Abstract
The acceptance of ecosystem management as a guiding paradigm in federal resource management agencies (GAO 1994) presents challenges to ecologists. In this essay, we identify some of those challenges and provide examples of how some are being addressed in an Ecosystem Management Demonstration Project in the Nantahala National Forest, North Carolina. The Ecological Society of America's report on the scientific basis of ecosystem management (Christensen et al. 1996) meets the first challenge, which is to provide a definition of ecosystem management that reflects the consensus of the scientific community and demonstrates the scientific underpinnings of this approach. Further progress in ecosystem management requires application and further development and refinement of these concepts in real world management settings. Earlier management approaches have also been guided by application of ecological principles (e.g., Hornbeck and Swank 1992, Swank and Van Lear 1992). However, ecosystem management differs from prior management concepts in several important ways (Christensen et al. 1996):
Published Version
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