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Water Management Study: Upper Rio Grande Basin The importance of setting priorities is illustrated by comparing two general approaches to watershed restoration. One emphasizes focusing most intensely on rehabilitating the "worst" areas from an ecological perspective, i.e., those areas in a watershed that have experienced the greatest change in composition and function. The other takes the opposite approach. It prescribes protecting the "best" areas within the watershed, facilitating connectivity among these areas, and allowing them to spawn the regenera- tion of ecosystem functions elsewhere. Several recent comprehensive reviews of watershed management favor the latter approach." The general goal is not to re-create an ecosystem as it existed prior to human activity, but to maintain the essential elements of an aquatic ecosystem in the most efficient and effective manner, within the constraints oflimited budgets. , :; , Setting economic priorities is equally important. As we describe throughout the preceding chapters, the demands for the Basin's water and related resources are expanding, with new groups living in sometimes distant areas desiring a more complex set of goods and services than in the past. These changes cut across the boundaries of water districts, county lines, and state borders, and they do not coincide with conventional views that see the resources as economically useful only if they are put to consumptive uses. Most federal resource-management activities have their roots in the conventional views, however, and, hence, we recommend that they explicitly go through a process of reevaluating the economic tradeoff's associated with their major activities and setting priorities. , As it evaluates tradeoff's and sets priorities, each agency should strive to incorporate the views of all stakeholders. We recommend that federal resource-management agencies in the Basin, acting individually or jointly, establish advisory groups (or broaden existing ones) that include all relevant stakeholder interests. We also encourage them to take other steps to expand their outreach to stakeholders beyond their conventional clients. Involving all stakeholder groups in the evaluation of tradeoff's and development of priorities is expensive, time-consuming, and often frustrating. We believe that doing so is better than the alternatives, and a necessary element of moving toward an ecosystem-management approach. f~ .." L:~ '. [ , (' 3 '-.1 t . v _ q , See. for example, "Section III. Approaches to Management at Larger Spatial Scales," in Creating a Forestry for the 218t Century: The Science of Ecosystem Management (Kohm and Franklin 1997b) as well as Healing the Watershed (Pacific Rivers Council 1996). ~ , 134 ~