David L. Peterson, Research Biologist/Professor USDA Forest Service Pacific Wildland
Fire Sciences Laboratory
1. Interdisciplinary science - Most of our current environmental issues are interdisciplinary and at large spatial scales. Encouraging and facilitating groups of scientists and managers to work together will increasingly be needed to address these issues.
2. Workforce diversity - The Forest Service needs to recruit and hire talented young scientists and managers from a broader diversity of cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
3. Technical transfer - The Forest Service continues to struggle with doing effective transfer of scientific information and tools to resource managers and decision makers.
The responsibility and means of doing effective tech transfer need improvement in the areas of transition to operations and to decision support.
4. Training new leaders - The Forest Service, like most federal agencies, anticipates a large brain drain during the next few years as experienced scientists and managers retire.
We need to begin training the next cadre of leaders in natural resource science and management. Specifically, we need managers with strong backgrounds in science, and scientists with strong connections to management and policy.