The USDA Forest Service is taking a new direction in its research and management programs in response to changing views of land and natural resources. The changes reflect the complexity of society's concerns and expectations for national forest ma?agement, including biological diversity, ecological function and balance, product yields, soctal values, and the beauty and integrity of natural environments. The new direction involves a shift in management focus from sustaining yields of competing resource outputs to sustaining ecosystems. More than ever, management of public lands and resources requires knowledge about ecosystems, including relationships to human values, activities, and patterns of resource use. Also required are new roles for scientists, including closer partnerships with managers to achieve large-scale studies and adaptive management of public lands and resources.

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The maintenance of biological diversity has emerged as a primary issue in natural resource management The best chance to establish biological diversity as a land management objective is on the public lands of the United States. Those lands are publicly owned legislation and regulations exist that direct attention to maintaining biological diversity, and cadres of appropriately trained people exist to formulate and carry out managementplam Tbese public lands contain 111 of the 135 Küchler potential natural vegetation types in the United States, with “adequate” representation of 102 types. It seems unlikely that large‐scale reservation of much more land will occur. Therefore, the real test for maintenance of biological diversity will occur on lands dedicated to multiple‐use management. Conservation biologists are desperately needed to focus attention on biodiversity as a management goal; to provide information necessary to guide management, to train agency personnel in the philosophy and mechanisms of prescribing biodiversity, and to make sure that conservation biology goes to work on the ground Time is short and opportunities to preserve biodiversity diminish by the day. Speed inputting conservation biology to work on the public lands is essential.

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