Figure 4.1. Society places many values on natural resources, and those values change over time. How would you develop a socially relevant monitoring plan for beaver populations? R. M. Muth (unpubl. data) suggested that society views resources through a prism of values. One segment of society may be most concerned with the incidence of Giardia in a beaver population, another with the degree of damage to property and another with their impact on wetland development. A monitoring plan that is carried out over time must consider to the degree possible those values that society may find important in future years as human populations grow, economic indicators change, and technology advances.
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