The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl: Policy Lessons for a New Century

The controversy over the management of national forests in the Pacific Northwest vividly demonstrates the shortcomings of existing management institutions and natural resource policies. The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl explores the American policymaking process through the case of the spotted owl -- a case that offers a striking illustration of the failure of our society to cope with long-term, science-intensive issues requiring collective choices.

Steven Lewis Yaffee analyzes the political and organizational dynamics from which the controversy emerged and the factors that led to our stunning inability to solve it. He examines the state of resource management agencies and policy processes, providing insight into questions such as:

• What caused the extreme polarization of opinion and lack of communication throughout the 1980s and early 1990s?
• How can the inadequate response of government agencies and the failure of the decisionmaking process be explained?
• What kinds of changes must be made to enable our resource policy institutions to better deal with critical environmental issues of the 1990s and beyond?

By outlining a set of needed reforms, the book will assist those who are involved in re-creating natural resource agencies and public policy processes for the challenges of the next century. In explaining the policymaking process -- its realities and idiosyncrasies -- The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl provides a framework for understanding policies and institutions, and presents a prescription for change to allow for more effective handling of current and future environmental problems.

Steven L. Yaffee is Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at the University of Michigan. He has worked for more than forty years on federal endangered species, public lands and ecosystem management policy and is the author or co-author of five books: Prohibitive Policy: Implementing the Federal Endangered Species Act (MIT Press 1982); The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl: Policy Lessons for a New Century (Island Press 1994); Ecosystem Management in the United States: An Assessment of Current Experience (Island Press 1996); and Making Collaboration Work: Lessons from Innovation in Natural Resources Management (Island Press 2000). A native of Washington, DC, he spent his youth hearing stories about public policy and politics while experiencing firsthand the loss of native habitat associated with urban sprawl; ultimately, that led to an interest in improving the process of decision making so that more environmentally sound decisions can be made. He has facilitated numerous collaborative processes across North America, and assisted a set of philanthropic foundations with ways to develop evaluation metrics for their conservation programs. He is currently working on a new book detailing the history and lessons of the California marine protected areas designation process. Dr. Yaffee received his PhD in environmental policy and planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His undergraduate and master’s degrees are in natural resource management and policy from the University of Michigan. He has been a faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the World Wildlife Fund.