This is the first of three Public Lands Blog posts on 30x30, President Biden’s commitment to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030. In Part 1, we examine the pace and scale necessary to attain 30x30. In Part 2, we will consider what constitutes protected areas actually being “conserved.” In Part 3, we will offer up specific conservation recommendations that, if implemented, will result in the United States achieving 30 percent by 2030.
Figure 1. A pictorial map of Yellowstone National Park by Heinrich C. Berann. Source: Wikipedia.
Top Line: If President Biden’s goal of protecting 30 percent of US lands by 2030 is to be attained, more than 1.3 times as much US land must be adequately protected (“conserved”) in this decade as has been protected by this nation in the past fifteen decades—since the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, the world’s first national park, in 1872.
Prompted by a scientific consensus, President Biden has embraced conserving 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030 (a goal known as 30x30).
One cannot protect what one does not measure. Today, 13 percent of the nation, which tallies to 316,304,508 acres, is in adequately protected areas dedicated to the preservation of biological diversity (in other words, we currently have 13x21). “Adequately protected areas” are permanently protected areas that achieve GAP 1 or GAP 2 conservation status as defined by the US Geological Survey. (There are four GAP categories, with 1 best and 4 worst.)
The land area of the United States and its territories (District of Columbia, Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, and Minor Outlying Islands) is 2,439,773,792 acres. Thirty percent of that is 731,932,138 acres. That is the area Biden needs to protect by 2030. That means that 487,954,758 acres—another 17 percent of the nation’s land area—must achieve GAP 1 or GAP 2 status by 2030.
Let’s be generous and conclude that “x30” means by the end of, not the beginning of, 2030. Let’s also assume the clock started at noon Eastern Time on Wednesday, January 20, 2021, when President Biden was sworn in. (I suppose it would only be fair to count the end of 2030 as actually at noon Eastern Time on Monday, January 20, 2031, but the calculations are much harder and we end up in the same place.) Now let’s say that the Biden administration’s share of the acreage that must be conserved is 40 percent (40 percent of the decade, or a presidential term). That means 166,251,052 acres must be adequately conserved by the end of this presidential administration at noon Eastern Time, Monday, January 20, 2025.
Here is what the calculator says must be conserved, on average:
· 41,526,763 acres per Biden-year
· 3,463,564 acres per Biden-month
· 799,284 acres per Biden-week
· 114,183 acres per Biden-day
· 4,758 acres per Biden-hour
· 79 acres per Biden-minute
· 1.3 acres per Biden-second
An acre is a bit larger than a US football field (end zones not included). Choose the unit of time that works best for you.
Bottom Line: The clock is ticking. To permanently protect 30 percent of its lands by 2030, the US must conserve 114,183 acres of land per day—with no time off for weekends and holidays. The Biden administration is already behind, but it can catch up.
For More Information
Kerr, Andy. 2022. Forty-Four Conservation Recipes for 30x30: A Cookbook of 22 Administrative and 22 Legislative Opportunities for Government Action to Protect 30 Percent of US Lands by 2030. The Larch Company, Ashland, OR, and Washington, DC.