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This cannot be done by the universities alone. Agencies must return to the university environment for basic research and cut down wasteful duplication of space, equipment and effort. University scientists must accommodate managers by doing innovative applied research and by providing educational forums that articulate management problems and potential solutions to students and agency personnel. Some of the cooperatives between a few universities and regional research units in the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey have been somewhat successful in this regard. However, we envision formal cooperatives at the level of local Forest Service districts and State fish and game regional offices and involving many, if not all, research universities. We emphasize that education and effective management of natural resource issues also must formally involve the public. Many management interferences and failures could have been avoided simply by the quality control afforded by an a priori public forum. A template for success in this regard is a state legislated catchment commission composed of all pertinent agency heads (e.g., forest supervisor, park superintendent, local land use planner, fish and game agency, tribal resource adminstrator, county commissioners) and at least an equal number of informed citizens that equitably represent the various publics (e.g., industry, agriculture, urban development, conservation). University scientists should be used as advisors or sources of basic information that can analyze and guide the process. One fairly successful example is the Flathead Basin Commission described above. In summary, we propose several important principles of integrated management at the catchment level. 1) Have as the major objective to conserve and enhance ecological connectivity. Keep in mind that processes and disturbances within the catchment are interconnected biophysically in time and space. 2) Let the key management questions define the catchment scale. However, for very large catchments (e.g., the entire Columbia River Basin, USA) no good formulas for success currently exist. Coordination and representation can become quickly fragmented or politicized because there are too many participants at the same table. We suggest that, if possible, focus should be on areas more the size of the Flathead catchment as described above. The inference is that if ecosystem connectivity can be conserved in all subcatchments of very large drainage basins, then the ecological integrity of the entire system should remain stable. Or, at least, an approach to problem solving in very large catchments should be forthcoming from an integration of subcatchment data and knowledge. 25