Intended and 

 . Purposeful 



Actions 



.on the Land 



and Water 



I 1 



I High Quality i 



I Human Benefiting j 



! Environment Over ' 



.the Long Run i 



/ 



Managemen t 



Continual 

 Action to 

 Keep the 

 System 

 On-Course 



Impaired 



Environment 



for People 



(Costs Appeared 



Less Than the Benefits) 



Natural 

 Catastrophe 



Unintended 



High Ignorance 



Risk-Taking 

 Failure 



/ 



Mitigation 

 Planned 

 Action to 

 Reduce or 

 Balance the 

 Impairment 



Figure 2. Chart of actions on the land and water. 



prescr\ation is one conspicuous example. But even //<>/ cleaning up oil slicks in 

 certain areas may be the best strategy. The managerial task is to know natural 

 processes well enough to be able to decide whether they can be augmented, or 

 whether time and sequence are the forces that will produce the greatest total human 

 benelits trom ecos\ stems o\er the long term. 



Figure 2 shows the major pathways displayed by the authors in this section. Only 

 through research, improved decisionmaking, applications of existing knowledge, 

 and preparation for catastrophe can the human actions be shifted to the left of Figure 

 2. Ignorance can be alleviated by education and practices changed by public 

 behavioral modification but there appear to be real limits. Indeed, we have had 

 massive educational programs in conservation and natural resources since the turn of 

 the ccnturv. Some of us worry whether there is time enough to reduce widespread 

 ignorance of ecosystems and to prevent such ignorance from destroying us. 

 Ignorance will destroy or impair some ecosystems. Thus, laws and more obvious 

 limitations on human activity (fences, etc.) will be needed. High risk taking activities 

 such as building on Hood plains, solid waste disposal on improper soils, and over-use 

 of groundwater will and already have impaired other ecosystems. 



Impaired ecosystems can often be repaired, but at great monetary cost and with 

 massive foregone benefits and a sense of loss of quality of life. There emerges within 

 manv resource managers faced with mitigation and restoration of ecosystems that 

 their work can never be done right. A project is not completed before a start must be 

 made on another one. Rarely is one restored; the resources are too limited; the new 

 cases arise daily. There is only the sense of living among partial ecosystems those 

 that are scarred or disfigured, surviving never whole. These are not the kinds of 

 ecosystems fit for humans. While ecosystems can be repaired, and some losses 

 mitigated, the overriding concepts herein are aimed at reducing the need for mitiga- 

 tion. The message: sensitively manage, manipulate, and care for ecosystems so they 

 may serve people well now and in the future. Incur benefits, not costs. 



REFERENCES 



1. Giles, R. H., Jr. 1978 Wildlife Management. W. H. Freeman Co. San Fran- 

 cisco, Calif. 416 pp. 



2. Giles, R. H., Jr. 1971. Wildlife conservation and wildland operations research, 

 pp. 560-567 In Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. McGraw-Hill Co. 

 New York, N.Y. 



169 



