From the Back Cover
Historical Environmental Variation in Conservation and Natural Resource Management
Edited by John A. Wiens, Gregory D. Hayward, Hugh D. Safford and Catherine M. Giffen
About the Book
For decades, conservationists and resource managers have believed that the long-term persistence of populations and ecosystems requires maintaining the conditions they have experienced in the past--the historical range of variation. With the environment now changing rapidly, conditions in the future may be quite different from those in the past, leading to questions about whether past history is relevant to future conservation and management. In this book, both scientists and practitioners consider how historical knowledge can be used in conservation and resource management, with particular emphasis on forests. Although future environments may depart from their past range of variation, the recent and long-term history of populations and ecosystems has determined what they are today, knowledge that is important in assessing their resilience and adaptability to future environmental changes.
About the Editors
John Wiens is a landscape ecologist and conservation scientist who was on the faculties of several universities in the United States before joining The Nature Conservancy as Chief Scientist in 2002. He has published over 200 scientific papers and six books, and has conducted research in Europe, South America, and Australia as well as the United States. He is currently Chief Conservation Science Officer at PRBO Conservation Science in California and is a visiting faculty member at the University of Western Australia in Perth. He lives in Corvallis, Oregon.
Greg Hayward, Regional Wildlife Ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Alaska, is a population ecologist with a passion for helping resource managers understand the trade-offs associated with difficult land management decisions. As a conservation practitioner, Greg brings an academic perspective from faculty positions at the University of Idaho and University of Wyoming. Greg's research extends from boreal owls and flying squirrels to Amur tigers and cutthroat trout with a focus on the consequences of broad scale ecological disturbance on wildlife dynamics.
Hugh Safford is Regional Ecologist for the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region, which includes California, Hawaii, and the Pacific Territories, and a research faculty affiliate with the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California-Davis.
Catherine Giffen, most recently a biological scientist with the U.S. Forest Service National Office in Washington, DC, specializes in regulatory compliance and land management planning. Prior to working with the National Office she spent time in the eastern and western regions of the country working in forest management and natural resource planning. She has over 15 years of experience working with national, regional, and forest-level land management programs.
