Ecosystem management: Desperately seeking a paradigm

Excerpt

Natural resource professionals and the general public hear a lot about ecosystem management—what it means; what it should mean but doesn't; how it is an innocuous sounding slogan masking adoption of an ecocentric world view; how it is a repackaging of old, discredited approaches; how those raised with a patriarchal world view had better adjust to the political realities of the twenty-first century; how it is a religion hiding behind the cloak of science; how it is the harbinger of an ecological renaissance. Supporters (Grumbine 1994) and critics (Fitzsimmons 1996) argue their cases in the professional literature. Others argue that the concept is so complex that it is impossible to define (More 1996). Advocates and critics jockey for the moral high ground, castigating those not sharing their views as uncaring, uninformed, and uncompromising.

Certainly anything that stimulates such intense reactions must have at its core fundamental, controversial tenets. But what are these tenets? Why all this strife over what might appear to outsiders as a debate over semantic nuances? The best analogy I can think of is the cult movie classic, Desperately Seeking Susan. Just as many of the characters in the movie were searching for meaning, many …