by Chris Buelow
Land protection is typically the critical first step required in realizing many long-term conservation outcomes, especially conservation elements related to biodiversity and landscape resilience. The land is the foundation upon which these elements exist, and without this foundation, the potential for their persistence is lost. However, when considering the goals of land protection, it’s important to evaluate each landscape protected in relation to the motivation for that protection. In other words, if the motivation for conservation is related to biodiversity and landscape resilience, then land protection is often only the very beginning of a long-term relationship with that protected landscape. Too often we see conservation efforts declared successful at the end of the land protection stage, resulting in a situation where the needs of the resources and values that initially inspired that protection are overlooked, and these resources and values are still eventually lost. The following is a brief overview of the need to consider the values of biodiversity and landscape resilience once land protection is achieved. Ideally, the considerations of these needs can also inform the prioritization of land protection actions and the expenditure of organizational capacity to truly achieve a conservation mission.
In its most basic form, biodiversity is a term that describes the full breadth of species and ecosystems represented across a landscape. The greater the diversity of species and ecosystems that are present, the higher that landscape’s biodiversity score will be. In general, and covering large areas, a high biodiversity score is an important indicator of the integrity of that landscape. However, this should always be viewed through the lens of the specific landscape that’s being considered and the physical characteristics underlying that landscape. Biodiversity scores are always relative. A healthy tropical rainforest would be expected to support some of the highest biodiversity scores on the planet. In comparison, a healthy northern bog ecosystem will support a much lower biodiversity score than the rainforest, but both ecosystems are critical in supporting global biodiversity because both support unique elements of biodiversity found nowhere else. Biodiversity values, especially on the smaller scale, shouldn’t necessarily be measured by the number of species present, but instead by the richness of the specialized species that that landscape supports. It’s those specialized species that will almost always be the most vulnerable to habitat degradation, and therefore the first to be lost from a landscape. The inverse is also true: if a landscape is currently supporting highly specialized species, then that landscape is likely expressing a relatively high level of integrity. 
The term landscape resilience can be used to describe the ability of an ecosystem to withstand environmental pressures, such as climate change. Like any system, an ecosystem’s resilience will increase or decrease as a function of the stressors that are introduced or alleviated. Generally, the more stress an ecosystem is experiencing, the less resilient and more vulnerable that ecosystem becomes to environmental pressures. Many ecosystem stressors are obvious and easily recognized, such as invasive species, landscape fragmentation, pollutants and hydrologic alterations. Other stressors are less obvious, and therefore are often overlooked. However, even if a stressor is not obvious, its impacts can be profound. A primary stressor that is still widely overlooked in the northeast is the disruption of historic disturbance regimes.
Regularly occurring fire, ice scour from flooding events, tidal rhythms, and the cyclical changes resulting from beaver activity are examples of disturbance regimes on our landscape that are critical to maintaining the integrity of many of our region’s most highly specialized ecosystems. In turn, these disturbance-dependent ecosystems are critical in supporting the long list of highly specialized species that rely upon them. When the disturbance regime has been interrupted, the integrity and resilience of that specialized ecosystem is compromised, and a compromised ecosystem will eventually lose its associated specialized species. However, thoughtfully reintroducing a historic disturbance regime to that landscape will often result in a restoration of those ecosystems. It should be noted that not every landscape and associated ecosystem in our region is disturbance dependent. In fact, many are not (at least not on a relatively short-term cycle.) Examples of restorative measures on landscapes that have experienced a disruption in natural disturbance regimes include: removing barriers to tidal pulses to allow seawater back into saltmarshes, removing dams to allow for seasonal dynamics of the river bed and its banks, introducing prescribed fire onto historically fire-influenced natural communities that have been degraded by fire exclusion, and allowing for unhindered beaver activity along waterways.
Recognizing the intersection of biodiversity, landscape resilience, historic disturbance regimes, and long-term goal setting and planning is the key to realizing sustainable conservation efforts.
One of the very first assessments that should be made when sizing up a conservation opportunity is to ask the following questions: 1) what are the current conditions of the landscape (vegetation communities, stressors, etc.); 2) what are the landscape’s underlying physical characteristics (soil type, bedrock chemistry, hydrology, etc.); and 3) in the absence of stressors, what would be the ecosystems that are expressed on that landscape. Answering these questions will allow you to evaluate a landscape’s current and future management needs, including if there’s a fundamental disturbance regime needed to assure the sustained integrity of those ecosystems. 
Case Study: Muddy Brook Wildlife Management Area
A prime example of where these concepts are clearly illustrated is the ongoing restoration effort occurring at Muddy Brook Wildlife Management Area in Hardwick, Massachusetts. Muddy Brook is a roughly 1,600-acre conservation area managed by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife). The core parcels of Muddy Brook were protected by MassWildlife in 1993, and at the time of acquisition, the protection of the Muddy Brook Valley was hailed as a major conservation accomplishment (which it certainly was!). The motivation for the protection of this landscape was fairly standard: the Muddy Brook Valley was a large, unfragmented forested landscape that supported important waterways and offered a diversity of recreational opportunities. Based on these values, the expected trajectory for the Muddy Brook Valley was one of relative stasis. There were no plans for management to occur on this landscape, because there were no specialized values requiring management identified on this landscape.
However, in the early 2000s, MassWildlife ecologists revisited the site and came to understand that there was much more to the Muddy Brook landscape than was originally realized. By posing the three questions above, it became evident that Muddy Brook was in fact a disturbance-dependent landscape capable of supporting a wealth of highly specialized and often quite rare species. This was initially overlooked because the site’s historic ecosystems were being obscured by the stressor of fire exclusion.
Question 1: What are the current conditions? The overall current condition at the time of acquisition was an extensive oak-white pine landscape. Oak is known as a species that thrives in fire-influenced landscapes, while white pine is known to be fire averse. That seems like a contradiction, though a closer look revealed that the canopy oak across the site was generally older than the pine, suggesting that the pine was a result of relatively recent fire exclusion across the site. This observation was further buoyed by the presence of classic fire species–pitch pine, scrub oak, little bluestem–in the last remaining areas of disturbance on the site. Finally, reviewing historical records (and eventually charcoal analysis), it was revealed that the Muddy Brook Valley had a very long and very rich history of fire that stretched back thousands of years, ending with the last wildfire in 1944.
Question 2: What are the underlying conditions? The site is based upon massive sand deposits on the valley floor, and shallow bedrock on the adjacent valley walls. Knowing that underlying characteristics—especially when coupled with disturbance regimes—are the key to which natural communities are expressed on a landscape, the droughty, generally nutrient poor underlying characteristics of the Muddy Brook Valley are the classic characteristics that support fire-influenced barrens and oak woodland natural communities.
Question 3: What ecosystems would be expressed in the absence of stressors? While there were none of the most obvious stressors associated with the Muddy Brook landscape, the answers to Questions 1 and 2 lead to a clear answer to Question 3: the ecosystems of this landscape were being obscured and degraded by the highly impactful stressor of long-term fire exclusion.
This realization set off nearly a decade of inventory, research and experimentation in the Muddy Brook Valley to detail current conditions, better understand historic conditions, and inform the proper restoration pathway. From this work, a restoration plan was generated that called for overcoming the impacts of 70+ years of fire exclusion on the landscape (a timber harvest to remove the white pine that came to dominate the site) and the introduction of a prescribed fire regime to maintain the restored fire-influenced woodlands of the valley. The initial phase of restoration occurred in 2012, and the response was almost instant. 
The first wave of response occurred in the spring of 2012, immediately following the timber harvest. The harvest was conducted in a way that purposely disturbed the pine duff layer so that the underlying mineral soil and the long latent seed bank that it supported could be engaged. The seeds of many disturbance-dependent plants can lay dormant for a century or more, only germinating when conditions are favorable. By June, the entire site was awash in the green of native sedges, and inventories revealed over 50 species of fire-adapted plant species that weren’t expressing on the site prior to the harvest. Four of these species are listed as Endangered in Massachusetts, with Muddy Brook now supporting by far New England’s largest population for one of these species.
The next revelation occurred with the site’s bee fauna. Prior to restoration (2011), systematic bee surveys were conducted and revealed that the site supported 36 species. The site was then resurveyed under the same protocol two years following the initial timber harvest, and this effort identified 133 bee species now using the site (a 270% increase!). Many of these species are highly specialized and associated with fire influenced natural communities. As of 2024 the bee list is up to 177 species, including one species so rare that it was thought to be globally extinct as recently as 2022. Muddy Brook now supports the third highest bee richness in Massachusetts, behind only Montague Plains (201 species) and the entire island of Martha’s Vineyard (~195 species).
Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) have taken a similar trajectory to the bees, with nine state-listed species now occurring on the site, where there were none pre-restoration. Nearly 1,500 species of moth have been identified in the Muddy Brook Valley. And similar is the case with eastern whip-poor-will. Prior to restoration, whip-poor-wills had last been recorded in the valley in the 1980s. Just two years following the initial timber harvest, the first whip-poor-will returned to the site, and as of 2024, there are over 20 whip-poor-will territories at Muddy Brook: currently one of the largest inland populations of this state-listed bird in Massachusetts.
The Takeaway
The above are just a few of the highlights associated with the restoration of Muddy Brook WMA. The site quickly shifted from being simply a nice parcel of open space to one of the most important landscapes in the interior of Massachusetts for the conservation of rare and specialized biodiversity, and is now informing the restoration of similar conservation lands across the region. Through the restoration of this landscape, two major themes have emerged. First, the life histories of the species associated with disturbance-dependent ecosystems make them incredibly resilient and allows them the capability to respond vigorously to restoration, even when the landscape has been obscured by a century of benign neglect. This capacity is not indefinite, but the window of opportunity has not yet closed on our current landscape. Second, it is critical to understand the underlying ecosystem potential of every landscape associated with conservation. While not every landscape has the underlying characteristics to support disturbance-dependent ecosystems, the landscapes that do offer immense opportunities for local and regional biodiversity conservation, but only if that potential is recognized and acted upon. There are many more Muddy Brooks out there, and protecting the land that they occur on is the first step in realizing their true conservation potential. In order to achieve true conservation, the appropriate removal of stressors through active restoration and management is equally necessary.
Chris Buelow is the Senior Restoration Ecologist with the Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program (MA DFW).
