western Big Game Winter Range and Migration Corridors”) allowed for the incorporation of wildlife corridor protection into land management agency policy through instructional memorandums and other policy devices. Although this was done under the auspices of benefiting mule deer, it has benefited a whole host of other species.

Another, older, example is the 1989 North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) (P.L. 101-233), passed as a result of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan. When you look at migrating waterfowl, you often do not think about wildland connectivity because they can fly over obstacles. But areas to rest and nourish are super important. By mapping and protecting wetland connectivity, migrating waterfowl, which migrate thousands of miles, will have plenty of space to rest, shelter, and eat. That is what has been accomplished through NAWCA.

EESI: Which elements of a collaborative landscape conservation system are most in need of sustained support from the federal government?

Wasley: Human capacity. There are four regional fish and wildlife agency associations—the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, along with ones for the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest—and three of those four entities have regional landscape conservation strategies in place. These three all have human capacity to champion and steward those efforts throughout that geographic region. The one that does not have a regional landscape conservation strategy in place is the Western Association, and I believe that is in large part due to lack of permanent personnel.

There are two areas where human capacity is needed: to oversee the creation of the strategy and to oversee, update, and implement the strategy. A lot of my counterparts do not have time to do these things. Having dedicated capacity is critical to the creation of a framework and the implementation of that framework. Federal funding can pay for such permanent capacity to oversee landscape conservation efforts.

EESI: What public policy lessons can be drawn from your experiences in landscape conservation over the past 10 years that can inform the building of a framework for landscape conservation over the next 10 or 20 years?

Landscape Conservation Cooperatives

The Department of the Interior created the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) in 2009, the first federal, nationwide effort to create a coordinated and landscape-level approach to conservation. Beginning in 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began to provide significant funding and personnel support for 22 LCCs, which covered the entire nation as well as portions of Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

Federal support for LCCs was withdrawn in 2017, although the Biden-Harris Administration signaled support for large landscape conservation in a 2021 executive order.

Read more about the history and current status of LCCs here.

Wasley: Something we learned from the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives is that we cannot be successful without trust and partnership. The fatal flaw of landscape conservation cooperatives is that they provided an opportunity for well-intentioned and energetic conservation-minded nonprofits to circumvent state programs, priorities, partnerships, and jurisdictional authorities in ways that fostered resentment by states.

I think there are two key considerations for whatever comes next: 1) respect for and acknowledgement of the jurisdictional authorities of the states as stewards of the public's wildlife—any landscape-scale efforts need to be complementary, not competitive with that—and 2) dedicated capacity to oversee and assist in the creation and implementation of regional landscape conservation plans.

The interview was edited for clarity and length.

Interview by: Amber Todoroff