Biodiversity conservation in the US Pacific Northwest is gaining new attention as large reserves are recognized as not being a panacea for protection of all rare species. In February 2005, a workshop at Oregon State University, held in conjunction with the joint annual meetings of the Society for Northwestern Vertebrate Biology and the Oregon Chapter of the Wildlife Society, focused on key topics of concern relative to the advancement of biodiversity conservation in the region. Articles in this issue of Northwestern Naturalist provide overviews of these topics. As an introduction, I describe the origin of conservation biology at another conference 25 y ago and 2 key developments occurring in intervening years—the definition of “biodiversity” and the need to advance and integrate several socioeconomic aspects of the discipline. Both of these developments support the concept of conservation biology as a “place holder”.

The USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station's Biodiversity Initiative seeks to determine the types of science tools needed by natural resource professionals to meet diverse and complex biodiversity goals. During the scoping phase of this Initiative, we asked a broad cross-section of people whose work involves managing for biodiversity, from state and federal agencies to private forestry companies and environmental groups, what their priority needs, challenges, and concerns were for the region's biodiversity conservation. We report here the results of our scoping phase and discuss how we intend to address the issues raised. The main biodiversity management challenges included a lack of a common definition of biodiversity, lack of standardized policy to implement biodiversity management objectives, uncertainty about disturbance effects, lack of a monitoring framework, conflicting social and economic values, and difficulty in finding relevant data and information. The products most frequently requested included a central clearinghouse for biodiversity information and resources, various information products, quantification of social and economic values of biodiversity, monitoring guidance, and computer models. By including the viewpoints of diverse clients and emphasizing collaboration, the Biodiversity Initiative supports informed natural resource management for the long-term sustainability of a wide range of resources.

Comparisons of natural and managed forests suggest that single-focus management of 2nd growth is unlikely to achieve broad conservation goals because biocomplexity is important to ecosystem capacity to produce useful goods and services. Biocomplexity includes species composition, the absolute and relative abundances of those species, and their arrangement in space (for example, trees and shrubs of various species, sizes, vigor, and decay states). Key to high biocomplexity is patchiness at the appropriate spatial scale (for example, 0.1 to 0.5 ha). Passive management (benign neglect) does not necessarily remedy whatever degradation might have occurred under past management or neglect (for example, lack of biological legacies, artificial homogeneity, loss of biodiversity, missing keystone species, presence of diseases, or increased vulnerability to disturbance). Furthermore, not all management is equal. Purposefully managing processes of forest development and landscape dynamics is more likely to be successful in maintaining ecosystem and landscape function (and adaptiveness) than just providing select structural elements in stands and select structural stages in landscapes, as is often suggested for conservation. Deliberate simplification of ecosystems (for example, even-aged, single-species plantations harvested every 15 to 40 y to maximize wood production) runs counter to conservation, even if rotations are extended slightly and conventional thinning is applied. Recent experiments support the importance of biocomplexity to soil organisms, vascular plants, fungi, invertebrates, birds, small mammals, and vertebrate predators. These studies suggest that various techniques used purposefully over time are more likely to be successful than any 1-time intervention, passive management, or traditional timber management. Biocomplexity is promoted by variable-retention harvest systems, planting and precommercial thinning for species diversity, variable-density thinning to create spatial heterogeneity and foster species diversity, managing decadence processes to provide cavity trees and coarse woody debris, and long to indefinite rotations. At the landscape scale, passive management (reserves and riparian corridors) that does not take into account restoration needs may be self-fulfilling prophecies of forest fragmentation and landscape dysfunction. Restoring landscape function entails restoring function to both 2nd growth and riparian areas. Intentional (integrated, holistic, and collaborative) systems management seems to offer the best hope for meeting diverse objectives for forests, including conservation of biodiversity, a sustained yield of forest products, and economic, social, and environmental sustainability.

The Society for Ecological Restoration Primer on Ecological Restoration (SERPER) states, “Ecological restoration is an intentional activity that initiates or accelerates the recovery of an ecosystem with respect to its health, integrity, and sustainability” and attempts to return an ecosystem to its historic condition. There are questions, however, about whether changing environmental conditions such as global climate change, invasive species (including pests and diseases), human-altered disturbance regimes, and widespread land-use changes will allow return to historic conditions, what constitutes naturalness, and whether restoration should incorporate continuing management. Active, intentional management (AIM) is a conservation approach that emphasizes a full range of active and passive management techniques to manage important ecological and hydrologic processes to conserve biodiversity; reconcile conflicts over management of natural resources; and provide various goods, ecological services, and recreational and spiritual opportunities to people over the long term. AIM includes intangibles such as knowing that rare species exist, that “wild” places are deliberately in place, and that ecological services important to the biosphere are maintained. How does AIM compare to restoration? Can AIM meet restoration goals? Specifically, can AIM reproduce the 10 traits of pristine ecosystems identified by SERPER? Measures can be used to evaluate success. For ecosystems, diversity of vascular plants, composition of functional groups of soil organisms, biotic integrity of vertebrate communities, and biocomplexity can be measured. For landscapes, simulations can project values: 1) capacity to support vertebrate diversity; 2) forest-floor function as measured by biotic integrity; 3) ecological productivity and ability to support medium-size predators as evidenced by biomass of mammalian frugivores; 4) ecological productivity and ability to sustain large predators, subsistence hunting by Native Americans, and sport hunting, as measured by production of corvids; 5) production of wood; 6) revenues; and 7) employment, which are measures of social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Would such forests seem natural? Perhaps what is needed are experiential comparisons of the abstract purity of pristine nature with contemplative experience of wildness in an intentionally managed mosaic … to immerse oneself in an AIM forest to experience aloneness as night falls, the moon rises, and the wolf howls.

Invasive alien species have long been recognized as a leading threat to biological diversity, contributing to the decline of nearly half of the imperiled species in the United States for which threat information is available. This paper discusses some of the invasive species that threaten imperiled wildlife in the western United States, including endemic birds in San Francisco Bay, sage grouse, and grizzly bears. I present 3 examples of the difficulties inherent in balancing the need to close pathways of invasive species entry with maintaining active international and interstate trade (wood packing materials, ballast water, and the nursery trade) and I present Defenders of Wildlife's policy recommendations in these areas.

Habitat models address only 1 component of biodiversity but can be useful in addressing and managing single or multiple species and ecosystem functions, for projecting disturbance regimes, and in supporting decisions. I review categories and examples of habitat models, their utility for biodiversity conservation, and their roles in making conservation decisions. I suggest the use of influence diagrams in structuring causal webs and structural equation modeling to quantify relations, as a general framework for building models of habitat from which a known degree of inference can be made to biodiversity variables.

Monitoring is an assessment of the spatial and temporal variability in one or more ecosystem properties, and is an essential component of adaptive management. Monitoring can help determine whether mandated environmental standards are being met and can provide an early-warning system of ecological change. Development of a strategy for monitoring biological diversity will likely be most successful when based upon clearly articulated goals and objectives and may be enhanced by including several key steps in the process. Ideally, monitoring of biological diversity will measure not only composition, but also structure and function at the spatial and temporal scales of interest. Although biodiversity monitoring has several key limitations as well as numerous theoretical and practical challenges, many tools and strategies are available to address or overcome such challenges; I summarize several of these. Due to the diversity of spatio-temporal scales and comprehensiveness encompassed by existing definitions of biological diversity, an effective monitoring design will reflect the desired sampling domain of interest and its key stressors, available funding, legal requirements, and organizational goals.

Researchers, land managers, and the public currently often are unable to obtain useful biodiversity information because the subject represents such a large component of biology and ecology, and systems to compile and organize this information do not exist. Information on vascular plant taxonomy, as addressed by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and key partners, serves as an example of current efforts to integrate information. Current areas of informatics research related to online systems are focused on improving searches and intelligent systems, but are limited by available information. I recommend 5 steps to improve access to biodiversity information. For even a small portion of the world's information on biodiversity to become available online, sites need to be able to integrate information from multiple sources and search capacity needs to be improved and focused. In addition, incentives or public policy need to promote the use of standards, the long-term maintenance of data sets, the maintenance of institutions for maintaining and distributing information, and more careful use of limited resources.