Wildlife Service sponsored the development of a process or technique to evaluate 

 habitat suitability for individual species, referred to as Habitat Evaluation Procedure 

 (HEP).'*The procedure is particularly well-adapted to evaluating habitat suitability 

 or judging habitat manipulation responses for individual, (featured) species. This 

 and similar procedures'".". '^ are numerical rating schemes in which key habitat 

 factors are described and rated, the scores are weighted appropriately, and a final 

 value is calculated. The overall suitability of the habitat is estimated. Habitat 

 deficiencies or limiting factors that can be altered to benefit the species in question 

 can be identified. 



A somewhat similar system was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture 

 (USDA) Forest Service research scientists in modeling impacts of management 

 alternatives to achieve multiple-use forest management in the eastern United 

 States. '3 In this approach, the consequences of manipulating key habitat characters, 

 such as the proportion of the area in identifiable structural states, the frequency of 

 openings, or the basal area of trees, were evaluated for selected wildlife species and 

 other multiple-use products. 



Such systems have the advantage of being largely objective and usable by different 

 observers. The question, of course, is how well the developers of the particular species 

 rating system or species/ habitat model identify the truly significant habitat variables 

 to be evaluated and how appropriately these variables are valued or weighted in the 

 mathematical rating scheme. Ideally, each HEP for each species in each ecologically 

 distinct area would be tested repeatedly and fine-tuned accordingly. In practice this 

 has seldom been the case because of the large costs involved. 



HEP can be utilized in species richness evaluation management, preparation of 

 environmental impact statements, and generalized wildlife habitat evaluation. This 

 is done by preparing a HEP for a species that serves as an indicator of certain habitat 

 conditions or, conversely, stands as a surrogate for a group of species that requires 

 the same or very similar habitats. This is in keeping with the regulations issued 

 pursuant to the National Forest Management Act of 1976- that requires the inven- 

 tory of indicator species as a means of deter mining if wildlife planning objectives are 

 being met. 



HABITAT ANALYSIS — FISH AND WILDLIFE HABITAT 

 RELATIONSHIPS (F&WHR) 



A different approach was independently developed by David R. Patton of the 

 USDA Forest Service'" in the southwestern United States and by a team of 16 

 contributors from the USDA Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and 

 the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for the Blue Mountains of Oregon and 

 Washington. '5''^ These systems use habitat as the key to analysis. Habitats are 

 classified or categorized and the wildlife associated with these conditions identified. 

 Although the earlier work of Hudson G. Reynolds and R. R. Johnson'^ was confined 

 to one small study area, it was much the same in approach. They'"-'^ presented 

 principles, concepts, and techniques that were found to be adaptable to other areas. 

 These efforts provided the direction and framework for the development of species/ 

 habitat information systems and models that are underway or planned for most of 

 the USDA Forest Service's 10 regions. '** This approach to systematic consideration 

 of species/ habitat information has become known in the Forest Service as the Fish 

 and Wildlife Habitat Relationships (F&WHR) system (although considerations of 

 fish life are just now being developed'**). 



Salwasser et al."* stated the following: 



Fish and Wildlife Habitat Relationships (F&WH R) is a relatively new term 

 — it is not a new philosophy or approach to resource management. It is 

 simply the comprehensive organization of the vast array of existing infor- 



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