TOWARD AN EXPERIMENTAL BASIS FOR PROTECTING FOREST WILDLIFE

Social and economic debates over allocation of old-growth forests have spawned conservation strategies that are aimed at protecting sensitiv e wildlife species while allowing limited timber harvesting. We are in terested in improving the scientific underpinnings for such conservati on strategies. because doing so might both minimize costs of resource development and provide more reliable protection. Here, we discuss pot ential consequences from inductive inferencing systems used to develop technical support for protecting wildlife in temperate forests. For e xamples, we refer to recent conservation strategies for Northern Spott ed Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) and Red-cockaded Woodpeckers (Pic oides borealis). Soft inferencing systems could result in conservation strategies that fail to meet intended goals, thereby exacerbating for estry-wildlife debates. Greater emphasis should be placed on hypotheti co-deductive inferencing processes that vigorously employ adaptive man agement principles. Such processes simultaneously test alternative lan dscape patterns and forestry options as rigorous management experiment s, and thus could incrementally predicate forest policy upon an experi mental basis.