Land manager's decisions can be handicapped by a lack of objective, comprehensive wildlife input. Contrary to the belief of many wildlife biologists, this is frequently due not only to a lack of appreciation of the importance of wildlife, but also to deficiencies in the quality of information provided by the wildlife biologist to management. This is especially apparent in environmental analysis. Pre-planning for costly inventories is often ill-considered, failing to ensure the studies provide the information required by EISs. Impact analysis ignores the ?big picture?, concentrating not on cumulative impacts and their significance but rather on the direct impacts of project components. Finally, the wildlife biologist may become overprotective of his resource. The first two points deprive the manager of information required for informed decisions. The third may eliminate management's confidence in the biologist's objectivity, encouraging the manager to use his own intuitive (and untrained) judgment. When this happens, much of the responsibility for poor decisions must rest with the wildlife biologist.
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