Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
this by presenting scientific insights in
ways that reveal the trade-offs that
different interest groups in the policy
process must reconcile when making
decisions and by illuminating the
consequences of choosing one or an-
other trade-off option.The trade-off
curve clearly and explicitly depicts
the alternative policy options and il-
luminates the consequence of choos-
ing a particular option (i.e., the level
of the deer population and the extent
of forest cover in the reserve). Most
importantly, the trade-off curve re-
veals that there is no ecologically
“best” solution: there are just different states of an ecosystem that could be
reached depending on what option is chosen.Thus, the favored solution de-
pends entirely on different human values and preferences that must be rec-
onciled through the policy process, not by ecological science.
What is implicit in society's wish to
“restore the natural balance” is that
society wants deer populations to
stabilize at levels observed when
predators were historically present,
which is much below another bal-
ance—their biological carrying
capacity. This suggests that we
should abandon describing systems
in terms of their “natural balance”
and instead use the explicit terms
we have learned such as carrying
capacity and predator limitation.
