Conservation planning increasingly emphasizes a broad-scale perspective that looks across ownership boundaries to coordinate management and restoration activities at landscape or watershed scales.This is especially important given the predicted impacts of climate change, current efforts to reduce increased risks of wildfire, widespread effects of increased human population, and related issues. An important issue that can limit success is the integration of aquatic and terrestrial management.

That topic?Integrating Aquatic and Terrestrial Resource Management?is the focus of Special Session 1. It will take place during the 76^th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Wednesday morning, March 16, 2011, at the Westin Crown Center in Kansas City, Missouri. It is one of four concurrent Special Sessions that will immediately following the conference plenary.

Terrestrial approaches often emphasize vegetation management to achieve ecosystem restoration and/or fuel mitigation objectives, and to reverse decades of changes caused by past resource uses and losses of natural disturbance processes. Aquatic managers often focus on protection of remnant populations and on improving watershed integrity through such efforts as reducing the impacts of roads and improving streamside condition. In many areas, the management activities desired by terrestrial managers may include mechanical treatments, prescribed burning or chemical control of invasive species. These activities often require road networks for access and may disturb lands and soils in the short term to achieve longer-term desired conditions. Aquatic managers seeking to minimize sediments to streams and maintain remnant fish populations may resist these terrestrial treatments as further disruption of already compromised watersheds.??? Aquatic managers may focus on actions such as closing and decommissioning roads and protecting areas from additional disturbances and. in turn, meet objections from terrestrial managers who need access to accomplish their management projects. Terrestrial managers may argue that, without proper management, uncharacteristic wildfires may further threaten both terrestrial and aquatic resources, while aquatic managers may be more concerned with the persistent negative consequences of human influences on proper stream and river functions. Because terrestrial and aquatic systems are linked inextricably through watershed and ecological processes, there should be substantial opportunity for collaboration.

Special Session 1 will explore both the opportunity and conflict in terrestrial and aquatic management, with a focus on developing more integrated restoration that can benefit entire landscapes/watersheds and not just single resource issues.

Find additional information about the 76^th North American Conference.