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 sensitive wildlife species while allowing limited timber harvesting. We are interested in improving the scientific underpinnings for such conservation strategies, because doing so might both minimize costs of resource development and provide more reliable protection. Here, we discuss potential consequences from inductive inferencing systems used to develop technical support for protecting wildlife in temperate forests. For examples, we refer to recent conservation strategies for Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) and Red-cockaded Woodpeckers (Picoides borealis). Soft inferencing systems could result in conservation strategies that fail to meet intended goals, thereby exacerbating forestry-wildlife debates. Greater emphasis should be placed on hypothetico-deductive inferencing processes that vigorously employ adaptive management principles. Such processes simultaneously test alternative landscape patterns and forestry options as rigorous management experiments, and thus could incrementally predicate forest policy upon an experimental basis.