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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We examined the roles of sex and spatial scale in habitat selection by Alaskan moose Alces alces gigas. We GPS‐collared 11 female and seven male adult moose in the Tongass National Forest, Alaska, USA, during 2002‐2004. We predicted that adult male and female moose would be spatially separated outside of the mating season, consistent with hypotheses attributing sexual segregation among sexually dimorphic ruminants to allometric differences in body and gastrointestinal size, and resulting differential needs for nutrient requirements by the sexes (the gastrocentric hypothesis), and varying risks of predation (the predation hypothesis) between sexes, especially for females with young. We predicted that habitat selection would be similar between sexes during the mating season, but dissimilar and occur at different scales during periods of late gestation and lactation. We expected that during segregation, females would select for a higher percentage of forested cover and a higher edge density than males to reduce predation risk on their young. Furthermore, we examined whether differences in scale of habitat selected between the sexes was related to home‐range size. Multi‐response Permutation Procedures (MRPP) analysis indicated that the spatial distributions of adult males and females differed, particularly near or during parturition. The sexes selected habitats similarly during the mating season (rut), when sexes generally were aggregated, whereas sexes exhibited differential habitat selection during spring, when sexes were segregated. Habitat selection by both sexes was best explained by vegetation and landscape composition tabulated within 1,000‐m radii centered on GPS locations of moose. The sexes did not differ in the scale at which they selected habitats. Mean size of the annual home range was 76 km2 for females and 125 km2 for males, but size of home range was not related to scale of habitat selection by moose. Our results indicate that females were likely selecting habitat with high‐quality forage while minimizing predation risk during periods of sexual segregation, whereas males were selecting habitat that allowed high forage intake, which together provide support for both the gastrocentric and the predation hypotheses.

Although natural resource management encompasses a wide range of disciplines, those with the closest ties to conservation biology are the renewable resources: forestry, fisheries management, range management, and especially wildlife management. How do practitioners in these disciplines view conservation biology? Some describe conservation biology as being entirely different from their disciplines because it seems more focused on protection of selected species or ecosystems than on management of populations and habitats-the hallmark of the natural resource disciplines. Others insist conservation biology is the same as wildlife management. In our view the truth lies somewhere between these two perspectives.We base our view on >75 years of combined experience in the ecological sciences and the professional disciplines of wildlife, rangeland, and forest management. We remember well when the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) was formed to advance the science, practice, and goals of conserving biological diversity. We were among the first members and have watched as the group matured into a full-fledged society with a membership and publications that are international in scope and reach.The field of conservation biology arose from the milieu of complex issues involving land, natural resources, and the future of the Earth's biological diversity, as did natural resource disciplines. These shared origins mean conservation biology has much in common with the natural resource disciplines. Yet conservation biology now fills a distinct niche that plays a complementary role in the larger realm of applied biological sciences and conservation practice. Natural Resource Disciplines' Contribution to Conservation BiologyIn a word, natural resource disciplines have contributed the origins of conservation biology. The evolving needs of natural resource professionals provided the impetus and building materials for conservation biology to emerge from the disciplines involved in the management, conservation, and preservation of populations and ecosystems. Natural resource disciplines (through various and everevolving interests and responsibilities) continue to have significant influence on the development and evolution of conservation biology.Conservation biology emerged at a time of rapid change in the natural resource disciplines. Before the 1980s many aspects of natural resources management reflected a sustained-yield paradigm in which management of forests, prairies, and other lands was driven mainly by their capability to yield desired products and uses. Management was largely about discovering the factors that limited production of a desired resource and removing those limitations through active intervention. Relationships among the different resources were regarded as trade-offs among the multiple uses, and measures to minimize the environmental effects of these multiple uses often were regarded as constraints on production.Managers of natural resources found that traditional, sustained-yield approaches to management could n...