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In an ecosystem-based approach, human needs (not to be confused with greed) are included as part of the needs of ecosystems. In other words, people are included as an interconnected, interdependent part of whole forest ecosystems. However, an ecosystembased approach also recognizes that modern human beings have inordinately large powers to modify and degrade ecosystems compared to any other living organism or natural disturbance. Activities such as clearcutting result in radical alterations of ecosystem composition and structures. In an attempt to justify these activities, government and industrial timber managers frequently compare the resulting alterations to the results of natural disturbances, such as fire or the effects of insect populations. However, this comparison fails to distinguish between exploitation of ecosystems for profitable commodities and the disturbance of ecosystems through natural processes.

Human Needs—Human Impacts

Clearcut timber management, for example, removes all of the merchantable trees from a cutting area, and plantation-style forestry plans the removal of all of the trees (i.e. logs) on short cycles or rotations, in perpetuity. In contrast, natural disturbances, such as root decay, insect feeding, wind, and fire, leave behind the tree trunks or tree stems, which become vital structures for maintaining forest functioning.

Some conventional timber managers have suggested that clearcuts nevertheless resemble some natural disturbances, pointing to volcanic eruptions and glaciation, which, like clearcuts, remove all of the trees from a particular area. However, this analogy is inaccurate and deceptive, for two reasons:
1. Clearcuts are predictable disturbances, planned to occur on short cycles of decades. In contrast, volcanic eruptions and glaciation are unplanned, unpredictable natural disturbances which occur on long cycles of millennia.
2. Clearcutting is a modification of an ecosystem which degrades forest functioning by removing biological legacies from a forest stand and forest landscape, including trees and beneficial soil fungi at the stand level, and old growth or late successional forests at the landscape level. In contrast, volcanic eruptions and glaciation leave behind important biological legacies, such as nutrient-rich volcanic ash and glacial silt, which provide the foundation for the millennia of forests that follow such natural disturbances.

An ecosystem-based approach requires that people take seriously the threat of ecosystem degradation from the inappropriate use of human technology and that human uses of the forest mimic, as much as is feasible, natural processes. In other words, an ecosystem-based approach focuses on managing human activities in ecosystems, rather than on manipulating ecosystems to serve short-term human interests.

An ecosystem-based approach is consistent with the development and maintenance of stable human communities and diverse, sustainable human economies. Labor-intensive activities and value-added wood products manufacturing in close proximity to the source of wood are cornerstones of the development of ecologically responsible, community-based economies. Development of ecosystem-based, local decision making about forest use is critical to developing and maintaining ecologically responsible forest use.

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Source : Ecosystem-based Landscape Plan for the Slocan River Watershed. Silva Forest Foundation.

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