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Commentary: Progress and Challenges of Adaptive Ecosystem Management at Military Installations: A Case Study of Fort Huachuca, Arizona

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

Sheldon Gen
Sheldon Gen*
Affiliation:
Doctoral Candidate, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
*
Sheldon Gen, 467 Hickory Hills Drive, Stone Mountain, GA 30083; (e-mail) shel.g@juno.com.
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Extract

The United States Department of Defense has promoted adaptive ecosystem management principles in their land management practices. This application of adaptive ecosystem management in a military environment presents special problems that the author analyzes through a case study of the efforts at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The evaluation reveals the progress and challenges of applying adaptive ecosystem management at military installations. The main areas of progress have been the employment of a multiscalar ecological focus in land management and the development of open dialog with local stakeholders. The primary challenge is the specification of democratic processes and decision rules that meaningfully consider stakeholder input. This challenge reflects the major tension of employing adaptive ecosystem management in the military: the integration of bureaucratic and democratic decision processes. Military installations can alleviate this tension by vertically integrating decision making such that all military stakeholders—including national policy makers affecting local land management—are included in open dialog with local stakeholders, and by clearly specifying the modes and influence of stakeholder input. Failure to do so may force local stakeholders to revert to more adversarial means of influence such as litigation, the threat of litigation, and political intervention.

Type
Features & Reviews
Information
Environmental Practice , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , September 2001 , pp. 153 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © National Association of Environmental Professionals 2001

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