Remarks for Steve Williams, USFWS Director U.S. NatureServe: Charting a Path Forward Conference
Tucson, Arizona

November 17, 2004

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here with you today. This conference offers an excellent opportunity for all us to work together in addressing emerging conservation needs; and the concept behind NatureServe’s conservation data centers itself represents precisely the kind of visionary spirit of putting sound science in the hands of active partners to anticipate future solutions, instead of only reacting to the current status quo. By virtue, conservation must keep an eye on the future.

Rachel Carson certainly had keen vision a half century ago when she looked across the American landscape and saw that the capacity of natural systems to sustain plants and animals was being diminished by pesticides. It was a time when most agronomists, foresters and public health officials regarded pesticides as miracle compounds capable of increasing production of food and fiber and reducing disease.

Over the next two decades, Carson helped the world understand and address an environmental crisis it had been slow to see. Armed with scientific data and integrity, Carson helped convince scientists, citizens and governments around the world to reduce their dependence on chemicals to control unwanted pests. Gradually over two decades, they adopted more cautious approaches to producing and using pesticides. Carson had succeeded in reminding humankind that perhaps the greatest challenge of all is helping others understand, predict and respond to ecological change.

This is a lesson that is resonates strongly today, and that serves as the impetus for broad-ranging effort I would like to describe to you now, called the Future Challenges Project.
Co-sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Geological Survey, the Future Challenges Project is intended precisely to improve capabilities of both agencies in order to understand, predict and respond to major ecological changes that are likely to have a long-term affect on the natural world and, therefore, our ability to effectively achieve our missions of managing and conserving fisheries, wildlife and plant resources. The Project is also intended to expand partnerships and collaboration between the two bureaus and others in the scientific community, such as NatureServe, we seek to ensure that we have the scientific resources we need to address those ecological changes over the next 15 to 20 years.

The U.S. Geological Survey can help address landscape level ecological change by several means. First and foremost, USGS has the scientific staff and infrastructure to contribute to understanding the causes and effects of ecological change; predicting the nature, rate and magnitude of change; and monitoring the efficacy of possible mitigation strategies. These capabilities contribute to a partnership with the Fish and Wildlife Service that enables both agencies to collaborate in applying adaptive management framework to environmental challenges.

My agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, can also help address landscape level ecological change by several means. Like the USGS, the FWS has scientific staff and infrastructure that can contribute significantly to broadening and deepening our understanding of causes of major ecological change, as well as predicting and responding to those changes. In addition, we manage habitats, fish, wildlife and plants directly, sometimes by on-the-ground stewardship, other times by regulation and other times in concert with public and private partners. These capabilities complement those of the Geological Survey and help further support adaptive management approaches.

A Future Challenges Team, made up of representatives of both agencies, have scoured scientific literature and publications of well-respected scientific organizations, like the National Science Foundation and the National Research Council, to better understand the perceptions of the scientific community at large concerning events and phenomena that are likely to cause landscape changes capable of reducing the sustainability of natural systems.

Then, we asked ourselves two key questions:

• How will the changes in ecological sustainability that have been forecasted affect the basic mission and authorities of both bureaus?
• What could both bureaus do to position their bureaus to be more effective in addressing the changes that have been forecasted?

Those questions elicited important perspectives and questions about the ecological changes that were forecasted and the “challenges” that produced them. The two questions also helped us focus realistically on our capabilities to mitigate predicted ecological changes. Both agencies understand and appreciate that human activity and technology are driving changes in ecological processes and functions at unprecedented rates and scales. As a result, both bureaus recognize that we can be more successful by addressing the ecological changes themselves rather than the factors causing them.

From among the drivers of ecological change uncovered in its literature search, the Future Challenges Team identified four major concerns that USGS and FWS should address in its initial effort:

First, global climate change: Mean surface temperatures are predicted to rise by as much as 5-7 degrees Fahrenheit across much of the United States over the next half century. Scientists expect increased temperatures to profoundly alter habitat conditions; abundance and distribution of plants and animals; and relationships among plants, animals and abiotic components of their habitats. The potential consequences could negate or mask the effects of many kinds of fish and wildlife management strategies and activities, or possibly complement them. This reality presents some very serious and complicated challenges ahead.

Second, we have identified concerns related to the consequences of biotechnology and bioengineering. Advances in genetic engineering and genetics capabilities in general have accelerated rapidly in the last two decades, especially in agriculture, forestry and more recently in aquaculture. Rapid technological advances have made it possible, inexpensive and relatively quick to replicate genetic material, decode gene sequences, clone some organisms, introduce new genetic material into organisms to confer desired traits and suppress genes that produce undesired traits. This has lead to new areas of scientific understanding and inquiry, like genomics, and made it possible to design and “engineer” organisms capable of resisting disease more effectively, growing larger and more rapidly, and out-competing members of the same species that have not been “engineered.” It is now feasible to engineer plants and animals that can flourish in degraded environments where their survival would otherwise be poor, and to introduce intentionally and unintentionally engineered organisms capable of quickly outcompeting and displacing species occurring naturally. Once established, engineered species are capable of spreading rapidly and occupying vast landscapes.

Another major concern stems from the challenges represented by Invasive Species. David Lodge, chair of the National Invasive Species Advisory Committee and an ecology and biology professor at University of Notre Dame has called invasive species and their environmental damage, “the most irreversible form of pollution.” A few years ago, Cornell University reported that exotic plants and animals on land and water cost the United States up to $138 billion annually, impacting human health, commercial activities, community infrastructures, natural resources, and agriculture production. And, the Federal Interagency Committee for the Management of Noxious and Exotic Weeds has reported that between 200 and 250 invasive plant species are recognized as major problems in world agriculture.

Today, species continue to be introduced intentionally and unintentionally to the United States in record numbers. Much like bioengineered organisms, invasive species have displayed alarming capacities to outcompete and displace native species and significantly reduce biological diversity. They thrive for many of the same reasons that engineered organisms do; sometimes natural predators are non-existent, other times invasive species prey on native species, other times the pathogens they bring cause disease among native species, and other times they occupy and defend habitats more vigorously and successfully than native species. Once established, many invasive species spread rapidly and uncontrollably across vast landscapes.

The fourth concern we share relates to our water resources. Competition for water, water consumption and water degradation continue at unprecedented rates. While per capita consumption has declined in some parts of the country and while total consumption by certain sectors of society or the economy has declined, demand and consumption of surface water and ground water in general continue to rise. Rising demand has reduced the volume of water available instream for fish, wildlife and plants.

In many parts of the country, contaminants and other pollutants continue to reduce water quality. As water availability and quality decline, surface waters become increasingly incapable of sustaining ecological functions instream and in adjacent riparian and upland areas. With increasing frequency and consequence, seasonal migrants arrive at habitats no longer capability of meeting their needs for cover, food, and safety. Also, with increasing frequency, landscapes experience fewer returning migrants and more die-offs of resident fish, wildlife and plants.

With these challenges in mind, we convened a scientific workshop, in August, where 40 USGS and FWS scientists and resource managers and five partners from the scientific community to help us flesh out how these four drivers of ecological change will affect our ability to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem function. Among the consistent themes that emerged from the workshop was the cross-cutting nature of these four drivers of change in relationship to natural resource conservation. As a result, we recognized a need for USGS and FWS to coordinate our research, monitoring and risk assessment efforts so that human and financial resources are used effectively and directed at the highest priority needs. Beyond that, we realized that the magnitude of these challenges will require unprecedented collaboration, across many communities, to access and share research and results so that the best information available is used by all decision-makers.

I anticipate that as the Future Challenges Project moves forward, that fine collaboration that already takes place between NatureServe and FWS and USGS will only increase in scope and importance. Our next steps in the process will be to take the dialogue that began with a core group of scientists and managers and expand it to include all of our employees and many more of our partners who also have a stake in these challenges that loom so large in the 21st century.

Rachel Carson wrote, “Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.”

Her work reminds us now that we must be poised to handle these alterations and, furthermore, anticipate solutions to the problems they are now causing. In an era before office PCs and emails, her accomplishments should also serve as encouraging reminder that, although our tasks may seem increasingly daunting, our cooperative capabilities are growing too. We must use them.

Thank you