The centrality of ethics for managing land under ecological transformation

Abstract

Human-driven ecological transformations threaten traditional management approaches to protected areas. The resist-accept-direct framework has been utilised within the U.S. National Park Service to help land managers make decisions during global change. But in U.S. land management agencies and beyond, there is often not enough appreciation that decisions about responding to change are laden with values. Using academic and agency literature, and drawing on interviews with U.S. National Park Service staff, we show how ethics is central to decisions about managing for the future. We identify six particularly salient ethical considerations that may be helpful for managers. We explain why they are ethical and why they should be recognised as such. During this ethical examination, we find connections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental ethics for land management and suggest that ‘relationships gathered in place’ may be an especially valuable ethical lens for thinking about ecological transformation. The article closes with some tentative recommendations about how to consider trade-offs when values conflict.

Keywords

Resist-accept-direct ethics ecological transformation land management climate change

Natural resource managers in state, federal, and tribal agencies face an increasingly difficult world. Anthropogenic changes in ecological and climatic conditions have created growing conflicts with traditional management goals. Foundational aspirations, such as preserving natural and cultural resources unimpaired or retaining wilderness areas’ primaeval character and influence, are fast becoming impractical given the magnitude of change. Ecosystems are moving beyond their historical range of variability and entering a no-analogue future. Many parks and protected areas would benefit from new management goals and strategies.

The resist-accept-direct (RAD) framework was developed by federal land management agencies as a tool to help navigate this new decision space (Schuurman et al., 2020 , 2022; Williams, 2022).¹ The framework characterises three options available in the face of change. The ‘resist’ option involves intervening to push back against change on the landscape. It tries to maintain or restore historical conditions in the face of transformation. ‘Accept’ takes the opposite approach, allowing change to take place with minimal intervention. It involves acknowledging that some trajectories of change are inevitable. ‘Direct’ means recognising that change is inevitable but suggests that managers intentionally influence the trajectory of change towards more desirable outcomes. Direct encourages a more active role in shaping the future.

Until now, resist has generally been the default option for resource managers in public land management agencies in the United States. The U.S. National Park Service epitomises this, as resist is embedded in the agency's mission: ‘The National Park Service preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations’ (NPS, 2024). Protecting resources generally means protecting what's already there. Invasive plants get pulled. Historic structures get reinforced. Decades of management practice are based on assumptions about climate and ecosystem stationarity (Milly et al. 2008). This assumption is ingrained in managers and the public alike.

Anthropogenic climate change and resulting ecological transformations are causing a rethink of the default assumptions. Ecological transformation – defined as ‘the dramatic and irreversible shift in multiple ecological characteristics of an ecosystem, the basis of which is a high degree of turnover in ecological communities’ (Crausbay et al., 2022: 72) – is unfolding in front of managers’ eyes. Difficult choices are unavoidable. The RAD framework is designed to help managers make choices strategically. It provides a simple tool to identify alternative futures. The RAD options are not meant to be exclusive of each other. It might be possible to resist changes in some places while accepting others elsewhere (Magness et al., 2022). They are also not once-and-for-all commitments. A manager might be able to resist for a while before switching strategies to accept change or try to direct it. But RAD is supposed to be helpful. It is designed to support ‘intentional, clear, and coherent natural resource management in a rapidly transforming world’ (Schuurman et al., 2022).

Where ethics lurks in land management decisions

Managers recognise that factors influencing their decisions about human-induced change cross many disciplines and take many forms. The driver of change matters. Is the landscape facing fire, flood, or encroachment by non-native species? The ecological context is also relevant. Does the park primarily protect coastal, high-altitude, biological, or cultural resources (Crausbay et al., 2022)? Important social considerations also come to bear. Who lives nearby and how have they used the landscape in the past? Uncertainty about the trajectory of future conditions can matter too. What do we know about the future and what outcomes seem likely (Cravens et al., 2025)? But one set of considerations always influences how a manager proceeds. These considerations are ethical.

Ethics, at its core, is about what matters. It concerns the things that individuals or society care about. Ethics is often in the shadows but is fundamental to all decision-making. Motivations for action are motivations about what counts. To act in ‘the public trust’, as U.S. civil servants are bound to do, is to say the interests of the wider public are ethically more important than the views of yourself and your office-mates (Department of Interior, 2019). Committing to the ‘best available science’ is to ethically value data over personal preference or the convenience of past practices (The National Parks Omnibus Act, 1998). To protect an endangered species is to say the species has more ethical importance than the interests causing its demise. To maintain ‘naturalness’ or ‘wildness’ is to commit to the ethical importance of certain landscape qualities, however complicated they are to unpack. Even to fight climate change is to believe that maintaining the climate of the Holocene will protect more things of ethical significance than the direction the planet is heading (IPCC, 2022). Deciding how to act always involves taking an ethical position on something. Whether managers explicitly think that way or not, management decisions are built on a deep foundation of ethical commitments, a set of ‘judgments made by people’ (Clifford et al., 2022). It's ethics, in other words, all the way down.

Even with ethics so foundational, resource managers often avoid explicitly discussing the topic (Decker et al., 1991). They may not recognise what ethics entails, as formal ethical guidance for NPS employees deals only with professional ethics, or rules about employee behaviour (e.g. rules against nepotism in hiring or improper use of government property (Department of Interior, 2024)). These guardrails – designed to keep bad actors in line – are part of ethics to be sure, but ethics is much broader and relevant to many other aspects of park management.

Ethics also has a reputation for being too subjective when data and science are supposed to drive management discussions. Ethical values vary. They can feel too unreliable to be the basis of sound decision-making. Managers may worry that ethical conversations are time-consuming or veer into politics, creating heightened tensions all around. Protected area managers tend to focus on scientific information (Treves et al. 2021) and look at ethics as a discipline best kept for conversations outside of work hours.

Adding to the reasons for neglect, formal ethical discourse is largely unfamiliar to most natural resource managers (Smith et al., 2024). It is not a standard part of training in forestry, wildlife biology, or resource management. Dipping a toe into the field is challenging. The language of professional ethicists can be abstract and their journal articles obscure. It is tempting for managers to avoid the topic, hoping there is an expert out there called an ‘ethicist’ who can resolve ethical issues on their behalf.

Unfortunately, ethics is not something managers can avoid. Choices that rest on ethical values are made in all walks of life, multiple times a day. It is baked into land management decisions (Pyron and Mooers, 2022). Being explicit about the ethical values driving a decision is a matter of honesty and completeness. Managers and agencies benefit from acknowledging this responsibility. It increases overall understanding of what is going on and builds legitimacy. Identifying the source of disagreements as ethical and exploring the competing values at play leads to more informed decisions (Stirling, 2008). Ethics, therefore, has a central place in the land manager's decision framework.

Sharpening the case for ethics in the face of ecological transformation

The literature on ecological transformation has paid scant attention to where ethics fits in. Although ethics is always present when making choices about resources, it is particularly salient today. Managers face a rush of pressing choices as the transformation of ecosystems speeds up. The pace of change demands more awareness and comes with greater consequences. Two other considerations heighten its relevance.

The first is that many of today's changes are the clear consequence of human actions (IPCC, 2022). Ecosystems are inherently dynamic but, till now, anthropogenic changes were small enough that it was possible to preserve most of what was valued from the past. Large-scale anthropogenic drivers, especially climate change, mean that the status quo is no longer an option. Managers must choose a way forward. Jedidiah Purdy, author of After Nature, points out it would be better to choose the future through ‘deliberate, binding choice’ than to fall into it through ‘drift and inadvertence’ (Purdy, 2015). You could deliberately move a species to a cooler refuge, for example, or drift towards its loss.

A second reason to make ethics more explicit stems from a more self-aware understanding of conservation history. A growing interest in righting the wrongs inflicted on Indigenous People by the U.S. conservation movement creates an obligation to prioritise ethics (Lee et al., 2021; Roberts, 2023). Most U.S. parks and protected areas are on land previously used by Indigenous Peoples to live, gather subsistence resources, and practice religious ceremonies. The intentional territorial dispossession of Indigenous Peoples across the country, alongside decades of policies and programmes aimed at forced assimilation (Newland, 2024), creates a moral obligation to do better. That obligation was increasingly written into federal policy under the Biden administration, policies still in place today (Department of Interior and U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2021; NPS, 2022).

Paying more attention to the interests of Indigenous Peoples is not only a matter of righting a wrong. It is also a matter of recognising sovereignty, rights, and ecological expertise. Indigenous People possess traditional knowledge about successfully negotiating change on the landscape that colonising peoples lack (Gómez-Baggethun et al., 2013; Hosen et al., 2020). Where they are willing to share this expertise, it is Department of Interior policy to learn (Department of Interior, 2023). Learning should be reflexive, respectful, and reciprocal. Options for incorporating Indigenous Knowledge (IK) include direct engagement in co-management and co-stewardship, tribal participation and consultation in decision processes, and inclusion of IK in scientific research. For such incorporation to be effective and enduring, particularly in tribal-led or co-managed contexts, there is a need to address foundational preconditions such as sovereignty, programmatic leadership, funding, cultural resources, and stakeholder support (Ciocco et al., 2023). Best practices for ethical IK engagement include a focus on representation, data sovereignty, and institutional protocols, as well as sustained, multi-level tribal engagement and careful attention to how IK is operationalised within decision-making processes (e.g. Ciocco et al., 2024).

We begin the project of making ethics more visible for land managers by identifying several prominent ethical considerations that arise when facing ecological change. These considerations come from three main sources. The first is a review of academic and agency literature on managing landscapes under conditions of change. The second draws on a reanalysis of qualitative social science data collected via interviews and focus groups with staff at national park units.² We use a handful of illustrative quotes to identify ethical considerations already evident as protected area managers address ecological transformation. The third source is the authors’ extensive experience in environmental ethics and the ethics of ecological change. This blend of empirical and analytical sources has distinct advantages. ‘[S]ocial science data and analyses’, Erica Haimes says, ‘cast light on different ethical concerns that are salient for members of the public. But the social sciences also help explain how and why those particular concerns come to be salient for different publics through social processes’ (2002: 9).

The resulting paper, informed both empirically and analytically, identifies five prominent ethical considerations for park managers. These considerations are species, ecosystem function and integrity, nature's autonomy, justice, and relationships gathered in place.

Ethical priorities for managing in an era of transformation

Our goal in what follows is not to provide an exhaustive list of ethical considerations for park managers. Such a list would be long. Nor, in the interest of interdisciplinarity, do we attempt to unpack in too much detail the many different ethical frames – for example, utilitarianism, virtue theory, deontology – that a manager might bring to the land. Instead, we identify five conspicuous ethical values (and a sixth that exists in the background) that managers already wrestle with in the face of change. In some cases, they masquerade as scientific matters. We clarify what makes the considerations ethical to create greater comfort with decision-making on changing landscapes.

Species

The protection of threatened and endangered species is required by law on all public and private land in the United States and many jurisdictions abroad. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) instructs the federal government and its agencies to ‘conserve to the extent practicable the various species of fish or wildlife and plants facing extinction’ (United States, 1983). At a basic level, a primary ethical obligation for park managers who encounter endangered species is simply to obey the law.

The point managers should notice is that the ESA itself expresses values. It reflects a commitment to the ethical significance of plants and animals. The ethical elements are evident in the Act's language. The Act specifies that fish, wildlife, and plants are of ‘esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people’. These are not economic values. President Nixon, after signing the law in 1973, said ‘Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed’. A 1978 Supreme Court case on the ESA affirmed, ‘The value of this genetic heritage is, quite literally, incalculable’ (U.S. Supreme Court, 1978). If species of fish, animals, and plants are ‘priceless’ and their value ‘incalculable’, then their value lies in the ethical realm.

The literature of environmental ethics and philosophy gives voice to this value. One environmental ethicist describes a species as a ‘dynamic natural kind’ whose genome encodes a set of successful traits and survival strategies (Rolston, 2012: 129). This gives a species an ‘intrinsic natural value’. To destroy a natural kind by causing an extinction is a form of ‘superkilling’ (Rolston, 1988: 145), involving the loss of both the last individual and millennia of accumulated genetic wisdom. The ESA protects things the nation and its people have decided are of intrinsic ethical value, regardless of their use to humans.

Indigenous philosophies also value wildlife (e.g. Cajete, 1999; Deloria, 2023). They might focus less on the idea of ‘value’ and more on ideas of ‘kinship’ or ‘shared origins’. For many Indigenous Peoples, humans owe their origins and continued survival to plants and animals (Kimmerer, 2015). This makes their protection an expression of gratitude and reciprocity. As kin, animals are entitled to be considered ‘persons’ and may deserve similar consideration to human persons (Robinson, 2014). Some scholars suggest adjusting legal systems to incorporate these Indigenous ideas (Deckha, 2020).

Managers already seem aware of the ethical basis for protecting endangered and culturally significant species when deciding whether to resist, accept, or direct change. For example, one interviewee spoke about the moral responsibility park staff feel to ensure species persistence, even in the face of ecological change.

I don’t want to be the [manager] of record when a species blanks out and is extirpated from the park. … Our fisheries biologist doesn’t want to be the fisheries biologist that goes down in history as, ‘Oh, they did this and now there's no more type of trout ‘X’ swimming around’ because of what they did or didn’t do. (Interviewee 70)

Managers with limited budgets increasingly confront trade-offs between a species’ value and its viability on a landscape. The compromises require assessments of a species’ prospects and how managers can best assist them among competing demands. Sometimes this may require controversial practices such as their managed relocation to a suitable habitat (Minteer and Collins, 2010). The caveat in the ESA that species should be conserved ‘to the extent practicable’ may not have been made with climate change in mind. But it highlights the moral calculus at play. Being explicit that the commitment is ethical – as well as legal – creates the discursive space needed to balance the valued with the possible.

Ecosystem composition and function

Most land managers recognise an ethical obligation to protect the composition and function of the ecosystems within their jurisdiction. Sometimes this obligation is expressed as maintaining the system's ‘health’ or ‘integrity’ (cf. Rohwer and Marris, 2021). Other times, it is expressed as maintaining all the biotic and abiotic elements so that each part can continue to play its role (Schmitz et al., 2008). NPS Management Policy specifies ‘The Service … will try to maintain all the components and processes of naturally evolving park ecosystems, including the natural abundance, diversity, and genetic and ecological integrity of the plant and animal species native to those ecosystems’ (National Park Service, 2006).

The abundance and integrity of native species in an ecosystem are increasingly threatened by ecological transformation. Crausbay et al. write that ‘species turnover, or the number of different species eliminated and replaced over time, is a key commonality for ecological transformation’ (2022: 72). Park managers constantly confront this challenge.

As we think of where we're headed … are there functional replacements for these [species], or not, and if there are, what's going to naturally replace them as they might disappear from pests or pure climate driven [causes]. (Interviewee 42)

Although determining the precise character of an ecosystem transformation is a scientific matter, the choice about whether to value existing ecological characteristics is ethical.

The fact that this choice is ethical may be somewhat hidden or seem too obvious to be worth stating. After all, maintaining ecosystem function is almost always a priority in agency policy. But beneath the desire to preserve existing ecosystems is a commitment to the idea that a well-functioning system is ethically desirable. The challenge for managers faced with ecological transformation is to determine which ecosystem characteristics they should try to preserve, which they should allow to change, and which to try to steer.

The ethical value of these decisions can be unpacked in different ways. One might assert that the services provided by functioning ecosystems create high amounts of human and organismal well-being. For example, healthy aquatic ecosystems in parks provide for high-quality fish habitat, which is good for native fish species, but also good for anglers visiting the park. Alternatively, one could say that the evolutionary processes supported by a functioning ecosystem are ethically desirable in themselves. Or, one could propose that the intrinsic value of species (discussed in the previous section) depends upon their functional ecological context. Each of these is a different way of describing the source of ethical value in the system. Together they explain why Aldo Leopold called the section of his Sand County Almanac on preserving the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community ‘The Land Ethic’ (Leopold, 1949).

Views like Leopold's in Euro-American environmental ethics are termed ‘ecocentric’. They are held by a wide range of environmental ethicists (Katz 1997; Matthews 2006; Naess, 1973). While Indigenous views about ecosystems may be framed differently, they often share an emphasis on taking care of non-human relatives and retaining balanced relationships with the world (Deloria, 2023). The ‘Rights of Nature’ movement, exemplified by the Nez Perce's resolution about the Snake River and the Yurok's declaration about the Klamath, echoes ecocentrism. Natural entities have the right to be in the relationships they have arranged for themselves. Different Indigenous views may suggest responding to environmental change in different ways. In some cases, it may involve resisting ecological transformation and emphasising historical relationships. In others, it may mean more adaptive and transformative approaches as part of a dynamic relationship with the environment.

When a park manager works to preserve ecological integrity, their actions are not typically couched in ethical terms. It feels like a commitment to something scientific. But every time they work towards the health of the land, they express a commitment to the ethical significance of ecosystems. This is something helpful for park managers to notice. Ecosystems host numerous interlocking natural values. And while the ethical importance of ecosystems does not always eclipse every other interest, it is often central to protected area management.

Nature's autonomy

Land managers in many agencies often work hard to protect nature's autonomy. Sometimes autonomy, or self-regulation, is considered a measure of its naturalness.³ To protect naturalness is less about protecting what appears to be a physical thing (e.g. a species or an ecosystem) and more about protecting a quality. Naturalness is difficult to define but is generally associated with an absence of human influence. NPS policy defines ‘natural condition’ as, ‘the condition of resources that would occur in the absence of human dominance over the landscape’ (NPS, 2006). Naturalness exists along a spectrum but, at its limit, a fully natural system is one where the influence of humans is either non-existent or unnoticeable. Naturalness, at these limits, is sometimes equated with wildness (Landres et al., 2000).

The idea that there is ethical significance in natural (or wild) places has a prominent place in Euro-American environmental thinking. The Romantic Movement was a reaction against the perception that the forces of industrialisation were destroying a certain type of experience. Places that appeared to lack human influence provided an important respite from relentless development. The authentic experiences they offered were a source of spiritual sustenance (Nash 1967). ‘None of nature's landscapes are ugly’, wrote John Muir in a typical expression of this sentiment, ‘so long as they are wild’ (Muir, 1901).

The ethical significance of autonomous, wild landscapes was cemented in place by the Wilderness Act (1964). The Act specifies that wildernesses are a source of ecological, geological, scientific, educational, scenic, and historical value. With the Wilderness Act, the obligation to protect nature's autonomy moved from being an ethical obligation to a legal one. Similar commitments to nature's autonomy can be found in the IUCN's Natural World Heritage designation and the European Union's 2030 Biodiversity Strategy.

A huge problem with championing nature's autonomy in wilderness areas is that it neglects the historical use of these landscapes by Indigenous Peoples. The association of wilderness with the lack of human presence has raised questions about the usefulness of the wilderness idea for a quarter century (Callicott and Nelson, 1998; Cronon, 1996). Some Indigenous scholars think the idea of wilderness should be retired (LaPier, 2021). Land managers are increasingly aware of the ethnocentrism it entails. One interviewee described this tension as follows:

The aspect of untrammeled, untouched by man. Well, the world's been populated for quite a while, and humans have had impacts almost everywhere. … [The park's tribal partners are] like, “Well, what do you mean that's a wilderness? We’ve been here forever. We’ve been managing fire and doing things and protecting resources, and you just say, ‘Oh, no. It was untouched by man’?” No. … Anyway, it's just being more aware of that, and being able to articulate and highlight shared desires. (Interviewee 75)

Reconciling past human use with the value of autonomy remains an ongoing philosophical and ethical challenge.

The idea of nature's autonomy is also under pressure from global change. In the epoch known informally as ‘the Anthropocene’, both naturalness and wildness need reconsidering (Cole and Yung, 2011). Nothing on earth is free from human influence (Waters et al., 2016). This creates a dilemma over how best to manage protected areas. Is it best to intervene and thereby sacrifice the land's unmanaged quality? Or is it better to maintain nature's autonomy at the risk of losing something of value? One interviewee acknowledged the puzzle:

We built trails. We built roads. It's already not natural. Anything we do will still not be natural, but we're trying to get a little bit closer, to give it the breathing room it needs to be healthy. (Interviewee 63)

Navigating this difficult terrain involves keeping a close eye on the ethical trade-offs between nature's autonomy, ecosystem function, and human history in a place.

Justice

Conservation's poor track record with Indigenous Peoples illustrates why another significant ethical consideration for land managers is justice (Kantor, 2007). Justice, or the idea that people must be treated fairly, has long been central to ethical theory (Plato, 2007). Parks and protected areas often safeguard values inherent in the land, and many parks preserve and interpret historical injustices in order to memorialise victims and promote a more just society in the future (e.g. civil rights-related parks (NPS, 2025)). Regardless, land always touches people and their history. The national park system is a testament to the myriad ways this happens. Parks connect people to the land through important events (e.g. National Battlefields and National Memorials), through their traditional uses of the landscape (e.g. National Historical Sites), and through the contemporary ways they find economic and recreational value there (e.g. National Recreation Areas and National Rivers and Seashores). In light of these human connections, it is ethically desirable to treat all people affected by parks and protected areas with justice.

There are different ways to be just. One way, distributional justice, involves ensuring benefits and burdens are shared equitably between different groups (Dobson, 1998). It would be wrong for one recreational use in a park (e.g. mountain biking) to come at the cost of others (e.g. hiking). A second type, procedural justice, is about all parties participating equally in decision-making processes (Bell and Carrick, 2017). It is wrong for some voices to be silenced on decisions that affect them. A third type of justice, corrective (or restorative) justice, is about making things right (Liszka, 2010). Parties wronged in the past might have a heightened claim to preferential treatment today. A fourth type, recognitional justice, is about acknowledging the full range of losses and burdens that occur with landscape protection (Whyte, 2017). Losing the ability to hunt, fish, gather berries, or perform rituals in traditional places is a loss that may not be compensated monetarily.

Indigenous Peoples in the United States suffered numerous injustices during the creation of parks and protected areas (Kantor, 2007; Roberts, 2023). These include distributional, procedural, corrective, and recognitional injustices. This makes it particularly important to pursue justice with Indigenous Peoples moving forward. What form this takes can be complicated. But there is more mainstream awareness of these injustices today than ever before (Newland, 2024). There are also more statutory requirements to uphold Indigenous rights and treaty obligations (e.g. Department of Interior, 2024).

In addition to recognising the ethical imperative to support Indigenous Peoples in seeking justice, some park managers have noted the satisfaction derived from playing a small role in promoting justice for tribal partners. One interviewee explained, ‘… supporting the tribes is super rewarding and helping them achieve some justice and equity and upholding our treaty rights is huge’ (Interviewee 22).

Justice is also important for land management involving non-Indigenous People. Parks and protected areas often restrict how people can interact with a place. Decisions about protected areas impact surrounding communities. Park managers know that they have an obligation to treat those communities ethically. One interviewee showed sensitivity to justice in a watershed restoration project:

I think, because of the downstream community, we need to have the public involved. They need to understand what we're trying to do, and how it will or will not affect them. If [town name] wasn't downstream, we'd do this project a lot differently. We can't restore it naturally because there's a town below it … There's wastewater treatment plants. There's homes. There's roads. I think if none of it existed, we would do this a lot differently…. (Interviewee 63)

Ensuring the public is involved is procedural justice. Ensuring nearby infrastructure isn’t negatively impacted is distributional justice. This manager sees the importance of both.

Relationships gathered in place

Environmental ethics has recently started paying much more attention to relationships. Instead of only valuing things like species, ecosystems, or wildernesses, there has been a turn towards valuing relationships between things (Gould et al., 2019; Himes and Muraca, 2018). This includes people-to-people relationships, people-to-nature relationships, and nature-to-nature relationships. Some of this has been driven by Indigenous ethics and some by a field called ‘care ethics’ (Whyte and Cuomo, 2016). In these two approaches, maintaining good relationships is a primary ethical consideration.

Emphasising relationships might sometimes feel like just another way of talking about values, as if it were an umbrella for the previous four ethical considerations. By valuing a species you might be valuing the relationships a species has with its ecosystem, with tribal members, or with park visitors and staff. The composition and function of a system might matter because it supports a range of important ecological relationships. Justice might be a way to ensure that relationships between governments, visitors, employees, neighbours, and traditional users are fair. If you find value in relationships, you will take seriously many of the ethical priorities already discussed (Hoelle et al., 2023).

Protected landscapes are a unique source of many notable relationships. The landscape might be the location of a rare landform. It might be home to a particularly charismatic species or a highly endangered one. It might be a place of deep spiritual significance where generations of ancestors have travelled to participate in an important ritual. Protected areas are often the ground – and the source – of relationships unavailable elsewhere.

Relationships can also endure, even as the related objects change. Parents and children go through many changes individually, even as their relationship is maintained. It will be the same in relationships with parks undergoing transformation. Relationships in protected areas are broad, multi-layered, and far-reaching. They offer a good lens for thinking about ethics.

The relationships gathered in protected areas are not only relationships between people and features of the landscape or its history. Relationships between different user groups are also important. Relationships with the practices of ancestors can matter. Relationships between park staff and local communities are also important, as are relationships between park staff and affiliated tribes.

Park managers often signal the increasing desire (and necessity) of building meaningful relationships with tribal partners and neighbouring communities that go beyond formal consultation. One interviewee couched this in terms of communication:

How we manage change on our landscape is just a fundamentally different kind of decision for our staff than we've made in the past, and so, it requires us to, I think, have different levels of communication that we typically do in management. We're realizing that we need to talk more, and then not to mention the fact that we're trying to engage the tribes more. We're more [about] co-stewardship … Where those relationships really need to be way, way deeper than they are now, and that just takes time and conversations. (Interviewee 54)

Some relationships are pragmatic and political. Good relationships with federal agencies, local and state politicians, and benefactors such as park foundations and conservancies can help secure goodwill towards protected areas. Protecting and nurturing these relationships is both prudent and ethical.

Fostering positive relationships between park staff and members of the public, and between present and future generations, is embedded in the mission of the National Park Service, which states that the NPS will preserve resources unimpaired ‘for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations’ and that the NPS ‘cooperates with partners’ to extend these benefits across the country and around the world (NPS, 2024).

Many relationships endure because they are beneficial to the parties involved. But there are exceptions. Ending bad relationships and developing positive new ones can be highly desirable too. Current agency guidance suggests this is the case with the federal government and Indigenous Peoples (Department of Interior, 2023, Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture, 2021). Decisions to resist, accept, or direct in the face of ecological change will likely involve forging new relationships around new practices. It may also involve trade-offs. Sometimes, for example, it will mean fighting to hold onto a relationship with a species that may be struggling. Others, it will involve conceding that a species is no longer viable on a landscape and another will take its place.

Personal integrity and the ethics of public service

The five prominent ethical considerations outlined above are not weighed in a vacuum. Clifford et al. point out that decisions about RAD are ‘judgments made by people, who are influenced by personal, institutional, and cultural factors’ (2022: 58). So, there is a sixth ethical element (or cluster) that contributes to the decisions an employee might make.

The cluster starts at the level of the individual. For many agency employees their career is their vocation. Managers are personally committed to playing a meaningful role in serving people and the planet. In some cases, this involves defending public goods like clean water and birdsong. In others, they help steward opportunities for meaningful experiences, such as standing at the foot of a glacier or peering into the depths of the Grand Canyon. Sometimes, they simply want to do right for the earth. ‘I like working for the NPS’, said one interviewee, ‘because it's in line with my values’ (Interviewee 32). Being true to these values is to display the ethical virtue of integrity, a balance between personal commitments and action.

Sometimes the values being weighed are not only personal but also national. Agency employees can be driven by the idea they are promoting some of the nation's defining ideals. National parks, for example, are established ‘for the benefit and enjoyment of the people’ (National Park Service, 2024). They are democratising spaces, something America as a nation embraces. Wallace Stegner called National Parks and Wilderness Areas ‘America's best idea’, an integral part of the nation's identity. To work simultaneously in support of personal and national values can be highly motivating. ‘The people who work for the park service’, said one interviewee, ‘are extremely passionate about their role’ (Interviewee 58).

Alongside whatever personal or national obligations they feel, managers have an ethical (and legal) requirement to adhere to the institutional mission of their agency and to U.S. law. The Department of Interior's Ethics Guide for DOI Employees makes obeying the law central (Department of Interior, 2024). These are obligations employees take seriously. But ethics is not just about obeying the law. It is in the values embedded within laws like the Wilderness Act, the ESA, and the Organic Act.

Finally, to work for the government means committing to the value of public service (Department of Interior, 2019). With public service comes obligations to act with integrity, on the best available science, and to ensure the best use of public dollars. Another part of public service is to be effective educators of the public on matters of natural and cultural history (e.g. National Park Service Centennial Act, 2016).

While following a mission and being a good public servant are primary responsibilities, the severity of global change demands increasing flexibility. In some cases, goals enshrined in founding legislation are being overtaken by conditions on the ground. Preserving the primaeval character and influence of a landscape as specified in the Wilderness Act, for example, may be impossible when the character of landscapes is determined more by anthropogenic change than by primaeval processes. One manager expressed an acute awareness of these challenges, stating:

One of the things that I think [is] a challenge for dealing with these problems for national parks, just my opinion, is that the mission of national parks was to preserve and protect, right? We’re in a situation where things—with big, human influences on it, we have affected them. … These are anthropogenically-driven changes, both in terms of the fuel accumulation, the fire expression … increased frequency of droughts. Major impacts are happening in these things that we had thought we’d set aside to protect in perpetuity. (Interviewee 2)

Working out how the mission will operate in a changing landscape demands creativity. The RAD tool can help think through the options. But which options get chosen will come down to which values are determined to be most important. Is it the value of species? The value of nature's autonomy? Or the demands of justice? Are there relationships in play that matter above all else? Answering these questions well demands that ethics come out of the shadows and that values be made explicit.

First lines of ethical guidance

Our suspicion is that managers often sense their decisions have ethical dimensions, even if they aren’t using the word ‘ethics’. They are acutely aware that protected areas remain part of the current generation's legacy to the future. They have a feeling for how deep ethics goes, even if they don’t live in an institutional culture that typically talks about it. And they also know that values written into agency missions decades ago are under strain from ecological transformation.

The five ethical priorities outlined above are, in our view, some of the most salient considerations as managers choose between RAD strategies. The value of Species, Ecosystem Composition and Function, Nature's Autonomy, Justice, and Relationships Gathered in Place make up a large portion of the relevant ethical terrain for NPS managers. And these considerations appear against a backdrop of deeply held personal and institutional commitments. While focused on the National Park Service, staff in other land management agencies may find that many of the themes resonate. For example, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service also have an obligation to protect endangered species, manage federally designated wilderness areas, and are required to consult with affiliated Indigenous Peoples during decision-making processes. Exploring whether these themes could inform decisions in other land management agencies in the United States and beyond is an area ripe for future research.

The list above certainly does not exhaust the ethical considerations pertinent to ecological transformation. Ethics is broad and ubiquitous, cropping up in unexpected places, demanding that decision-makers stay alert to its presence. Our list is limited by how we have paid particular attention to natural over cultural resource management. Future attention to how RAD can be used for decisions about cultural resource management will helpfully supplement this work.

The future is certain to demand trade-offs within this list. For example, the natural autonomy of a forest will be compromised if it has to be chemically treated to protect an endangered species from an invasive fungus (Lieberman et al., 2018). Accepting change in the landscape to preserve nature's autonomy may mean that some species and relationships disappear. It may not be possible to weigh all five ethical values equally on one landscape.

How these trade-offs are made will depend heavily on the situation. A manager might wish for an algorithm to decide which ethical considerations to prioritise as ecosystems change. Unfortunately, ethical decisions are rarely algorithmic. They involve juggling values, determining what's possible, and learning what stakeholders most care about. This means managers should track public values, perhaps with the help of social scientists and their empirical methods, as conditions change (Haimes, 2002). Managers should also know the history of a landscape, showing awareness of what has been done well and what has been done badly in the past to avoid repeating mistakes or reinscribing injustices.

Although we can offer no algorithms, asking the right questions can help focus the decision-making process. Questions can help a manager see when an ethical priority should rise to the surface. For example, a manager might ask whether their agency's mission prioritises some ethical considerations over others. Or they might ask whether there are priorities particularly salient to the patch of land they manage. Does the protected area have a set of stakeholders or rights holders with especially pressing interests? Are the natural values their land protects unique in some way? Are there important relationships at stake that cannot be replicated? Are matters of tribal sovereignty in play? Are there obvious ways to resolve a value conflict? Focused questions can reveal elements of the ethical terrain that may deserve priority in one location and not in another.

While the right questions can help, the decisions remain complicated. Aristotle acknowledged over two thousand years ago that ethics is not a precise discipline. But recognising the presence of ethics is key to informed decision-making. One interviewee acknowledged this.

We have to make a value judgment in society about what we’re going to do, if anything. There are people who don’t want to do anything, and I get it. There are people that want to get in there and try to reverse all the stuff that we’ve done. Then there are people we’ve got in the middle. There's all kinds of ways to approach that problem, but if you’re a National Park Service manager, how do you deal with that? (Interviewee 2)

We suggest a manager deals with it by outlining RAD options and by being explicit about where the ethical conflicts lie.

The future of landscapes experiencing ecological transformation will be complicated. On occasions, important ethical priorities will align. Relationships will be preserved, species protected, and ecosystem function maintained. The values of public service will be honoured and agency missions followed. These are the situations we can hope for. When priorities don’t align, knowing when a management challenge is scientific and when it is ethical is key. Managers are facing an increasing number of decisions about whether to resist, accept, or direct the ecological transformations bearing down on them. Identifying ethical priorities and being comfortable talking about them is a vital first step in securing the best future for protected lands.

Methods

The social science component of this project employed a reanalysis methodology to integrate data from an existing qualitative dataset. Reanalysis refers to ‘the secondary use of data that has already been collected or aggregated’ (Alexander et al., 2020: 81), and enables researchers to gain new insights from existing data, including exploration of topics that may not have been the primary focus of the original research. We utilised a reanalysis of a qualitative data set that included 79 semi-structured interviews with park staff at four National Park units (University of Colorado IRB #23-0017). The project that originally collected this data sought to understand how staff at national parks were navigating decision-making processes in the face of ecological transformations.

The four parks were selected because of their ongoing challenges with climate change and their reputation as leaders in responding to ecological transformation. Interviews were mostly conducted in person at each park in the spring and summer of 2023, with some conducted via Zoom. Interviewees were asked about their background and role at the park, perceptions of climate-driven changes in the park and how to respond, and external factors affecting management responses.

All interviews were transcribed and coded into broad themes using NVivo 15 software. Initial deductive coding uncovered themes related to staff values, worldviews, and the values of park partners and stakeholders, indicating that ethical considerations were embedded in the interviews, if not explicitly discussed as such. To get more directly at potential ethical themes, the author team reviewed quotes under select codes and developed a secondary coding structure based on ethical keywords, including: values, justice, naturalness, trade-offs, tribes, and traditions. The second author then reanalysed interview transcripts utilising a coding scheme based on these ethical keywords. That reanalysis directly informed the development of the six ethical themes discussed above. Some quotations have been edited slightly (i.e. removed filler words, identifying information) to improve clarity and ensure privacy, but all edits preserve participants’ meaning.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Wylie Carr, Amanda Cravens, Stefan Tangen, Gregor Schuurman, and David Lawrence, who all made valuable contributions at different stages in the development of this paper. We would also like to thank staff at the four National Parks who were part of the original cross-park study (Sequoia & Kings Canyon, North Cascades, Glacier, and Acadia) for the time they invested.

Ethics approval statement

Ethics approval is not needed as this is a secondary study.

ORCID iDs

Christopher J Preston

Tony W Ciocco

Julia B Goolsby

Heather M Yocum

Funding

Work on this article is supported by a subaward to the U. S. Geological Survey grant (Grant No. GA G22AC00472), titled ‘Cross-Park RAD Project (CPRP): A Case Study in Four National Parks Investigating How Institutional Context and Emotions Shape Manager Decisions to Resist, Accept, or Direct Change in Transforming Ecosystems’. The subaward looks at where ethics appears in the topic described in the primary award.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data availability

It is not possible to share the data because the nature of the qualitative interview data used for the primary project contains identifying information for individuals. The data used in the manuscript has been anonymised to protect the confidentiality of study participants. Any questions about the data set and/or protocols in place to protect the identity of study participants can be directed to Heather Yocum.

Notes

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