Ecosystem management for parks and wilderness.

Abstract

The purpose of this book is to indicate why a new vision is necessary for park and wilderness management and to discuss strategies for cooperative management. It is not intended to define precisely what those goals should be. The workshop participants represented too narrow a group to set those goals even in a preliminary way, a fact recognized early in the workshop. However, this group was able to define a framework for future management to serve as a forum for park and wilderness ecosystem management. There will never be a single blueprint, a cookbook approach that will fit every park and wilderness situation. Unique legal, biological, and social situations guarantee that individualistic solutions be defined, and that those solutions remain flexible to incorporate new information and values within the intent of Congress. These themes comprise the common thread of the chapters to follow. The first and last chapters synthesize the workshop discussions. The intervening chapters are organized in a disciplinary fashion discussing legal issues, vegetation, wildlife, effects on terrestrial and aquatic resources from long-range air transport, perspectives on economics and human ecology, and finally three management perspectives. Each recognizes the problems of managing these park and wilderness ecosystems through past,more » outmoded paradigms, and the dangers of defining a rigid set of new paradigms. As a whole, the book provides a comprehensive view of our current problems and future opportunities for ecosystem management in parks and wilderness.« less