(Washington, DC) — The sustainability of ecosystems has become an explicitly stated goal of many natural resource agencies. Examples of sustainable ecosystem management, however, are uncommon because management goals often focus on specific deliverables rather than the processes that sustain ecosystems. In the January-February issue of the National Wetlands Newsletter, Ned H. Euliss, Jr., Loren M. Smith, Douglas A. Wilcox, and the late Bryant A. Browne examine the need to link ecosystem processes to sustainable wetland management.
The authors note that most managed wetlands are manipulated to maintain a static temporal relationship between wildlife productivity and specific habitat conditions. Yet, the ecosystem processes that sustainably yield specific habitat conditions and wildlife productivity have an important temporal component. Restoring processes within a temporal framework removes subjective values given to certain groups of wildlife and affords managers an objective base to develop and justify management actions. Under the approach advocated by the authors, the focus would be on ecosystem function, with the goal of intergenerational sustainability.
For three decades, the nationally recognized National Wetlands Newsletter has been a widely read and esteemed journal on wetlands, floodplains, and coastal water resources. The Newsletter, published by the highly respected Environmental Law Institute®, analyzes the latest issues in wetland regulation, policy, science, and management through feature articles written by local, national, and international experts from a variety of perspectives.