An ecosystem services approach to management can produce a holistic understanding of natural systems and can foster stakeholder relationships and support, resulting in improved decisions. Such an approach could be helpful in the following contexts:

• Management areas with natural assets of interest to engaged nearby communities, or those that have natural assets with national or global significance;
• Projects in which different groups of stakeholders may have conflicting priorities for resource management or in which there is a history of contentious resource management decisions;
• Management options that generate significant benefits or costs that fall outside the traditional management focus or physical boundaries of the management area;
• Management decisions that involve tradeoffs among ecosystem services; or
• Decisions that call for social or economic comparison of natural resource impacts or benefits across project alternatives.

An ecosystem services approach will not always be necessary or appropriate, particularly in the following contexts:

• Projects in isolated locations that have little human use, biodiversity, or cultural value; and
• Projects with no feasible alternative management actions.

Here are a few questions to ask when deciding whether to take an ecosystem services approach to a project management or planning effort:

• What ecosystem services might be important to the agency, the public, and stakeholders?
• Would these services already be considered in the agency’s traditional planning process?
• Might considering additional ecosystem services or beneficiaries resolve or reduce management or legal conflicts?
• Does identification of these ecosystem service benefits create opportunities to leverage the actions of partners?
• Would translating ecological outcomes into socially relevant outcomes be helpful in resolving conflicts or misunderstandings between the agency and stakeholders?
• Could the inclusion of ecosystem services in planning lead to a different choice of projects, sites, or management actions?

See this guidebook’s agency examples for insight into how the USFS, FWS, BLM, NOAA, and EPA have approached these questions.

See the guidebook’s Assessment Framework overview for insights into the range of methods that could be applied.