But ecosystem decline is not inevitable. Ecosystems are resilient and can be sustained through practices that accommodate their inherent biological limits, recognizing that ecosystems are not simple production factories but living systems built on complex relationships among species and physical factors such as water, temperature, and nutrient availability. Practices that respect and preserve how ecosystems function are the building blocks of what in the past five years has come to be known as an ecosystem approach to natural resource management – that is, management that centers itself around the sustainable and equitable use of ecosystems. In this chapter, when we refer to “better ecosystem management,” we mean adopting an ecosystem approach. (See Figure 4.1 Maintaining The Value Of Nature.)
In practice,
