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“Not Supported By Current Science” : The National Forest Management Act And The Lessons Of Environmental Monitoring For The Future Of Public Resources Management, Ryan P. Kelly, Margaret R. Caldwell

Ryan P Kelly

Environmental monitoring remains a persistent challenge for natural resources management, illustrating the difficulty of incorporating dynamic science into relatively static law and regulation. One such management statute, the National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA), required that “wildlife and fish, and wilderness” be among the multiple uses embodied in the forest land use plans. NFMA’s implementing regulations fulfilled this mandate by requiring forest managers to implement a particular monitoring strategy—Management Indicator Species (MIS)—in making land-use decisions. The regulations’ fundamental assumption was that a small suite of these MIS could and would provide feedback as a kind of ecosystem gauge that …