Ecosystem Management
CONCEPT 24.4 Ecosystem management is a collaborative process with the maintenance of long-term ecological integrity as its core value.
Learning Objectives
24.4.1 Evaluate how collaborative ecosystem management may lead to better solutions to preserving diversity than strictly science-based decisions.
24.4.2 Describe why iterative adjustments to land and marine reserve management policies are needed to help improve their effectiveness.
In 1989, a convoy of logging trucks and about 300 loggers made the journey to a packed public hearing in Olympia, Washington, to defend their jobs. There was talk that the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina; see Figure 9.15) could be listed as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which would place its old-growth forest habitat off-limits to logging. Tempers were flaring among loggers and others supported by the timber industry. “When it comes to choosing between owls and the welfare of families, the hell with the owl as far as I'm concerned,” said a state politician. At times, some of the testimony was drowned out by the honking of truck horns. The contentious debate about the logging of forests in the Pacific Northwest was reduced to “owls versus jobs” and resulted in bumper sticker and T-shirt slogans, vandalism by both sides, and the exchange of many angry words.
Some people recognized that there might be a better way to make decisions about the use of natural resources. The conflict in the Pacific Northwest was in part the outcome of a long history of top-down management of natural resources with a focus on resource production and extraction. In 1995, a federal Interagency Ecosystem Management Task Force was formed to develop alternatives to this approach (DellaSala and Williams 2006). Through selective withdrawal of old-growth forests from timber harvest, greater protection for the northern spotted owl has been accomplished. However, population recovery has been hampered by range expansion of larger barred owls into the Pacific Northwest, which compete with northern spotted owls for food. The recovery plan for northern spotted owls now includes both habitat protection and removal of barred owls.
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