Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Forest Service's management indicator species approach to monitoring wildlife and their habitat in national forests, focusing on the cost-effectiveness and ultimate usefulness of this approach.
GAO found that: (1) although the management indicator approach is based on sound theory, several practical drawbacks exist which raise questions about whether data collected on selected species can provide the basis for drawing conclusions on overall habitat conditions; (2) the costs of monitoring indicator species populations were prohibitive, since the cost of monitoring increased as the population of the species being monitored decreased or as the size of the habitat increased; (3) even when planned data collection efforts were completed using the management indicator species approach to monitoring, the data had limited usefulness because they revealed population changes without conclusively relating observed changes to overall habitat conditions or Service management actions; (4) although Service headquarters officials acknowledge that problems exist in field implementation of the management indicator species approach, they believe that these difficulties stem more from the application of the management indicator species principle than from fundamental weaknesses with the concept itself; and (5) Service headquarters is revising its national direction on wildlife and wildlife habitat monitoring.
