Harmful Non-Indigenous Species in the United States - Aquatic ...

Chapter 4-The Application of Decisionmaking Methods I 1352.3.NEPA for controversial environmental impactstatements (21); and pursuant to theFederal Negotiated Rulemaking Act, 15 discussedbelow.Lack of convincing treatment of uncertainty,because of their emphases on negotiating,quantifying, or developing scenariosbased on unknowns. Admittedly, it is hardto envision any convincing treatment ofuncertainty in a decisionmaking model.Lack of evaluation of their adaptability toNIS decisionmaking in the real world.Randall’s Safe Minimum Standard veryroughly resembles the restrained benefit/cost weighing allowed under the EndangeredSpecies Act (55). (The act’s SafeMinimum Standard is no further humancausedextinctions unless the ‘God Squad’determines the costs to be intolerably highin a particular case.) The Maguire approachhas been utilized successfully in othernatural resource contexts, such as reintroducingthe endangered grizzly bear (Ursusarctos horribilis) in the Northern Rockies,which is comparable in some ways tointroducing potentially harmful NIS (43).Obviously, neither model can be evaluatedin the NIS context unless a commitment ismade to try them.Agencies’ implementation of decisions should beevaluated if new decision making methods are tried.Also, the quality of decisions reached must beassessed, i.e., whether new approaches ultimatelyimprove management of harmful NIS.As far as strengths, both models can incorporatethe various decisionmaking approaches discussedin this chapter. In doing so, they organizeand structure information from diverse sourcesbut are not overly rigid. Both proposals also callfor full documentation of the process. They forcemethods, assumptions, comparisons, and tradeoffsto be explicit, which facilitates their communication,review, and appraisal (20,68).The question remains how these or comparabledecisionmaking approaches could be integratedinto a regulatory process. One existing avenue isthe Federal Negotiated Rulemaking Act. It pro-vides a process whereby the head of a Federalagency makes a threshold decision about whetheran issue would benefit from negotiations. He orshe bases this on the need for a new Federalregulation and the feasibility of convening arepresentative committee likely to achieve consensus.Public notice of the process is required.The agency may hire professional facilitators torun the negotiations. Under the act, the agencycommits to using the consensus agreement, if theparties reach one, as the basis for the proposedregulation “to the maximum extent possibleIS INegotiat~ Rtiemtig Act of 1990 (5 U. S.C.A. section 561 et seq.)