Preface

• Author: Rebecca L. Kihslinger/James M. Mcelfish Jr.
• Pages: 9-9

Preface

Ecologists know they have a problem. Every landowner or regulator of land

makes decisions concerning areas whose boundaries bear little, if any, rela-

tionship to ecologically def‌ined functions.

This has become known as the problem of scale.

Solutions such as ecoregional planning or conservation planning are fre-

quently proposed. But what can a landowner do when such plans are not yet

in existence? Or where the information available in a plan does not match the

spatial and time scale of the decisionmaker, who is almost always concerned

with a different set of issues with their own elements of scale? Can landowner

decisions accommodate uncertainty and changing answers about the science?

The research for this book began as a National Council for Science and the

Environment-administered study seeking to determine how state and local land

regulation and management programs focused on other primary objectives

could generate ancillary benef‌its for wildlife.

We soon realized that in addressing this question, we were seeing practical

answers to the problem of scale. And we were seeing similar answers for land

use decisions at different scales.

These answers are rooted in institutional choices. Rather than restating bio-

logical conservation principles in a nested hierarchy of plans, the answers

involve the construction of systems that can allow entry of, and use of, new

information. Such systems can make excellent use of large-scale conservation

plans, where these exist, but do not depend upon the prior existence of such

plans. Land use decisions are not one-time decisions, but involve multiple insti-

tutions whose participation in land management continues over time and area.

The case studies that follow,preceded by essays by Dan Perlman and Bruce

Stein, show how systems solutions offer practical approaches to a problem that

bedevils ecologists while too often escaping the notice of land use decision-

makers.

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