CONSERVATION-BASED LAND USE PLANNING
What - Why - How

Saskatchewan's native grasslands and forests are experiencing tremendous change as resource extraction activities and other land uses escalate. Conservation-based land use planning (CLUP) is an important tool that we can use to help manage our activities.

CLUP is designed to take care of the land and local economies.
It plans for the long-term
It is supported by best-available information about the land, its wildlife and human needs
It addresses both ecosystem health and a mix of human land uses
It plans for the development of diverse, sustainable community economies.
It takes a precautionary approach to land use management by erring on the side of protecting ecosystem functioning, rather short-term monetary profits.

The terms --- conservation-based, conservation-first, ecosystem-based --- can be used interchangeably. Most of the 'integrated land use planning processes' in Saskatchewan claim to be ecosystem-based, but they are not. The claim is premised on the idea that environmental impact assessments and project management plans are sufficient to preserve fully-functioning ecosystems. Neither however, are designed to achieve this because they are project-specific and not capable of addressing cumulative impacts stemming from a mix of human activities on the landscape.

Key difference between CLUP and current planning measures in Saskatchewan are outlined in the table below.

How do you do Conservation-Based Land Use Planning?

The first priority of CLUP is protection of land and water, recognizing that human economies and cultures are sustained by healthy ecosystems.

CLUP starts with carefully choosing areas to set aside from industrial activities. The areas and linkages between them are collectively chosen to help native ecosystems maintain their natural functions.

Protected areas are valuable to people for many reasons. For example they contribute to research, recreational opportunities, cultural pursuits and family incomes (e.g. tourism, trapping, fishing, outfitting, etc). Sometimes people think that protected areas are meant to stop economic development or to keep people out of certain areas. Neither is true. Under CLUP, many light footprint human activities are permitted, but large scale industrial developments such as mining and industrial forestry, are not allowed.

Protected areas, and in particular the larger sites, must achieve a number of things:
allow for, yet be able to withstand natural disturbances (e.g. fire)
capture representative mixes of different habitats (e.g. old growth, young growth, wetlands, uplands, etc)
accommodate both broad and specific wildlife needs (e.g. caribou migrations, fish spawning)
preserve places of high biological diversity (e.g. riparian areas along waterways)
preserve places that are ecologically rare (e.g. sand dunes)
preserve habitats for rare and endangered species
preserve places that are ecologically sensitive (e.g. steep slopes)
ensure that some sites extend variable distances on a north-south line to help wildlife adapt to habitat impending changes caused by global warming.

The second priority of CLUP is careful economic development activities outside of protected areas. These places can accommodate various human uses like town sites, forestry, mining and other activities that provide for sustainable economies.

	- Branimir Gjetvaj

An important aspect of the CLUP process is understanding the impacts that various human activities have on ecosystems. Issues like soil degradation, poisoning, depleting water systems, damaging wetlands, flooding river valleys, fragmenting landscapes, mechanically removing vegetation, penetrating groundwater sources, etc, all need to be investigated.

With ecological integrity in mind, the final land use plan uses all information to identify protected networks of ecosystems and zones for careful economic development. Guidelines are developed to explain how human activities will take place outside of protected areas.

Projects of various kinds, such as mining and forestry,require their own planning processes and produce their own management plans and environmental impact assessments. These initiatives are not designed to address the cumulative impacts arising from multiple projects on the land base, but they remain extremely important in planning for how activities will be carried out in respective operating areas.

CLUP is a collaborative, community-based process with shared decision-making by all participants. CLUP combines indigenous ecological knowledge with western science to provide for both cultural and ecological sustainability. Socioeconomic issues are discussed and integrated into CLUP planning as well. What do people want to do on the land? What are their needs and opportunities? How and where can activities/ developments take place? A diversity of activities is discussed and planned to encourage ecological, social and long-term economic well-being.

CLUP uses best-available information about a planning region. Understanding how the land and waters function is important to planning. What are the ecological limits of the land (e.g. short growing season)? What are its soils characteristics? What do soils need to replenish themselves? How easily do plants grow? Where is water and how does it move? What are the natural disturbances? When and where do natural disturbances typically occur? And so on.

Ecosystems are always changing and so CLUP considers and plans for changes that occur over time (e.g. young growth forests evolving over time into old growth). ‘Pictures of the land’ are looked at in both short and long time frames. Preservation of nature’s inherent goods and services (like water filtration, medicines, climate regulation) is considered at various geographic scales (large, medium and small).

Information is gathered from all possible sources and is examined and analyzed to determine where best to protect, and how best to use the land (both inside and outside of protected areas). Photos and maps are developed, often using computerized geographic information systems (GIS) to provide pictures and knowledge of what habitats for animals and plants exist, the location of rare and sensitive areas, important cultural and spiritual places, drainage basins, topography, soils types, and so on. When information is overlaid, interpretive maps are developed to help decide where to locate protected areas so that overall functioning of the various ecosystems can be maintained.

Determining What to Protect

A conservation-based planning approach focuses first on what to leave, not on what to take. In other words, instead of looking first for the best places to remove resources, CLUP looks first for the important places to protect the ecosystem. This approach allows planners to develop a baseline understanding of what protection is needed for long-term ecosystem and cultural health. From there, they can proceed to land use deliberations.

	- CPAWS map showing 'first cut' analysis at determining where large, linked sites should be located in the northern half of the boreal forest. - Orange shapes = proposed sites and linkages. - Dark green shapes = existing protected areas.

As planners consider what to set aside from industrial developments, they look at the landscape at several different scales (large, medium and small). The goal is to shelter a diversity of natural places and help the overall landscape to sustain the full diversity of ecosystem functions and services while accommodating human footprints.

Large Protected Sites: Large, linked sites are identified first by looking at natural changes on the land that occurs over time. A protected areas network is planned to ensure that nature's mix of habitat types will always exist on the landscape within protected areas and can accommodate the natural disturbances.

Medium Protected Sites: On lands outside of the large protected area networks, planners look next for other places, typically in smaller areas, that also need protection because they are important for maintaining ecosystem functioning or sensitive for unique reasons. For example, streams, caribou calving grounds and low-lying wetlands might be selected.

Small Protected Sites: Finally, on the remaining lands, say in an areas that are deemed suitable for timber harvesting, planners look once again for places within harvest sites that are sensitive and require protection. This might include intermittent streams, or perhaps nesting sites for osprey or owls.

Is CLUP Happening Today?
Saskatchewan is not doing this kind of planning yet, although initial steps have been taken in the Great Sand Hills in southwestern Saskatchewan. In our forests however, final decisions for land protection and use are currently based on industrial interests first, and ecosystem needs last.

Land use planning regions in the forest (yellow regions show CPAWS campaign areas).

Discussions are underway about doing 'cumulative impacts assessments' in some parts of northern Saskatchewan. This is good news. There are no indications however, that there will be a shift in land use planning so that cumulative impacts are actually addressed. CPAWS and others are working to include the CLUP approach into northern planning and management.

It is argued by some that we must allow for wide-spread industrial developments and we will compensate for the impacts later by doing assessments, new research and site mitigation. These activities all have value, but a 'wait until later' position is filled with risk to ecosystem health and local livelihoods because it places a profound trust in our abilities to understand complicated ecosystems and in our abilities to fix nature when we hurt it. Under CLUP, risk is moderated because protected area networks are designed (as best as we can) to accommodate ecosystem complexities and to preserve a broad sampling of natural places that don't require 'fixing'. Moreover, when well-chosen, protected areas become places that we can use as benchmarks to compare and measure how well we are doing in managing unprotected lands.

The Provincial Protected Areas Program: Saskatchewan has a protected areas program called the Representative Areas Network (RAN). It is a government program unto its own, but often connected to government planning processes when protection issues are discussed. The RAN has some admirable goals to preserve species diversity through habitat protection, but the Province does not have a well thought out system of large, linked sites. Many of the principles of conservation biology are overlooked when RAN sites are established. For example, most RAN sites are too small. None of them are connected.

-Branimir Gjetvaj

The selection process for new protected areas in Saskatchewan is inherently flawed. A landscape analysis of enduring features (rocks, soils and topography) is used in an effort to identify representative habitat types. This analysis is important but the site selection process typically stops at enduring features and little, if any consideration is given to other important conservation aspects of the ecosystem such as animal movements, rare species and places, vegetation types and age structure, natural disturbance regimes (e.g. fire), and so on. Sites selected are further weakened when industry dominates the decision-making process and shifts and shrinks the RAN sites to make way for economic interests. Because the RAN program operates outside of land use planning processes, the site selection process does little to address questions around sustaining local economies.

Conclusion

A key result of CLUP should be a well-planned network of protected areas that represents all of our natural ecosystems and preserves the integrity of native species and their habitats. Saskatchewan's land use planning and protected areas programs are not doing that. Instead we are seeing management decisions that relegate nature to small, disconnected areas, often chosen for their lack of importance to industry rather than their importance to nature.

Conservation-based management is an important tool that can be used to help look after our part of the world by restoring balance to land use and land protection.

Our human issues surrounding site selection and protection are numerous, complicated and often difficult to resolve. But they are important and worth the effort if we wish to implement good stewardship practices. We have a marvelous opportunity to do things right in Saskatchewan. We can have both meaningful protection and sustainable economic development.

Download fact sheet on Conservation- Based Land Use Planning (pdf)

LEARN MORE:

The Science behind the Need for Protected Areas Conservation Biology 101: Learn about what conservation biology says about preserving our natural ecosystems

CPAWS Work in Land Use Planning Read about the North Central and Athabasca land use planning processes.

Towards Ecosystem-based Conservation Planning in the North Central Planning Area (the Uskiy Puhco report) Read the Uskiy Puhco research report prepared for the NCLUP process. Overview Summary report Main report