PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #108: Precautionary Principle and Restoration .
Presiding: M. O'Brien
Friday, August 9. 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM. Palo Verde Room, Radisson.
Chicago Wilderness and the Precautionary Principle.
Packard, Stephen1, Rodriguez, Karen*,2, 1 National Audubon Society, Skokie, IL 600772 United States Environmental Protection Agency, Chicago, IL
ABSTRACT- Chicago Wilderness includes hundreds of thousands of acres of some of the Earth's rarest ancient ecosystems. It includes more than 140 agencies and organizations, hundreds of scientists, scores of land management and restoration professionals, thousands of volunteers, 8.5M people, and more than one thousand endangered and threatened species populations and high quality fragments of globally threatened natural communities. It also regularly seeks answers to hundreds of scientifically and ethically difficult questions. The group has five teams focused respectively on science, land management, education, communications, and sustainability. It has called for appropriate and increased use of burning, cutting of invasive trees, herbicide use, deer control and other work sometimes considered "controversial" -- when the preponderance of the evidence requires it. In fact one of the greatest threats to the region's globally significant biodiversity is inaction due to fear that needed restoration could cause harm. We believe that the precautionary principle provides a helpful framework for resolving some of the difficult questions that may need to be answered and acted upon before all relevant research results are in hand.
KEY WORDS: precautionary, restoration, fire, deer