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INTEGRATIVE CONSIDERATIONS IN WATERSHED PLANNING
Citation:
McComb, B C., J L. Ebersole, AND R T. Lackey. INTEGRATIVE CONSIDERATIONS IN WATERSHED PLANNING. Presented at Western Division American Fisheries Society meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, February 29-March 4, 2004.
Description:
Understanding the filters through which society views the values produced by watersheds is key to developing effective and adaptable watershed plans, and ultimately a measure of how well policy makers are likely to meet a sustainability, or any other, intent. Many natural resource managers recognize the need for integrative planning through assessment, identification of desired future conditions, and adaptive management. Despite the intuitive logic behind these approaches and the broad agreement among natural resource land managers to use the approaches as part of a planning process, agencies continue to find themselves embattled with resource interest advocacy groups and reacting to criticisms or even aggressive attacks. Resultant watershed planning processes more closely resemble a dysfunctional planning/litigation/revision cycle than the strategic adaptive management process that was intended. We suggest that five key points be given additional consideration during plan development in an attempt to reduce, or at least be prepared for, conflict resulting from the planning process.
1) Clarify the need for integrated, broad-scale social and biophysical assessments as the basis for natural resources planning;
2) Identify the key implicit assumptions that underlie biota-habitat linkages in such assessments, and in particular the need to consider how factors can interact over disparate scales of space and time;
3) Address the implications of extrapolating information over time and space to assess biota-habitat relationships across watersheds and landscapes, while not losing sight of important ecological and social processes;
4) Consider departure from the historic range of variability in key, interacting factors to guide plan development and assess the potential for success of alternative possible watershed futures, while relying less on arbitrary biological performance measures; and
5) Consider current and potential future expectations of managed watersheds to influence management of watersheds in a manner that maintains and/or restores the potential of watersheds to supply diverse and perhaps unanticipated values.
We provide a conceptual framework for understanding the integration of these factors to understand past patterns and likely future directions. This generalized framework poses simple but important questions that should be considered during the planning process, and will enhance the probability of plan success by development of more social acceptability now and into the future.
Management plans must be based on good science presented in an easily interpreted manner, but success of the plan will be driven by consideration of social responses to current and likely future resource values. Those responses may come through civil or judicial reactions to policies, regulations and management actions. These responses will develop through an understanding of how the the values that society sees as priorities are likely to be sustained or maximized. Society does not communicate consistent values over time, because their values change. Changes in what society views as sustainable production of values may result from changes in human health, economic constraints, quality of life, safety, and security. Hence the resource values projected into the future under alternative policies may be interpreted by society in ways that few expect. Values that humans place on watershed resources now and into the future must be central to the planning effort.