Both resource states and flows are important, and they are not mutually exclusive, as some imply. Planned resource flows are important in ecosystem management for at least two reasons. For one, planned outputs are important for the sustenance of the human communities that occupy those ecosystems. There is growing recognition that EM, if it is to work, must better integrate the human dimension. Human communities, if they are to be socially viable, need some reasonable assurance that the resource outputs necessary to their economic health will be produced with some level of reliability over time.
Outputs are important for another reason, as well.
They are important due to the inescapable fact that what is done, or not done, in one ecosystem, affects directly and indirectly what is done, or not done, in ecosystems elsewhere. While it may be nice to say that National Forest ecosystems will be managed only for forest health or other objectives, the reality is, if that results in substantially reduced resource outputs, it can affect in a very direct way how ecosystems perhaps thousands of miles away are managed. As an example, over the last decade the people of California have substantially reduced the level of timber harvesting within the state, both on private and public lands. Yet the per capita consumption of wood by those same Californians has shown no corresponding decline. We now see active consideration being given to opening up new sources of U.S. wood supply overseas, such as Chile and Siberia.