Ch. 5— Maintaining Biological Diversity Onsite • 115 



Management Plans 



Management plans can help avoid typical 

 protected area problems, such as inappropri- 

 ate development; sporadic, inconsistent, and 

 ad hoc management; and lack of clearly defined 

 management objectives. Management planning 

 also serves to review existing databases, to en- 

 courage resource inventories, and to identify 

 other needed research and monitoring activi- 

 ties. Unfortunately, such plans do not exist for 

 many of the world's protected areas, which con- 

 stitutes a major constraint on maintaining di- 

 versity (82). 



Species-specific management plans identify 

 actions for maintaining healthy, reproductive 

 populations of a particular species. Often, the 

 species are either economically valuable or are 

 rare, endangered, or sensitive to certain land- 

 or water-management practices. The Office of 

 Endangered Species of the U.S. Fish and Wild- 

 life Service is the lead agency for recovery plans 

 to restore populations listed on the Federal 

 Threatened and Endangered Species List. For 

 example, two Federal agencies, two State agen- 

 cies, one university, and two agencies from Brit- 

 ish Columbia cooperated in development of the 

 Selkirk Mountain Caribou Management Plan/ 

 Recovery Plan. This plan provides details on 

 caribou population dynamics, behavior, and 

 habitat in Idaho, Washington, and British Co- 

 lumbia. It describes past and present caribou 

 management activities, specifies management 

 goals and objectives to recover the species, in- 

 dicates priorities for action, and assigns these 

 to specific agencies (87). 



Site-specific management plans outline the 

 options for maintaining biological resources 

 within given locations, commonly parts of nat- 

 ural areas. For example, the Bureau of Land 

 Management developed a plan to maintain re- 

 sources within the Burro Creek Section of the 

 Kingman Resource Area in Arizona (88). The 

 plan has clearly stated management objectives. 

 It describes the resources of the site, presents 

 the management issues pertaining to the area, 

 details the management practices that will be 

 used on the site, and indicates what other re- 

 source activities will be allowed (e.g., mining) 

 (88). 



Large-area planning documents can include 

 maintaining diversity as one objective to be bal- 

 anced with others, but they generally do not 

 recommend site-specific actions. Examples in- 

 clude the plans prepared by the U.S. Forest 

 Service for national forest management, plans 

 by the Bureau of Land Management for re- 

 source area management, and plans by the Na- 

 tional Marine Sanctuary Program for the man- 

 agement of marine sanctuaries. These planning 

 processes generally involve numerous experts 

 from various disciplines who identify and 

 weigh management options. The planning doc- 

 ument then describes resources, the options 

 available for managing those resources for vari- 

 ous uses, the trade-offs that would be made in 

 various resource-use scenarios, and finally, the 

 proposed management strategy. 



National and subnational conservation strat- 

 egies (NCSs) tend to be generic documents that 

 may include but are not limited to conserving 

 biological diversity. Some 30 countries had be- 

 gun to develop national conservation strategies 

 by the end of 1985 (62) (see figure 5-2). To date, 

 only a few NCSs have been completed. The 

 United States, for example, does not have a plan 

 for conservation of biological diversity. 



One example of a completed countrywide 

 plan is the Zambia National Conservation Strat- 

 egy, which identifies the major environmental 

 issues and ecological zones that need immedi- 

 ate attention in that country (29). Objectives of 

 the strategy are to maintain the essential life 

 support systems, maintain genetic diversity of 

 both domestic and wild species, promote wise 

 use of natural resources, and maintain suitable 

 environmental quality and standard of living. 

 To accomplish these objectives, plans and pol- 

 icies for sustainable management of natural re- 

 sources are to be integrated with all aspects of 

 the country's social and economic develop- 

 ment. The strategy outlines schedules of action 

 for the major agencies and identifies necessary 

 interagency linkages to assure cooperation. The 

 official status of this plan and the extent to 

 which it is being implemented is not clear. 



Management plans vary in geographic scale 

 and levels of specificity. Plans at the more gen- 

 eral levels require less detailed information on 



