Washington Forest LandscapeManagement Project—A Pragmatic,Ecological Approach to Small-Landscape ManagementAndrew B. Carey, Catherine Elliott, Bruce R.Lippke, John Sessions, Charles J. Chambers,Chadwick D. Oliver, Jerry F. Franklin, and Mar-tin G. Raphael, Washington Department of NaturalResources, Washington Forest Landscape Man-agement Project, Report No. 2 ($10.00)

With increasing and often competing demandsbeing placed on our region's forests, policymakerscontinue to seek creative and efficient ways tomaximize an array of economic and ecologicalbenefits and reduce current conflicts. One sucheffort, the Washington Forest Landscape Manage-ment Project, was charged by the U.S. Congressto explore the advantages of simultaneously man-aging forests for multiple species of threatened,endangered, and sensitive wildlife over large land-scapes and across land ownerships. More spe-cifically, the Project explored ways to meet theneeds of wildlife associated with late-seral for-ests while minimizing impacts on commodityproduction from Washington's forests. This pub-lication, A Pragmatic, Ecological Approach toSmall-Landscape Management, is the report of aworking group that developed forest managementstrategies to enhance biodiversity at the scale ofthe small landscape.

Beginning with the premise that conservationof biodiversity is a foundation for sustainableforestry, the authors present an approach that isimplemented through landscape management andthat produces regional, long-term benefits. Theoverall goal of the study was to provide informa-tion on some ecological and societal benefits thatmight be achieved, and costs that might be in-curred, by public policy initiatives designed tostimulate management for conservation ofbiodiversity across all land ownerships. A com-panion report, Economic Analysis of Forest Land-scape Management Alternatives (also reviewedin this issue of Northwest Science), evaluates fi-nancial incentives for motivating landowners toinclude nontimber objectives along with timberobjectives in managing private lands.

The body of the Report is organized into sixmajor sections. The first section introduces thestudy's objectives, scope, terminology, and con-cepts. The second section outlines the approachfor ecological management of biotic communi-ties. The authors apply their analytical approachin a hypothetical test case, using the Clallam Riverlandscape in the western Olympic Peninsula, whichis introduced in section III. Sections IV, V, andVI present the methods, results, and discussionof the test case. The study used a simulation modelto project changes in the landscape over 300 years,using real data to start the simulation. Three generalapproaches to forest ecosystem management wereevaluated: the protection-no manipulation path-way, the timber and fiber production pathway(maximization of net present value), and thebiodiversity pathway (joint production of ecologicaland economic goods and services). The most sig-nificant result was that maximizing biodiversitythrough forest management achieved older for-est habitat more quickly than other managementstrategies, and produced significant economicbenefit. The study also found that protecting anarea by excluding management after a timberharvest appeared to delay the forest's develop-ment into older forest significantly longer than ifthinning or other management techniques had beenallowed. Wildlife diversity was found to differamong stages of forest development and manage-ment scenarios, with the lowest diversity foundin stages immediately following closure of newforest canopy. Managing to maximize net presentvalue resulted in the highest economic value andthe most risk to species. The authors concludethat there is great potential for conservingbiodiversity in managed landscapes without main-taining large upland or wide riparian reserves.Important caveats, assumptions, and weaknessesof the analysis are covered in the Discussion.

This study makes several important contribu-tions to the ongoing debate over forest manage-ment in the Pacific Northwest, and to appliedecology in general. First, the authors translateecological concepts that are accepted but oftenill-defined into principles, terminology, and ap-proaches that can be used by managers andpolicymakers. Such practical methods and quan-titative measures of ecological values are espe-cially needed for integrated analysis of trade-offswith commodity values. The authors—who in-clude some of the region's most noted experts in

76 Northwest Science, Vol. 72, No. 1, 1998

forestry and ecology—develop a conceptual modelof landscape management, an expanded concep-tual model of forest ecosystem development spe-cific to westside western hemlock/Douglas-firforest, "biodiversity pathways" for forest ecosystemmanagement, four new indices of forest ecosys-tem health, and several economic measures.

Secondly, the study focuses needed attentionon opportunities to increase ecological and eco-nomic benefits from the managed, second-growthforests that dominate much of the Pacific North-west. As the authors point out, no one yet knowshow to conserve biodiversity on intensively man-aged lands—yet the question is not whether tomanage landscapes or not, but whether to man-age consciously and purposefully or not. Thestudy's emphasis on managed lands complementsstrategies for biological conservation that empha-size regional networks of reserves managed pri-marily for natural values. Indeed, the authors'eight stages of forest ecosystem development rec-ognize old-growth as a unique, natural legacy notachievable through management.

Interdisciplinary approaches are essential toaddressing today's critical issues in forest man-agement and policy. In this study, Carey et al.overcame several scientific and practical challengesin integrating biophysical and socioeconomicconsiderations. Their approach also employs aneeded long-term perspective (several centuries).Carey et al. reinforce the reality that optimal so-lutions will require that decisionmakers adopt thislong-term view despite a policy arena that oper-ates on a much shorter cycle. Although the ap-proach also is designed to produce regional, long-term benefits through implementation at the scaleof the small landscape, it is unclear howpolicymakers will "scale up" information from

several unique landscapes to assess regional im-pacts.

Overall, A Pragmatic, Ecological Approach toSmall-Landscape Management will provide use-ful guidance to policymakers for formulating in-centives to conserve biodiversity on large-land-scape and physiographic province bases. Forestmanagers will find general principles that can beadapted to fit their particular landscapes, ratherthan a set of analytical tools that can be used straight"out of the box." Carey et al. do a commendablejob of synthesizing a large amount of complexinformation into a conceptual framework and pro-cedures for evaluating the ecological and economicconsequences of management and policy alter-natives. The approach is applicable to second-growth forests now managed primarily for woodproducts, as well as to upland and riparian for-ests managed as late-successional reserves. Sci-entists will find the report an interesting case studyfor the application of ecological theory and con-cepts to a real-world problem. The report will beuseful to both general and professional reader-ships, and in graduate-level courses in ecosys-tem management. By demonstrating several waysthat ecological and economic benefits are notmutually exclusive, the study represents an im-portant step forward from the current polarizeddebate over forest management. With compan-ion reports, the study points to several incentive-based rather than legislative or regulatory solu-tions to current forest policy issues.

—Janet L. OhmannPacific Northwest Research StationForestry Sciences Laboratory3200 SW Jefferson WayCorvallis, Oregon 97331

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