The Federal Advisory Committee Act: An obstacle to ecosystem management by federal agencies?

Ecosystem management, the new guiding concept for federal land management, requires collaboration and information sharing across ownership boundaries, facilitation of changes in social values, and adaptation to new scientific and social information. Particularly in the western states, the federal land management agencies have been involved to varying degrees in innovative collaborative processes with the goal of implementing ecosystem management. However, the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which places numerous procedural requirements on certain federal interactions with non-federal parties, has been cited as an obstacle to federal participation in these efforts. This Comment presents an analytic framework for determining when FACA applies and recommends strategies for overcoming this perceived obstacle to ecosystem management.