However, at the last minute the Board of Forestry adopted only a fraction of the Administration's original proposal. Watershed assessment can be an important component of an effective forest protection and salmon recovery strategy. It has the potential to yield site-specific information about the conditions and limiting factors of specific watersheds. This information could be used to generate land management actions specifically tailored to that particular watershed. Unfortunately, the Administration is envisioning a watershed assessment program that would give the timber industry an excessively broad role in developing and implementing watershed assessments and recommending and effecting changes in logging practices based on the results of such assessments.
Many key factors remain unresolved.
Missing is a mechanism for integrating the information that is to be developed by various departments within the Resources Agency and CalEPA into a coherent assessment process. Also unclear is whether and how the methodologies and information developed will be reviewed by experts and the public. The Administration's approach has profound and precedent-setting implications. If the information going into the watershed assessment is flawed, the decision that results will be as well. For these reasons, it is imperative that the watershed assessment process be scientifically valid and credible in the first place.