ABSTRACT
Forest management in North America and some other parts of the world has been rapidly evolving since the 1990s as concerns for the environment, biodiversity, and the provision of ecosystem services have become increasingly considered along with the traditional utilization of forests for timber production (see Chapter 12 ). The evolution of forest management can be viewed as a paradigm shift from purely utilitarian management towards multipurpose management (Bengston, 1994). With this shift, ecosystem management (or integrated natural resource management) has developed, which promotes the application of management strategies that can achieve some future desired state over strategies that simply produce some desired mix of resource outputs over time. The development of sustainable forest management (SFM), which involves the integrated management of forests for social, economic, and environmental goals in a manner consistent with the Statement of Principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests and Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, has explicitly created a paradigm where potentially confl icting objectives must be managed, such as conservation of biodiversity versus maintenance of economic benefi ts.
