With all of that in place, all that is necessary is to ``establish ecological sustainability goals in terms of ecological endpoints and human values.'' If you are a biologist participating in such a process, your expertise will be particularly important in defining what endpoints are achievable. While biological expertise is needed to define the range of the possible, choosing among possible endpoints is a question of values. The endpoint chosen for south Florida involves a large core area (whose characteristics are ``defined by ecological characteristics of the predrainage Everglades'' [4, p. 506]), and substantial changes in agricultural practices south of Lake Okeechobee (to reduce soil subsidence; Figure 3). Biologists have no special competence on this choosing among competing values. We can describe the consequences of different choices, but we don't necessarily have any special standing to choose one set of consequences over another.7
In a discussion about choosing among endpoints, what biologists can do is to make sure that everyone discusses only scenarios that can be achieved and that everyone understands the tradeoffs among them. As Harwell et al. [5] point out, decisions about design and implementation of an ecosystem management program lie along a continuum:
