ABSTRACT
In the U.S. many scientists, politicians, environmentalists, and others see ecosystem management as the path to a correct relationship between people and nature. They argue for the new paradigm of ecosystem management because, wrote Carl Reidel and Jean Richardson (1995), “Put simply the old paradigms are no longer scientifically or politically valid.” The traditional anthropocentric approach to natural resource policy that blends multiple use, conservation, preservation, and protection of human health leads to “collapse of life and living as we know it” and must be replaced by “ecocentrism … and ecosystem management” according to Roderick Nash (1994). In the new paradigm world of ecosystem management, protection of ecosystem health, integrity, and sustainability replaces concern for improvement in human well-being at the core of government environmental and natural resource policies. Government must use regulations, permitting, planning, and other means to control land use on public and private lands to see to it that ecosystems remain healthy or are restored to a state of health. In 1998 former President Clinton’s last chief of the U.S. Forest Service (FS), Mike Dombeck, said, “Our first priority is to maintain and restore the health of our ecosystems.” Dale Bosworth (2001), the new FS chief under President Bush, echoed Dombeck, “Today, the role of the Forest Service is to restore and maintain healthy ecosystems to meet the needs of present and future generations.”
