The term ecosystem health has been employed to embrace some suite of environmental goals deemed desirable.Edward Grumbine’s highly cited paper “What is ecosystem management?” surveyed ecosystem management and ecosystem health literature and summarized frequently encountered goal statements:
Conserving viable populations of native species
Conserving ecosystem diversity
Maintaining evolutionary and ecological processes
Managing over long time frames to maintain evolutionary potential
Accommodating human use and occupancy within these constraints
Grumbine describes each of these goals as a “value statement” and stresses the role of human values in setting ecosystem management goals.