Ecosystem Management in the
Southwestern Region
Cathy ~ a h m s '
On June 4, 1992, Forest Service Chief F. Dale Robertson
committed the National Forests and Grasslands to ecosystem
management. The Forest Service has defined ecosystem
management as using an ecological approach to achieve the
multiple-use management of National Forests and Grasslands by
blending the needs of people and environmental values in such
a way that National Forests and Grasslands represent diverse,
healthy, productive, and sustainable ecosystems. Sustainable
ecosystems are not only those that provide for the health and
resilience of ecological systems and processes, but also provide
for sustaining the health and vitality of the people who depend
on the land for their livelihoods, outdoor recreation
opportunities, and inspirational experiences, as well as sustaining
economic prosperity
In implementing ecosystem management, the focus will be
on desired present and future conditions of the land and its
human communities at multiple scales, always striving to
maintain a balance between sustaining the resource itself
(diversity, health, and productivity), lifestyle or social goals
(attractive appearance of the landscape, health factors,
understandmg historic use and cultures, current human values
and use patterns, inspirational areas, religious values, customs
and tradition) and economic goals (economic productivity,
economic importance, jobs, diversity of products, recreational
opportunities). If the desired conditions for these three areas are
represented as circles, the goal of ecosystem management for
the overall landscape would be somewhere within the
intersection of the three circles. While striving to meet this
generation's resource needs, we must be careful not to make
any irretrievable resource decisions that would limit the ability
of fbture generations to also meet their needs.
The key difference between ecosystem management and
Forest Service resource management of the past is that under
ecosystem management, we look at the whole picture over space
and time, while in the past, we tended to examine each resource
separately and within units or aggregates of units of land at the
stand level. Focusing on ecosystems is a shlfl in our thinking-many people have referred to this as a paradigm shift. According
to Joel Barker, a paradigm shift is an action that creates new
opportunities where:
'
Ecosystem Management Interdisciplinary Team Leader for
NM.
southwestern Region, USDA Forest S e ~ k eAlbuqueque,
,
It happens before you are ready and those
who take early action profit greatly.
Comes from people who do not know your
business. While ecosystem management
was an evolution from the Forest Service's
New Perspectives program, there were
many other national and international
efforts that promoted taking an ecological
approach to management.
Requires more courage and intuition than
data. This is encouraging because we'll
never have all the data we'd like to have.
It has been said that not only are
ecosystems more complex than we think,
they are more complex than we can think.
It changes the rules.
Also, ecosystems do not fall conveniently into our
administrative, ownership, and jurisdictional boundaries, and
frequently cross ownership boundaries. This calls for greater
cooperation and coordination of goals and planning effort's with
the landowners involved.
In addition, we recognize that ecosystems occur at different
geographic scales. A National task team is working on a
hierarchical framework of ecological units and have proposed
the following overall scheme. At the Region level, represented
by U.S. map scales of 1:30 million to 1:7.5 million, bmad
analysis and modeling would occur. Landscape level analysis at
1:100,000 to 1:24,000 would most likely occur at the Forest
planning level, while planning for ecological land units at the
1:24,000 scale would occur during project planning. Because
ecosystems occur at different scales, we are faced with the
challenge of considering the effects of our proposed actions at
several geographic scales as well as through time. When
planning at the local or landscape level, we must recognize that
our choices also aEect the continental and global economy and
environment. As a rule of thumb, we need to consider effects
of proposed actions at least at one scale larger and one scale
smaller than the scale we are working with, and for a minimum
of several decades into the future.
To meet this challenge, the Southwestern Region and the
Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station jointly
developed an umbrella strategy to guide the 11 National Forests
and 3 National Grasslands of the Southwestern Region in the
implementation of ecosystem management. The strategy
examined where we are today and where we want to be in the
future. Some of the key goals in our vision for the future are:
1. To have forest land and resource management
plans that reflect programs and methods
that are socially responsible, scientifically
sound and, at broad scale land areas, are
managed within long-term ecosystem
capabilities or sustainability.
To develop a desired future condition (DFC)
integrating the needs of people, land, and
resources and is both site and landscape
sensitive as the starting point for all
projects. Cumulative effects are assessed
through time and space. The goal of
planning and implementation is to progress
toward the desired future condition.
Monitoring and evaluation are
systematically carried out to determine
effectiveness and validity of plans and
practices and the results incorporated into
forest and project level plans.
3, To approach land management from a holistic
perspective, rather than for single resources.
4.
To have an interactive program explaining
the workings of southwestern ecosystems
available to Forest Service employees and
interested outside parties.
5. To have integrated resource inventories and
analytical techniques in place that are cost
effective to deal with the spatial and
temporal aspects of ecosystem functioning
at the landscape level.
6. To focus as much as possible on managing
ecosystems rather than managing individual
species.
Our next step was to expand our vision into a strategy
document. In the development of our strategy, we actively
solicited the input of the public, Forest Service Research, and
employees at all levels of the Region. Ten elements formed the
backbone of the strategy: public involvement, conservation
partnerships, demonstration projects, improving our ties with
scientists, our forest and project planning process, monitoring,
classification and integrated inventories, new technologies,
staffing and training, and the evaluation of our progress and
performance.
Three of these elements (public involvement, partnerships,
and ties with scientists) reflect the teamwork that is essential for
the success of ecosystem management. More than ever before,
we are committed to public involvement and need to solicit and
incorporate people's views into our management decisions. As
part of our strategy, the Region developed public participation
standards to provide consistency in our public participation
process. Coupled with public involvement, we must exparad our
partnerships with agencies, organizations, individuals, and
anyone else who has a shared interest in the management of the
National Forests and Grasslands. Our strategy encourages
partnerships at all levels - not only do we need to work with
the local communities to help them achieve their long-term
social and economic objectives, but we also need to encourage
partnerships at the forest and regional level to coordinate our
management of regional, national, and even international
ecological systems such as the Colorado-Rio Grande Rivers or
the Chihauhan Desert. The element of stronger ties with the
scientific community is also a critical element, to make sure our
decisions reflect the best science available. One of the ways we
are forging stronger partnerships between the Region, Station,
publics, and other scientists is by holding joint seminars,
conferences, and symposiums such as the one today. We have
also formed a scientific study team to refine ow understanding
of ecosystem processes and the acceptable range of such
processes in terms of sustainability at different scales.
For the next two years, the Region will have demonstration
projects at each Forest for interpretation, professional
development training, and conservation education on ecosystem
management. This doesn't mean we will not be applying the
goals and guidelines for ecosystem management in our other
projects, only that these projects have been selected for
educational purposes. From a practical standpoint, these are also
the projects for which we will be using advanced technology.
The Forest Service has not yet awarded their contract on Project
6 15 to acquire Geographic Information Systems (GIs)
technology nationwide, so not all of our Districts can take
actvantage of the spatial analytical abilities of GIs. The majority
of our demonstration projects will be using GIs, videography,
Landsat imagery, andlor Global Positioning Systems technology.
Also, our demonstration areas are looking at larger areas than
we have in the past - 50,000, 100,000, even 250,000 acres at a
time.
To incorporate ecosystem management in our forest and
project planning process, our key strategy will be to develop
regional policy and guidance to define the Desired Future
Condition concept, describe how planning areas andlor
management areas will be based on ecosystem management
within the landscape context, and to describe how effects on
ecosystems and cumulative effects at larger scales will be
analyzed. The Region has a project implementation guidebook
(Integrated Resource Management) and has committed to
revising the guidebook by October 1993 to more fully integrate
the principles of ecosystem management into our planning
process.
Since forest health is one o& the key goals of ecosystem
management, we also plan to capitalize on our Regional
Initiatives that are focusing on restoring ecosystem health and
productivity, i.e., the Forest Health Restoration Initiative, the
Piiion-Juniper Initiative, and the riparian issue. The Forest
Health Initiative, for instance, is an initiative covering the
complex ecosystems of ponderosa pine, mixed conifer, aspen,
spruce-fir, woodland, chaparral, and riparian areas of the
Southwest. The structure and composition of these ecosystems
on National Forest Sewice lands have changed simcantly
since European settlement in response to both management
activities and climatic events such as periodic drought. The
initiative calls for an accelerated effort to restore overall forest
health so that anticipated distwbance events such drought, fire,
or insect outbreaks fall within the ability of the various
ecosystems to absort, and thereby maintain their biological
integrity. The Piiion-Juniper Initiative recognized the unique
uses, products, and benefits of our pifion-juniper (P-J)
ecosystems and is an effort to restore the health and productivity
of our P-J ecosystems with management that is sensitive to
lifestyle as well as ecosystem needs.
Monitoring and evaluation is another emphasis area. In
addition to our traditional monitoring of the implementation of
projects, we will need to idenw elements needed to actually
monitor ecosystems, and to monitor the achievement of our
desired future conditions (DFC's), as well as the suitability of
chosen DFC's as a portrayal of ecosystem sustainability. A task
team on monitoring and evaluation has been established and will
be providing guidance on the practical and reasonable
expectations of monitoring, environmental analysis, techniques,
sampling, documentation, budgeting, as well as serving as a hot
line to the Forests and Districts. It is tempting to wait until we
have "all" the information we need, but there will always be
new research and new technology just around the corner. Rather
thanbe paralyzed into inaction, we plan to implement ecosystem
management by taking small steps, and then through monitoring
and evaluation, re-evaluated and redirect our management.
Before we can effectively evaluate ecosystems at multiple
spatial and temporal scales, we need to have the data in place
and the analytical tools available to support ecosystem
management. Integration of our inventories, classification, and
data base systems are needed to provide a uniform framework
for use in land and resource management planning and to
develop an ecologically based information system - not only
within the Region, but at the National level as well. Immediate
needs in our Region are to complete our Terrestrial Ecosystem
Survey for all Forest (half of the Forests have been completed
so far) and to develop an integrated, uniform, existing vegetation
information system across all fhctional areas. Continued work
on a set of Regional standard terms and def~tionsis another
stmtegy item Geographic Information Systems (GIs) will be a
critical tool to conduct spatial analyses to assist resource
managers, and implementation of GIs technology, along with
related technologies such as videography and remote sensing,
are an important part of our Regional strategy.
To assist in the implementation of the Strategy, an
Ecosystem Management Interdisciplinary Team (EM IDT)
was chartered this year, with members from the Rocky
Mountain Station, Regional resource staffs, the public affairs
office, and the program and budget staff. To work on specific
ecosystem management topics, task teams have been created.
Some of the current task teams are the scientific study team,
two teams to work on an integrated existing vegetation data
base (a ,tabular team and a spatial team), a team to explore
the data and analysis needed for the human dimension, a team
to evaluate demonstration projects, a monitoring and
evaluation team, and the Every Species Counts task force that
is charting a desired course for threatened, endangered, and
sensitive species. Proposals from the task teams are reviewed
by the EM IDT. For the first time we have an organized
interdisciplinary team of Region and Station employees from
all functional areas to review recommendations and
coordinate activities across the Region-Station. Right now,
the EM IDT is working on developing an action plan focusing
on key actions needed to implement the Strategy over the
next two to three years.
The concept of taking an ecological approach to multiple-use
management is not fully developed and is unevenly understood,
both internally and externally. We recognize that the strategy is
not a static document, but will continue to grow and evolve over
time as more information and experience are acquired regarding
the implementation of ecological principles. Rather than trying
to fit our strategy to our existing resources, we recognize the
need to stretch beyond our resource limitations and invent new
ways of achieving our goals. One of the challenges in our
continued strategy development will be to provide the necessary
guidance to land manages without suppressing the creativity
and innovation so critical to the success of ecosystem
management. In striving for successful management of our
piilon-juniper ecosystems, I have great hopes that this week's
symposium will expand our understanding of the social,
economic, and environmental aspects of P-J ecosystems and that
we will work together in partnership in their management.