I recently posted a guest blog on the Georgetown Public Policy Review discussing adaptive management. Two key areas that can make or break the success of an adaptive management plan are the strength of the management triggers that frame future decisions, and the quality of information gathered through monitoring that forms the basis for management.

Today our staff has submitted a full set of comments to the Forest Service on the National Forest Management Act planning rule. Our comments provide workable fixes to the proposed rule’s primary problem areas, mainly in the areas of assessment, species diversity management, and monitoring, which are the key components of adaptive, science-based land management planning and decision-making.

No, these words were not uttered by Nancy Pelosi on November 4th, but by the late Senator Hubert Humphrey in response to major mismanagement of our national forests in the 1970s, including controversial clearcutting on West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest. Congress responded by passing  the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) in 1976, which required the [...]