Aquatic biodiversity conservation: Translating the natural flow paradigm into water policy

The Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin Compact negotiations are an excellent opportunity to improve aquatic biodiversity conservation by bringing new scientific and technical understanding of flow requirements of aquatic ecosystems into the policy making arena. Maintaining the ecolog ical integrity and biodiversity of aquatic ecosystems is dependent upon pre serving the dynamic qualities of the flow regime of a river. The Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA) developed by The Nature Conservancy assesse s alterations to the natural flow regime caused by human water uses. The na tural flow paradigm, that is the protection of the natural range of flows w ith all of their intra-annual and inter-annual variability, as the basis of aquatic biodiversity conservation and the use of the IHA in designing an a llocation formula is gaining acceptance in the ACF basin. Bringing our late st scientific and technical understanding of the biological implications of water resource management into the policy arena facilitates the developmen t of more sensitive and sophisticated policies for meeting human needs whil e preserving natural ecosystems, An iterative process of communication betw een scientists and policy makers is essential if we are to apply what we ha ve learned from the results of past water resource management in a way that influences water policy decisions.