Objectives

Systems are designed by people to achieve objectives. If objectives do not exist or are unclear, great frustration, "milling around", and counter productive work can occur. One of the key tasks of a systems-oriented manager is to help state and clarify objectives. [We contend that it is not to state them! His or her personal objectives may be no more relevant than a single vote in a democratic decision framework. The manager's role is to help the people of the wildland, inside and out, to state their objectives.] Suppose group A wants X and group B wants Y. It may be that X, in short supply, is wanted by both A and B but it is of low importance to the people of B. Even understanding and clarifying these differences can lead to improvements, usually seen as reduced conflict (Hart and Murphy 1987).

Problems exist in the gap, the differences, between the present state and the desired state. That desired state as in no other way, is described by objectives. The present or actual state is usually perfectly clear (Hillman 1986). The problems at the edges of wildlands (Ledec and Gooldand 1988, Wells and Brandon, 1992), the gaps as we now see them, in no particular order, are:

For the managers

• Simple trespass, a law violation in areas in which the public is not allowed
• Grazing of domestic stock within the area, either illegal, or destructive of vegetation or soil conditions. Controlled grazing is needed in some areas to achieve objectives of the wildland.
• Harvesting of fruits, nuts, gum, mushrooms, fodder, thatch, medicinal plants, etc.
• Harvesting of trees (Cannel and Jackson 1985)
• Harvesting of animals for food, hides, ceremonies, etc.
• Harvesting of fuelwood, tool handles, housing wood. An FAO conference noted that countries in the Near East were consuming their fuelwood supplies far more rapidly than they could be renewed. If "current trends continued, it was estimated that by the year 2000, fuelwood supplies would fall short of demand by 35 million m3 per year requiring the equivalent of approximately 8 million tons of oil to replace them" (FAO 1988).
• Poaching for hides, ivory, feathers, etc.
• Capturing animals for live-animal sale or use
• Harvesting eggs
• Effect on food supplies (harvests or pollution) of protected species (Foster-Turley 1989:25)
• Pest relations, where the manager(s) must subsist within the area
• Pest relations, in which wildland users or visitors experience damage or risks (e.g., elephant destruction of granaries; mauling)
• Pest relations, in which complaints are received about the effects of wildland animals on orchards, crops, livestock and facilities
• Threats to lives of the manager and visitors (e.g., form poachers and displeased local people as well as from those involved in drug production and military operations)
• Threat of extensive wildland damage (e.g., forest and grassland fires)
• Inability to deal with threshold phenomena (movement of population abundance past the minimum viable population level or loss of area for extremely localized plants or animals) (Meyers 1979).
• Interference by government officials to gain patronage and support in ways that countervene planned and desireable programs and projects and add intolerable constraints in already difficult conditions.

  For the people at the edge

• Removing and resettling people living in the wildland
• Removing resources for the existence of the people (putting available resources "off-limits")
• Reducing life support diversity (removal of resources which are infrequently used but essential in harsh periods over the long run for village or human subsistence; jeaopardizing sustainability)
• Uneven distribution of the costs and benefits of wildlife management among communities at the edge (e.g., farmers vs. pastoralists)
• Fear of counterintuitive results from improving conditions at the edge (roads, schools, health services, etc.) to reduce poaching, resulting in attracting people to the area in search of these services.
• Increasing psychological distance (i.e., excluding local people while simultaneously encouraging ingress of people from elsewhere)
• Lack of active and powerfully-instituted stake-holder organizations to represent the local people
• Substituting non-commodity resource interests for commodity interests, the latter often being those of survival
• Predation on livestock by the large carnivores (and other animals of the wildland such as bears, condors, elephants, hippopotamus, crocodiles), Predation on people by the large carnivores (and other animals)
• Crop destruction or loss (e.g., by birds Ezealor 1995)
• Crop storage destruction (attack of grain silos by elephants)
• Adverse treatment (excessive punishment etc.) of subsistence poachers and other trespassers
• Life pattern disruption caused by tourists (e.g., indigenous people forced to move because of land use)
• Loss of land capability (erosion, reduced fertility)
• Loss of land use rights or title (where lack of use may release the title)
• Loss of esteem (in cultures where clearing land displays personal or family prowess)
• Loss of access to religious spaces (e.g., grave sites, monuments, and temples) (Werner et al. 1987)

  In The Caracas Declaration (INTECOL Newsletter 22(2):1992)) it was stated that natural parks and protected areas are vital because "they also. . may be home to communities of people with traditional cultures and irreplaceable knowledge of nature" and have ". . .immense scientific, educational, cultural, recreational, and spiritual value." Ntiamoa-Baidu (1987) claimed that for some West Africans, wildlife is the symbol of their culture, for some their religion "and even their identity . . . Language, art, philosophy, and social structure in Africa are also strangely influenced by their association with wildlife." McGoodwin (1990) holds similar concerns for fishers and their culture.

  In a national park in the Columbian Amazon, for example, there are mountains where the local people believe a god lives. He releases birds and mammals for them to hunt. When hunting success is low, they believe the god is offended. They know when they can hunt each species without depleting it and offending the god.

  For people beyond the edge

• Concern about (fear of) species losses
• Concern about (fear of) community losses
• Concern about (fear of) cultural losses
• Ethical concerns
  • The wrongness of moving local people from or preventing their use of cultural lands
  • Health and mortality in resource-short environments
  • Concern that all of the opportunities from wild areas have not been obtained before their loss to various human influences
  • Concern that cultures, languages, etc. may be lost due to removing an area from all or part of the culture's long-term needs
• Concern for large-scale, distant off-site influences due to wildland exploitation (e.g., effects of siltation upon reefs; of oxygen release; of weather patterns; of change in commodity production, e.g., Brazil nuts); of change in communities (e.g., seed dispersal rates by agouti, pacas, and birds)
• Concern for uneven distribution of conservation costs between people near the edge and those quite distant from the area.
• Fear by a government that it might display lack of "progress" by not continuing deforestation and land development for agriculture (Meyers 1979)

Adams (1991:7) observed that

"Destruction of conservation reserves, the world's national parks, or still-intact natural areas does not hold the solution to global poverty. Burning tropical forest or encroaching on national parks and preserves may fill short-term needs, but these activities cannot be sustained. Once the resources held by these lands are used up, people will once again go hungry and the forests and the wildlife will be gone."

The problems are numerous and varied and many are large and unbounded. We do not believe there is a solution. Only a solution system will begin to be adequate for reducing the distance between where wildland managers are now and the objectives that they have for effective use of wildlands and harmonious, high quality lives for the people within or at the edges of these areas.

The objectives are missing, vague, or misappropriated from areas without careful thought. Patterns of U.S. national parks have been imposed on some lands; "multiple-use" on others; biological reservoirs on others. Increasingly more evident to us is that we need to retreat to criteria, to express the minimum standards by which we will know that an area is doing what we (the people of the region or world) want it to do now and, as best we can judge, for at least the next 2 generations. We may want an area "to protect wildlife" but we must present the criteria by which we would know that such has occurred or is likely to do so. We may likely have other criteria for another area. Throughout the world, it seems to us increasingly evident that there is the need for management with the general success criterion being one of whether the resulting conditions will be potentially good for people. The phrase has shifted, in these few places where it was started, from preservation for the sake of wildlife to preservation of wildlife for people. The emphasis has changed. The logic of the former was inadequate (there was no-way to measure success) but logic has never been the apparent criteria for some human activity.

Asibey and Child (1990) said that "the urgent requirement today is for a significant and sustained effort to include the evaluation, development, management and utilization of wild animals in national plans for socio- economic development."

Now we have an international situation in which there is a need to study, re-evaluate, re-write and re-formulate the objectives for the wildlands. Our hypothesis is that if developed and used, the gaps, the identified problems, will greatly recede.

Feedback

"Recede", not disappear, is the word for the prospects for problems of people at the edges of wildlands. The systems approach is nothing if feedback is not working. It is dependent upon having clear, measurable objectives (the lack of which explains part of the absence of feedback as a corrective force) but its special contribution is one of a dynamic, adaptive attitude and one of making measurable change toward those objectives.

Feedback is not simply communicating or replying. It is a controlling operation in the sense of steering a boat. It is a condition of a managed, changing system with continual adjustments to get closer to the objective. It is active problem reduction. In wildland management, the needs for change to achieve objectives are very great, so great that adjustments must be very cost-effectively made. This requires inputs (usually expressed as monitoring) so that the current state of affairs can be precisely seen. Once seen, that state can be compared to the objective, then an optimum treatment selected and used. Feedback is a micro-system, itself with all of the components of Fig. 1.

Suppose we plant crop A but it suffers 15% loss from invading animals from a park. The manager may recommend that people plant crop B at 2% more effort but with losses of only 5%. The gain is not much but it is positive and, considered as the total over 40 years, it is substantial. Where emphasis in the systems approach is on feedback as control and correction, it is clearly different from the processes of the system. Feedback almost denies that there is any one best process, that options need to be explored, and that desired timely change in the system per unit cost is the criterion of success. The final criterion is not persistence in practice or necessarily (by some definitions) "sustainability."

Inputs

"There are never enough inputs" is erroneous. There is frequently too much information, too many species, too many soil types. The myth of "getting it all together" needs to be laid aside. It can never be done, given the funds, expertise, rates of loss and destruction that people experience. We arrive at this conclusion reluctantly. The perceived needs are for generalized models, approximations, synthetic ratios, statistics (as compared to data), and decisions-with-feedback.

In the wildlands, we need to use objectives to decide what we want, then to use technology to determine the best actions, areas, and timing for achieving those objectives. Where lines were once drawn around whole wildland areas for preservation or special use, using topography, roads, or other national boundaries, it is now possible with geographic information systems to select the best areas using the criteria of goodness, suitability, or primness (Giles and Koeln 1983, Giles and Fugita 1989). It is now possible to analyze the likely financial feasibility, annual costs, and sustainability of set-aside areas. Such analyses were rarely part of earlier land dedication. Similarly, analyses were seldom done to determine the likely human problems of boundary selection. Such mapping techniques can be used to dodge or minimize human activity, to avoid areas of known conflict, to select essential areas (leaving less valuable or optimal areas for negotiation), and selecting areas, spots, or corridors where variable levels and types of use may be allowed without loss of success.

Jhala (1991) studied blackbuck impacts on cropland at the edge of Valevedar Park, Gujarat, India. Simple enclosures and transacts to count feces and "bites" of crops allowed him to appraise the real monetary value of crop loss. Such input is needed in situations where there are claims and counter claims of loss. Opinions will rarely suffice in arguments. Easily- conducted study procedures are needed. In some cases, remedies, such as payment for loss, may be justified. Such payment, for example, needs to be studied (as part of the feedback effort) to compare it with animal reduction (and effects on tourists etc.), fencing, and other techniques. Frequently, wildlife-related injury (physical loss to crop or animal) is not damage (significantly different expected monetary or socio-cultural loss) and control costs cannot be justified. Frequently losses are very site specific and time specific and control efforts (often exercised widely) can, themselves, be controlled by having such information. In some cases, the placement of a wildland boundary has no effect. Problems which existed before, still exist. There may be no justification to demands for control efforts, payment of damage claims, or other adjustments. Making baseline studies and establishing strong policy early can reduce exaggerated claims. Similarly, monitoring (collecting information about on- and off-site areas) is needed by wildland managers to protect themselves and the resources of their areas from being claimed as the source of all problems associated with off--site conditions such as low crop production (perhaps related to soil fertility loss, not pests). Processes

Processes may be differentiated from products for managerial or regulatory emphasis. Increase in area that is plowed each year (and related wildlife habitat loss) is a product of the process of agricultural expansion. This is a process that must be regulated at the community and large farm scale. Such regulation (or its failures) appear in zoning, appropriate buffer area designations, and boundary enforcement work.

Improving agriculture, improving forestry (Cannell and Jackson 1985), adopting agroforestry (e.g., Gholz 1987; Young 1989); and using integrated pest damage management (Giles 1979, 1980) are conspicuous processes that can be employed by people at the edges of wildlands. These practices can improve the conditions of people and reduce the needs for products of the wildlands. Given growing populations and their needs, the improvement rates may not be sufficient, but the effort in this direction seems imperative along with other efforts in population regulation and environmental enhancement. Education may be called for (as is conventional.) "The rural sector is not a homogeneous group . . . and research and education efforts also need to be directed toward the social or economic constraints and incentives that lead to destructive practices or conflict with institutional conservation policies" (Gomez-Pompa and Kaus 1992:276). However, we see little evidence for great changes resulting from rural education. Though not dismissing it, for we are in favor of a mix of approaches, we wish to stress more direct, physical, operational efforts to reduce conflicts.

The other major system processes and activities that need simultaneous work will be discussed.

Altering Bias

Ambler (1991) described how the literature and the media can create an unwarranted image of the people at the edge. The resulting decision bias can be very influential. In the same article she described how such people can communicate, share concerns, organize, and develop a base of technical expertise and influence that can find ways to make economic progress and environmental protection fit into their own value system.

Throughout the world, people in positions of authority over wildlands have been known to abuse such positions. A "them against us" mentality takes over; "them" becomes the enemy, and enemies are always derogated. People who do "bad things" easily become "bad people" by an evil logic. Suggesting that this classic behavior be stopped would be silly. At least, however, there are examples of how it has been replaced by partnerships and working groups that have reduced conflicts and protected people and their ideas, and how positive synergistic results have replaced destructive antagonism.

Padoch (1987:10-11) observed that all tropical forest-dwelling farmers are not forest-destroying, shifting cultivators living at the survival margin. She found the Lun Dayeh, a tribal group in Indonesian Borneo, to be progressive, permanent-field farmers using wet-rice cultivation resulting in annual surpluses. She attributed their success, not to soil (as previously thought), but to intimate knowledge of their environment and skillful use of techniques. The potential elsewhere is thereby suggested.

Use of Expert Knowledge

Ramakrishnan and Singha (1992) said that building upon traditional knowledge is important to ensure peoples' participation in the developmental process and that the process is based upon a familiar value system. Although long ignored, indigenous knowledge systems often contain a wealth of local knowledge about ecology and resource dynamics. These knowledge systems can be keys to understanding the socio-cultural roots of rural resource use and are a "resource for the future" (Pawluk et al. 1992:302).

It becomes increasingly clear that all of the needed knowledge for solving the problems identified above will not be gained by classical research. There is insufficient money, expertise, or time. The available knowledge needs to be captured and means for its use developed (e.g., in computer data bases and expert systems).

Substitution

A 10% loss in gross village product due to new designation of a wildland can probably be replaced easily by 10% improvement in return by new cultural practices. Rate of adoption becomes the causative element in the quality of human life then, not the wildland.

Rarely is engaging in a practice the objective of people at the edge of wildland. (There may be individual exceptions.) The objective is to gain food, clothing, housing, money, or self esteem. Adverse practices can usually be replaced or substituted because there are often many ways to the same desired end. The manager's task is to find an equivalent-value substitute; almost any one that is ethical and legal will suffice.

For example, Denevan et al. (1987:9) described a rational cultivation- plot and fallow-plant agroforestry system in Peru that was judged to be ecologically and economically preferable to monocrop cultivation or pasture, to shifting cultivation, or to long-rotation forestry. Lewis et al. (1990) described related substitution of protein to reduce wildlife poaching. They suggested introducing fish farming, more intensive farming for plant protein, allocating a sustainable quota of animals to village hunters, and employing hunters to provide meat for the community.

Substitutions in the means by which people meet their needs is fundamental to reducing conflicts with managed lands and the people at their edges. We are not recommending "hand-outs", cash or otherwise. People should be actively involved in producing the substitutions. Only then will the work have high survival value over the long run. Payments and subsidies have tended to debase the community, to allow traditional techniques to be lost, and to present other logistical and administrative problems. Substitutions which increase the number or complexity of negative linkages between wildlands and people at the edges should be avoided, political or budgetary expediency not withstanding.

Lewis et al. (1990) observed that poaching and wildlife-related problems are inversely related to (1) availability of alternative protein, and (2) availability of employment opportunities. The managerial effort may then be directed to increase both, or to convert the latter, or combine it with "revenue earning capacity of wildlife."

Baseline Knowledge

Improvements are said to be needed, but there is a need to address continually "in what?" and "as compared to what?" Managers and villagers alike forget baseline conditions. A 10% improvement as a substitute or payback only has meaning when compared to a standard. Improvement is a perpetual demand, part of the human condition. Demand is usually expressed as an addition to the amount last experienced. Having "doubled" production has little meaning if you were producing only 2% of a village's needs (thus increasing it to 4%) as compared to an expression of "we are within 4% of our objectives for the year."

Empowerment

"If new technologies are designed, implemented, and managed so as to empower rather than to replace the potential users, to make them more adaptable to change, and to make their activities more productive, efficient, and sustainable, the problems of technology adoption will be minimized and the benefits maximized" (Holt 1989). The technology or new knowledge suggested for the people at the edge, may be small indeed. The needs seen are not to require or cause people to move from the edge where they are creating problems but to cause behavioral change that allows, even encourages, them to live there. They may serve as a work force for the wildland, as guides, rescue teams, researchers, or interpreters. They may themselves display their history and culture, thereby augmenting the potential attraction of the wildland. Many of their activities can be useful in the wildland, others may be of no known consequence. Measurably detrimental activities may require specific control action.

Work with the people at the edge by education, incentives, and forming enterprises may provide an escape for them from boredom and may provide improved health and enhanced financial status that can substantially reduce the problems at the edge.

Land Control

Altering control of land is one fundamental process needing involvement in decisions where problems are perceived. Often wildlands are owned by the state or "the public." People at the edge, while also the public, are localized subgroups. Conflict and confrontation have resulted. Agents of the state are seen as the enemy, a manifestation of policy, and the only target for action, often violent confrontation, by individuals. Lurie (1991) reported on participatory system in West Bengal, India, which "acknowledges that the only way to practice sustainable and socially-just forest management is to involve local communities -- not just by giving them more access to forest products, but by making them jointly responsible for the presentation of these resources." This does not mean that people are put in a legalistic position in which they must accept blame if anything goes wrong or resources are lost. It implies that decision making is shifted so that decisions are made by the people most affected (Ambler 1991).

Exclusion of people has rarely worked; people in many areas are to varying degrees, dependent upon the forested wildland for their very survival. In India as the population increases, forests are lost at the rate of 3.7 million acres a year, 9 million a year in Africa (Adams 1990). The needs for changes seem evident and these include real changes in land use control, perception of ownership and rights, and real participation in decision making about wildland management that can protect the land and animals and restore those that are degraded or lost.

Ramakrishnan and Singha (1992) said that, apart from local initiatives (agreements, support, etc.) "regional and global initiatives are required to provide adequate motivation for people to conserve the remaining hot spots of biological diversity." These global initiatives may include substantial investments of money and they do need to include the people at the edge as part of the initiative. These actions need to go beyond selecting and purchasing land for protecting select species.

A Wildlife Program

Change in land ownership, breakdown in traditions and taboos, increase in human population and need for brushmeat, market price increase, animal parts (e.g., ivory and therapeutic uses), and efficient hunting equipment (Pilgram and Western 1986) have resulted in wildlife resource exploitation. Effects have also been experienced from efforts at vertebrate pest control (Ntiamoa-Baidu 1987). The problems are real but appear to be reversible in many areas. It is possible to develop elaborate management programs for areas for their wildlife resources. This can include protection as well as use regulated in time and space. Sophisticated wildlife resource management needs to be practiced (Giles 1978) and the expertise for this is not widely available. It, by definition, is not wildlife research, or animal observation and analyses, but active decision making and work to achieve stated human objectives. (Of course it includes protection and preservation.)

Some populations can be satisfactorily hunted by local people as well as tourists. The "spill over" effect of game from unhunted areas was reported by Hart and Petrides (1987). They said that ungulate populations can serve as a source of protein on a limited basis if hunted areas are near reservoirs of unexploited populations. Over exploitation is possible. Small cultivation plots in wildlands are not harmful and often beneficial to wildlife populations (thus one of the human conflicts). Short rotation forestry may not allow tree maturity to produce fruits and nuts needed by some animals, or the dispersal of seeds that may allow a floristic composition to develop similar to the original forest (Hart and Murphy 1987:48). The task is not easy. It can include work with animals from within the wildland taken to villages. The African grasscutter (Thryonomys swinderianus Temminck), for example, can be raised in boxes for producing quality meat (Asibey and Child 1990).

"There has been no major deliberate effort to integrate wild animals into cropping systems in sub-Saharan Africa. It is hoped that in the long run the renewed interest in the integration of tree growing into agricultural systems (agroforestry) will be followed by integration with wild animals that will take advantage of tree cover"

Chaudhry (1990) observed that "wildlife have strangely been neglected in the definition [of agroforestry] . . . but in practice it appears that only domestic livestock is referred to, though wildlife is very much a part, not only of the natural ecosystem, but also of agroforestry systems." Where a wildlife trade is developed, the state may benefit from sale of hunting licenses and export permits, taxes on sale of arms and ammunition, and foreign-exchange earnings from wildlife export (Ntiamoa-Baidu 1987).

Offers the People are Unlikely to Refuse

In India, for example, the 1952 National Forest Policy Act blamed the poor for deforestation of the land and declared that national forests should be used to produce timber for industry and commerce, not to meet subsistence needs (Lurie 1991). If land is treated as "commons" it will get heavy, usually unregulated use. When ownership is felt, exploitation is usually replaced with care. For example, in one area for protecting trees and forming a protection committee to guard an area (about 1200 ha) participants would be given local jobs on forestry projects or allowed access to all minor forest products and a share of the timber profit. Force and arrests for illegal activity were recognized as ineffective. Even effective committees and payment will rarely stop timber and other wildland poaching and trespass. It is unreasonable to expect people to protect forest if they are starving or their subsistence depends upon them. "If you don't want them to cut the trees, you have to provide another source of income" (Lurie 1991). ". . . In conservation areas local people could be allowed to hunt in exchange for assistance in reforestation and rangeland management. . ." or other related wildland efforts. "This would provide a motivated source of local labor, a serious constraint in many forestry efforts" (Asibey and Child 1990:7).

". . . Attempts to protect or re-establish wildlife resources that do not take into consideration the socio-economic needs of local people are doomed. Preservation laws are often abused with impunity. This is to be expected where resources are linked with survival. People with very low incomes survive as best they can. The temptation to break preservation laws is great since wild animals can provide food and cash. Furthermore, the people who would enforce the law often receive inadequate salaries and therefore may be tempted to turn a blind eye to or even aid rich exploiters such as illegal trophy hunters"

Narayan (1990) described conditions in and near the Manas Tiger Reserve of Assam, India. "Decades of poor land management coupled with gross inequities in terms of access to natural resources have so totally alienated the tribals from their forest home that they would rather see the jungle razed to the ground than let 'outsiders' usurp their birthright." DebRoy (1991) also described relations of people and wildlife at this area in the foothills of the Himalayas. Manas harbors the largest number of threatened and endangered species in India but has now been surrendered to Bodo militants. Several Reserve employees have been killed. Accompanied by poaching, the wildlife of the area and previous management work is being destroyed. "Manas is dying" Narayan said. " The tragedy is that it is being destroyed by the very people who should be its saviors -- the tribals."

"Mainly a forest dwelling tribe, they have been confronted with a situation where all forest lands outside protected areas have disappeared, largely usurped by paper, timber, and other business interests for a pittance. No long-term alternative has been provided for tribals and the influx of agriculturists from ... Bangladesh has merely added to the problem as the agriculturists migrants from there illegally purchased tribal lands for themselves."

"Like most oppressed people, the Bodos are not likely to be bought over by charity. There has been too much blood spilled for such inadequate, temporary responses. What they need is understanding and social justice. The same ingredients required to save virtually all our over 446 protected Parks and sanctuaries, all of which are ringed by a hostile, if somewhat less violent, people than the militants that now hold Manas hostage."

No wildlife or natural resource management textbook will have the solution to such large, long standing, grave problems. No research project will yield an answer. In most cases the need is to analyze the costs of immediate and swift police or military action to bring a situation under control, then to move it to a progressive participatory form of activity with abundant incentives or to decide whether delays, while costly to wildlife and natural resource, may be required. For work in areas with threatened species, the costs of a species loss are almost inestimable. This tends to create situations in which swift, decisive action is essential.

Few people realize the enormous costs of wildland designation. They often perceive of such acts as "wasteland dedication." The costs are opportunities foregone, management and administrative costs, political costs, and the long term costs to the people who remain within them (often deprived of the fruits of any future development). There are costs to those who move outside, and those outside who experience the invasion of extra people into environments which are often already resource-short. There may be gains, of course, and these need to be studied. Our view is that most areas have not been properly marked (too much here, too little there), that objectives are not clear, rules and policy not site-specific enough, staff inadequately trained, bias against the people widespread, insufficient options presented to augment their condition (or at least replace that part lost following the wildland designation), insufficient work done to reduce damage from the wildlife invading from the wildland, inadequate retention of people within the protected areas (e.g., to allow certain stages of ecological succession to be retained), and inadequate use or vigorous, diverse development of the resources (with protection) of most of the wildlands. Most of this list can be seen as difficulties in finding the proper mix or making proper tradeoffs.

Optimization

The fundamental "process" within a systems approach is optimization. It means finding the best mix, the best tradeoff, the maximum or minimum given a group of constraints. There are abundant procedures such as ranking, linear and dynamics programming, game theory, optimum paths in networks, and optimum seeking techniques. They all depend upon clearly stated objectives. Past use of these has suggested to us that most unaided decisions, even by the most expert people, are at least slightly suboptimum (based on the computer- selected answer). People who decide without expert advice are often very wrong. Solutions to systems often are very counterintuitive. If computer-aided optimization is used, the chances are that at least minor improvements can be made in decisions about managing human systems at the edges of wildlands. This is a very conservative observation. A very small improvement in 10,000 decisions can result in major improvements globally. This, too, is a conservative observation. Given the scope, extent, magnitude, and diversity of the problems of the people at the edges, and the lack of expertise and resources, we see no other possibilities for extensive solutions than those of general approximate computer models to aid in solving some of these types of decisions. We have made sufficient use over many years to have reduced the risks of such an observation. Failure to use them suggests to us that people have accepted the status quo and that it is not unsuitable. Suggestions which Lewis et al. (1990) made for improving the situation include:

1. Monitoring wildlife harvests and using results to achieve predictability.
2. Allowing time and flexibility in introducing new programs.
3. Ensuring economic incentives for legal, local uses of wildlife.
4. Encouraging sufficient participation to gain peer pressure and exponential change rates.
5. Providing information about successful programs to expand the program.
6. Implementing programs where success is likely, large and conspicuous to ensure a "stepping stone" effect.
7. Implementing programs at the edges of wildlife areas to create populations unwilling to admit illegal hunters, or timber or rangeland trespass.
8. Associating nearest communities with lands totally uninhabited to achieve a sense of ownership allowing a work force, and allowing revenues to provide community benefits and reduce management costs.
9. Avoiding "over-conserving" or excessive participation by non--professionals, volunteers, and donors. Carefully devised and utilized plans and consistent recognition of government authorities and trained indigenous staff leadership is needed.

Feedforward

The concept of feedforward in a systems approach is more than one about projections and estimates about the future. It also includes the concept that changes are made in the current system to get ready for these projections (or to prevent or encourage them). It implies current action in response to predictions. For example, if it is predicted that there will be no forage in a month, you do not buy goats today. This is a simple example of feedforward. That there will or will not be forage is a prediction. It cannot be known by the procedures of classical science but it is an element of human life and actual response is seen. Whether there will be just policies and collaborative participation in the future emerging from the government, or whether an organization, a type of union, must be formed, to secure some new state of justice and stability for the people is a prediction and a potential action. Feedforward can be aided by computer analyses of resource production; change in boundaries; change in international law; ecosystem stability, biodiversity, etc. However, in the modern system approach, these analyses are used with concepts of risk, human values, and substitutability to make decisions that achieve an improved human condition at the site. Centralized aids for this component of the approach may be cost effective for the managers as well as people at the edges of the wildlands.

Conclusion

It is now fairly clear from abundant evidence that extremely rigid wildland policy restricting human presence or use for the local people or even visitors (tourists, etc.)(and in some cases even researchers) is inappropriate. Rigid policy executes intolerable primary enforcement costs, often wasted or at least ineffective, and often with un-demonstrable benefits. The international resources for wildland protection, while growing, appear inadequate and the prospects for them to increase to "adequacy" seem very unlikely. The apparent need for exclusion of all people for the "good of wildlife" or for research (yet scantily demonstrated) or for some theoretical "existence values" is not being discussed here. In the face of such a future, it appears that improvements in the relations between people in and outside parks can be made. These improvements need to be site specific and usually several actions need to be taken simultaneously. An optimum strategy (hopefully with computer aide for selection) needs to implemented. In some cases where efforts have been made to overcome difficulties with problems with people at the edge, there have been claims leveled about caring more for wildlife than people. That this will continue is now predictable. The feedforward is to emphasize that most people are interested in achieving a strategy that will achieve both sets of benefits. The decision is not either/or but one of both/and; its roots are in optimization. The solutions lie not in buffer areas or zonation but in separating people from critical wildlife (plants and animals) (viewed as spatial optimization). However they need only to be separated at critical times (the temporal optimization). Use of all types of resources need to be managed, limited here, encouraged there. Techniques need to be provided for improved self-evaluation of progress and proximity to limits established by stated objectives (feedback). The solution includes manipulating areas by allowing and promoting planned tree and grass cutting, burning, flooding etc. (Giles 1978:173, Yocum et al. 1980) to achieve desired ages (successional stages) of vegetation for certain life groups. It includes providing creative economic options. As well, there is a need to foster environmentally sound life styles that slow rapid human population growth by concentrating on improving the role and status of women, on education, and on health systems. It also includes encouraging certain alternative, perhaps novel, types of use of the wildland, thereby creating a total system, one of the wildland with its nearby people, a system that can achieve wildlife and wildland resource benefits at reasonable costs for all of the people of the world.

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