Wildlands Prioritization

Wildlands in New England: Past Present and Future (2023) defined Wildlands as follows:
Wildlands are tracts of any size and current
condition, permanently protected from development, in which management is
explicitly intended to allow natural processes to prevail with “free will” and
minimal human interference. Humans have been part of nature for millennia and
can coexist within and with Wildlands without intentionally altering their
structure. 

Goals for Ecological
Representation in Wildlands

Building on the recommendations in Wildlands
in New England, our goals are to: 

• Protect
  at least 10 percent of every ecoregion as Wildland. The report recommends
  protecting at least 10% of the region as Wildlands, distributing that 10%
  more or less evenly among all ecoregions to ensure that these Wildlands
  will protect a greater breadth of the region’s biodiversity.
• Represent
  each ecoregion’s natural communities in Wildlands. To protect the full
  range of biodiversity, we must protect examples of every natural community
  type within each ecoregion as Wildlands.
• Establish
  Wildlands, when feasible, in large and connected natural lands.  Protected lands
  mean very little if the species that rely on them cannot access
  them.  Establishing new Wildlands in the best ecological context
  possible gives them the best chance at a full recovery of natural
  processes.

Ecological Representation: Why & How

Across New England and New York, only a small percentage of ecosystems
are free to live in a truly wild state, where natural processes unfold without
human interference. The small fraction of our landscape that is permanently
protected as Wildland is disproportionately concentrated in mountainous regions
such as the Adirondacks, Green Mountains, and White Mountains. As a result,
most ecosystems, including extensive lowland and common
communities—floodplains, pine barrens, and oak-pine-northern hardwood forests,
for example—remain underrepresented in the region’s Wildlands.

Using the Wildlands in New England data, we conducted the first
region-wide analysis of ecological representation in Wildlands. Our GIS
analysis highlights areas that contain habitats that are under-represented or
absent from the current Wildlands network within each ecoregion. These findings
were then combined with measures of landscape connectedness to identify
priority areas for future Wildland protection.