| Monitoring wildlife (and biological diversity overall) has perennially posed a challenge to management agencies. Most public land agencies have mandates to maintain native species and communities, and yet effective multiple-species monitoring programs are rare. Cost is often cited as a barrier to monitoring populations of more than a few species, and yet attempts to justify a few species as representative of many species do not hold up under scientific scrutiny. Many researchers have dedicated attention to how to overcome this conundrum, and there are multiple success stories that we can learn from. The Pacific Southwest Region of the United States Forest Service (USFS) asked a panel of scientists to address this very question "what options exist to be successful in monitoring wildlife populations, communities, and habitats" and particularly what approaches would meet the intent of the updated USFS 2012 Planning Rule regulations that call for monitoring ecosystem diversity. The recently released report outlines objective-driven approaches that have been proven to be efficient and effective at identifying focal species and sampling larger suites of species that are well-suited to meeting the mandates of public land stewardship. |