INTERIOR COLUMBIA BASIN ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT PROJECT

Let me start, somewhat lightheartedly, by telling you that one of my reactions to all this great, new scientific information is that ignorance truly was bliss. Seriously, how to assimilate it all and put it to work will be quite a task. One of my other reactions reminded me of a college professor's definition of ecology as "the painful elaboration of the obvious." It's great to know the scientific view of what is going on in the Columbia Basin. But there are few big surprises here; rather, there is a more compelling rationale for action and a sharper focus on urgency and priorities.

By way of providing context for the use of this body of scientific knowledge, let me offer these thoughts. We are part of a diverse regional culture and environment that has a rich heritage and a rich future. We all share responsibility for shaping that future as it plays out on federal public lands: the future of both our cultural diversity and vitality and our environmental quality and resiliency. The "we" here, by the way, is all of us: citizens, businesses, and public servants at county, state, Tribal, and federal levels of governance. Science alone won't shape our future and neither will land managers alone. So much for context.

This is the major theme I hear from the Science Assessment: Humans are not benign occupants of their home ecosystems. Our presence, and the activities that support our lifestyles, changed the character of the land, water, and biota. Of course, George Perkins Marsh told us this nearly 150 years ago.

To meet our needs and desires, we mine, we dam, we log, we farm, we hunt, we fish, we gather plants, we graze, we play, and we try to suppress or displace natural factors that cause us stress, such as wildfires, floods, and big meat-eating animals. Some of our ancestors also suppressed and displaced the humans who occupied these landscapes when they arrived, and the ancestors of those people did the same thing to those they could out compete. This is now happening to some of us as newcomers from other states move in to occupy the places we thought were ours.

So, it should not surprise us that after 150 years of occupancy by "techno-man" and our developments that the ecosystems are no longer like they were 150 years ago or like they would have been now without us. But then, human life is not as hard as it was 150 years ago either. Not only have our ecosystems departed from historic conditions, but so have our life spans, literacy rates, affluence, and cultures. It is not clear that many people occupying the Basin today would choose to return to all the conditions of 1850. So, our task is how to shape a relationship between land and people that fits the 1990s and beyond.

In doing this, we need to recognize that the role of resource management, whether in the private or public sector, is not to create or recreate an artificial illusion of pristine nature. Rather, it is to provide for human well being while sustaining as much long-term diversity, productivity, and resilience in the natural world as possible given that humans are here and are natural, independent parts of ecosystems.

One of the interesting findings of the Science Assessment for me is not how far conditions have departed but rather how many of the natural parts and processes of ecosystems still occur in the Basin after such a long time of human occupancy. I think this would be more obvious to us if we were to compare Basin conditions today not to Basin conditions in yesteryears, but rather to how much further ecosystem conditions have departed under human influence in Central Europe, the Atlantic Coast, the Great Plains, or the Western Pacific Coast, than they have here. The prevalence of federal public land and low overall human density are, no doubt, positive factors in this result.

But these two factors should alert us that it might not always be this way. One comes from the Science Assessment: The demographic projection of a doubling of human density in the Basin over the next 50 years. The valleys and private flood plains are filling up with people while expensive homes invade wildlife winter ranges and create wildfire liabilities in the urban-wildland interface.

The other factor is not from the science; it's from politics. Some in our society would like to divest the public's federal lands to another form of ownership. Gone would be the remaining, large contiguous blocks of wildland and eventually the resource values possible only with such a configuration of ownership and management. We need to stay alert to the ramifications of these factors.

Two sets of forces of change in our ecosystems will continue and perhaps accelerate. Nature will continue with succession, disturbance and renewal. It always has and always will regardless of our impacts. And our culture will continue its growth, technological innovation, resource consumption and disposal of waste. We can mitigate some of the undesired effects of both nature's forces and culture's forces, but we cannot control or reverse either. We fool ourselves to think otherwise.

These two sets of forces meet in the ecosystems of the Interior Columbia Basin and play out in the wild landscapes of our region. Our challenge in responding to what the Science Assessment tells us and to the reality of these intersecting forces is not simple. It is certainly not to satisfy all human demands regardless of impact on other ecosystem values. Nor is it to curtail all human resource uses by removing human culture and its relations with the land. After all, we all depend on resources, and they must come from somewhere. If not here, then where, and at what costs and benefits to the people of those other places?

One of our colleagues, Peter MacNamee of British Columbia, used to describe this challenge we face as a "wicked problem." Wicked problems are:

• messy
• interconnected
• complex
• uncertain in knowledge and potential outcomes
• ambiguous in which risk to tackle first
• controversial, and
• have social constraints that inhibit action.

Does this sound familiar to you?

So, the science has spoken to us. It better informs our choices. But it does not point in one clear direction that will solve all facets of our wicked problem. Further, the 53% of the Basin that is federal public land can only address part of the problem. We cannot, for example, overcome the effects of hydropower dams on salmon or steelhead no matter what we do on public lands. And we are powerless to alter the effects of interstate highways on the free movement of large mammals. But we can make a difference on other desired outcomes on the public lands, even for the salmon, steelhead and large mammals on those lands.

To eventually meet the goals stated in the Draft Environmental Impact Statements that you will all see in May, we will have to satisfy six criteria for success (this is my personal view of what it will take to successfully get the direction on the ground). The science helps us on the first three, and might inform the rest but is not sufficient by itself on the last three. Here they are.

The regional scale management direction for public land stewardship in its final form, not necessarily in the draft form that will guide our dialogue for the next few months, must:

1. Directly responds to the Purpose and Need for that direction. Namely it must guide management to restore and maintain long-term ecosystem health and ecological integrity of the federal public lands; and it must, as a coequal goal, support economic and social needs of people, cultures, and communities, and provide sustainable and predictable levels of products and services from those lands.

2. It must build its strategy from the Science Assessment and be responsive to an ever-changing body of scientific knowledge and technology.

3. It must meet the intent of applicable federal and state laws, especially the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and National Forest Management Act.

Now here are the three criteria that go beyond what science can do for us:

4. The direction must protect American Indian Treaty Rights and fulfill federal trust responsibilities to Tribes.

5. It must make sense, be understood and be supported by the broad spectrum of citizens and communities who live in close association with these public lands and resources.

6. And finally, the direction in both its substance and process must be affordable to carry out within realistic financial capabilities of the responsible agencies. It must strike a prudent balance of investments in action, analysis, collaboration, education, monitoring and research, with a special focus on action.

Let me conclude my remarks with some general observations:

• Wildness is an overarching value of federal public lands in the Interior Columbia River Basin -- wildlife, wild fish, wild rivers, wild recreation, wilderness, wild scenery, a sense of living in wild places and back country all characterize this value.
• Regional scale direction and prioritization of actions for resource conservation, restoration and production purposes must sustain this wildness character, while meeting human needs and reducing unacceptable risks to human well-being and ecosystem integrity.
• Human well being in the Basin is based on a variety of values and uses of public land:

- Sharing is the only ethical option in a place with a shortage of land and a longage of people;

- Land health is fundamental to sustainable resource production;

- But then, productive use of natural resources is fundamental to societal health and support for sustaining land health.

• Affected people want a meaningful role in shaping the future of their public lands.

Yesterday afternoon, I told the group sitting in the aquatic session that we have now done the easiest part -- the science and part of the planning. Now, these have not been easy and they are not trivial accomplishments: building a first-time ever Basin-wide, integrated, scientific ecosystem assessment, and conducting an open, collaborative, interagency and intergovernmental plan for 75,000,000 acres of federal public land based on that assessment. These are significant innovations in public land stewardship. But what we still have to do to complete the innovations needed for true, collaborative stewardship that meets the goals stated in the Purpose and Need will probably be harder than what we've done to date.

• Complete the collaborative planning to make decisions on management direction and action priorities from the Basin to the project scale and do it in ways that strengthen the civic capacity of our communities and institutions of governance.
• Develop a multi-source, intergovernmental financing strategy to carry out the direction by tying cost containment to leveraging of traditional federal appropriations.
• Develop a multi-sector monitoring and evaluation system to ensure that management actions do in fact strengthen the natural capital and social values of public lands by restoring and sustaining ecosystem health and supplying people with the resource benefits of healthy, productive ecosystems.
• Innovative new contracts and private sector roles for getting work done so that regional economies benefit from carrying out the new management strategy.

Much more could be said about the tremendous value of this Science Assessment and the work we still have left to do. But this is enough of an overview and this line manager's perspective. I am anxious to get on with the next steps and look forward to the innovations we have yet to make together.