OCR Text |
Show Lack of sufficient food supply to accommodate growing animal populations results in mass die-off. sideration in day-to-day operational decisions. We believe such guidelines are an essential supplement to our recommended policy objectives for fish and wildlife on the public lands and that they should be included in statutory declarations of management policy. The guidelines recommended below have been developed and framed primarily with the lands administered by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management in mind. The general availability of these lands for various uses requires effective guidelines for allocating and managing them for each use. Some of the guidelines are, however, equally applicable to lands administered by the National Park Service, the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, and other classes of Federal lands administered for special purposes. We believe guidelines are necessary for two major categories of policy: habitat management, and fish and wildlife protection and population control. With regard to habitat management, we recommend that all public land uses and management practices that affect vegetative cover and surface water should, to the extent possible, be conducted in a manner designed to leave a quality habitat essentially unchanged in its overall capability for supporting fish and wildlife. We believe it is necessary to establish a habitat condition standard to assure continuous attention to the effect of such uses as livestock grazing, some forms of outdoor recreation, timber harvesting, mineral development, and road construction on the capability of the habitat affected to sustain dependent wildlife and fish species at appropriate stocking levels. The guideline we recommend is a "no avoidable deterioration" standard. While this standard may be difficult to attain in some circumstances, we believe it is possible to adjust construction, logging, mining, and livestock use methods to achieve it under most conditions. The standard also provides a basis upon which mitigation or corrective work to recondition the habitat may be measured. Adoption of this guideline would not preclude habitat enhancement programs. It is merely a basis for preventing habitat deterioration. All improvements installed on or across the public lands must be constructed in a manner to minimize the impact, so far as practicable, on normal fish and wildlife migration patterns. If some adverse impact is unavoidable, then it should be mitigated by compensatory actions elsewhere. This would extend the principle that has been applied to Federal water 165 |