Standard Scientific Procedures for Implementing Ecosystem Management on Public Lands

Abstract

Modern ecological ideas, including fundamental principles of conservation biol- ogy have not yet been fully embraced by federal land management agencies. Reasons include bureaucratic resistance to new ideas, influence by resource user groups who put maximum resource production above long-term ecological health of ecosystems, lack of external accountability by the agencies, and a misperception by agency personnel that conservation science is poorly developed. The fact that federal land management agencies often do not gather data or make management decisions using up-to-date science hinders their ability to ensure the long-term sustainability of both biological diversity and the specific resources, such as timber and fodder, for which the lands are managed. For example, agency managers have often defended conventional patterns of timber harvest by arguing that the edge habitat they produce is beneficial to wildlife, even though edges are well known to have multiple deleterious effects on native, forest-interior species. To prevent such poorly informed management decisions, agencies must develop mutually compatible, explicit standards that determine how they will apply modem ecological science to land management. To facilitate this process, we propose a comprehensive set of standard procedures for implementing ecosystem management on public lands. These procedures incorporate our best contemporary understanding of population, community, and landscape dynamics to efficiently and systematically protect ecosystems and their constituent biodiversity. Introduction