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Executive Summary
Pages 1-8

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From page 1...
... Other federal agencies and many state natural resource agencies also have lands held in large blocks where biodiversity can be protected and maintained. Taken together, the state and federal lands, including military reservations, collectively identify a developing national system of potential biodiversity reserves.
From page 2...
... This report differs from many recent ones that have focused solely on measures of the economic value of biodiversity in that it seeks to embrace the range of values that legitimately can be used to determine the merits of alternative courses of action regarding biodiversity. Recognizing that improved methods for assigning value can enhance the process of decision-making, we also provide a summary of state-of-the-art methods for establishing value.
From page 3...
... Methods of analytically estimating economic and noneconomic values of biodiversity must be viewed in the broad context of people's different ways of thinking about values. In chapter 4, major Western philosophies of value are reviewed to provide a context for describing how the tools of economists can contribute to understanding how biodiversity values fit into the management of biological resources.
From page 4...
... Results of both direct evidence and surrogate measures of value provide useful information for informing decisions about biodiversity. But both approaches provide only part of the needed information.
From page 5...
... This report discusses the merits of analytic deliberation processes as a way of bringing value- and science-based information to bear on decisions involving biodiversity. Analytic deliberation is a class of discursive processes for dealing with conflicts that draws on the best features of both analysis and deliberation; these processes incorporate input from traditional public participation, from normal political processes, and from science in several ways.
From page 6...
... · That a broader understanding of the implications of biodiversity conservation is needed for resource-management decisions on the various scales at which they are made. · That the available tools for estimating both economic and noneconomic values to management alternatives are limited in their usefulness in these decisions, in part because of the wide differences in philosophies of value held by the public, but also because of the nonmarket nature of so many of the values of biodiversity.
From page 7...
... EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7 includes using the process to weigh the different kinds of values that are involved. · Because most decisions affecting biodiversity will be made on a local scale, there is an urgent need for periodic regional assessments of the state of biodiversity so that managers can assess the consequences of their decisions in broader and more ecologically meaningful contexts.


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