Measuring the Effects of Stakeholder Participation on the Quality of Local Plans Based on the Principles of Collaborative Ecosystem Management

In response to the increasing decline of critical natural resources across the United States, public decision makers are abandoning the traditional species-by-species approach to regulation and instead are embracing ecosystem approaches to management. Ecosystem management represents a departure from traditional management approaches by addressing the interaction between biotic and abiotic components within a landscape or seascape, while incorporating human concerns (Szaro, Sexton, and Malone 1998). In this approach, entire ecological systems (e.g., watersheds, ecological communities, etc.), and the ecological structures, functions, and processes within them, become the focus for management efforts rather than a single species or jurisdiction (Grumbine 1994; Christensen et al. 1996). Local natural resource and land use planners increasingly recognize that while ecosystem management requires looking beyond specific jurisdictions and focusing on broad spatial scales, the approach will in part be implemented at the local level with local land use decisions. Furthermore, ecosystem approaches to management may not be realized solely by structural or engineering approaches to management but by the coordination of local plans and policies across larger landscapes (Kirklin 1995; Beatley 2000). Local-level planning therefore must be considered along with other spatial and jurisdictional scales when it comes to managing entire ecological systems. The factors causing ecosystem decline, such as rapid urban development and habitat fragmentation, occur at the local level and are generated by local land use decisions (Noss and Scott 1997). The vast majority of these decisions affecting large ecosystems will be made at smaller scales, where they make the largest impact on the natural environment (Endter-Wada et al. 1998; McGinnis, Woolley, and Gamman 1999). As a result, some of the most powerful tools that threaten or protect natural habitats are in the hands of county commissioners, city councils, town boards, local planning staffs, and the participating public. Thoughtful policies and actions at the local level can often protect critical habitats of regional significance more effectively and less expensively than the best intentioned state or federal protection schemes (Duerksen et al. 1997). The importance of local ecosystem-based planning is further highlighted by the declining role of