Decision Support for Ecosystem Management and Ecological Assessments

Abstract

In the face of mounting confrontation and after almost 20 years of increasingly contentious public unhappiness with the management of National Forests, the USDA Forest Service officially adopted ecosystem management as a land management paradigm (Overbay, 1992). Other federal forest land management agencies, such as the USDI Bureau of Land Management, the USDI National Park Service, the USDI Fish and Wildlife Service, the USDC NOAA, and the Environmental Protection Agency, have also made the commitment to adopt ecosystem management principles (Government Accounting Office, 1994). Ecosystem management represents different things to different people. At the heart of the ecosystem management paradigm lies a shift in emphasis away from sustaining yields of products toward sustaining the ecosystems that provide these products (Thomas, 1995; Rauscher, 1999). The ecosystem management paradigm represents the latest attempt, in a century-long struggle between resource users and resource preservers, to find a sensible middle ground between ensuring the necessary long-term protection of the environment while protecting the right of an ever-growing population to use its natural resources to maintain and improve human life (Chase, 1995; Taylor, 1998). As the concept of ecosystem management evolves, debates over definitions, fundamental principles, and policy implications will probably continue and shape the new paradigm in ways not yet discernible.