G. Evelyn Hutchinson famously summa-rized the natural world as “the ecologicalplay in the evolutionary theater”. Unlikeits Elizabethan namesake, this original“globe theater” opened without a Shakes-peare; there were players and a stage, butno director or manager. Were this still the case, thework of ecologists would be just to study the play – inother words, to do ecology. However, as humanity hasassumed the position of director and manager, the globetheater, earth, has become somewhat more like theGlobe Theatre in London. The new director is noShakespeare, and so the work of ecologists has expandedfrom understanding the play to providing notes for itsdirection – from doing ecology to guiding policy. What role, if any, should ecologists have in policymaking? For that matter, what should be the role of pol-icy makers in ecology? In this forum, we have asked forboth theory and empirical results. A new mission state-ment for ecologists might run something like this: “toprovide the most useful scientific information possiblefor making the legislative and administration decisionsthat affect society and nature, by meshing their interestswith those of policy makers”.Unfortunately, there are devils lurking in the details. Inparticular, two dimensions of ecologists’ new role haveprovoked increasing debate. One of these is distance, andtherefore objectivity. A time-honored model for the inter-action between scientists and policy makers has been forscientists to maintain a “healthy distance” (Bush 1945).Scientific funding and salaries are often provided by insti-tutions that do not make environmental policy, such asuniversities and the National Science Foundation. Thisfrees scientists from political pressure to study particulartopics or to produce results that support particular policies.The downside is that the results may not be very useful forpolicy, given that policy-making questions are oftenaddressed only tangentially by any given research project,especially one not specifically directed towards them.The alternative resembles endosymbiosis, with govern-ment agencies such as the USDA Forest Service employ-ing and housing their own scientists. This arrangementseems more likely to ensure that the resulting researchaddresses specific policy needs, but less likely to ensureintellectual freedom. Some political scientists argue thatwhen scientists take on a role that affects policy outcomes,their independence ought to be limited, because democ-racy requires such trade-offs between freedom and politicalresponsibility (Price 1965). Some natural scientists viewthe bargain as Faustian, and caution colleagues that symbi-otic relationships tend to switch between mutualism andparasitism as resource availability changes (Wagner 2001).An intermediate scenario is the “ecology/policy middle-man”, in which a third party organization accepts commis-sions from policy agencies to tap scientists from academiato participate on panels, review current research, and pro-vide synthetic reports that characterize the current state ofscientific knowledge on a topic of the agency’s choosing.The scientists gain exposure, plus expenses and perhapspublications, which go to the credit of the universities thatpay their salaries. A hallowed example of this type of sci-entific retail in the US is the National Academy ofSciences’ National Research Council (NRC). Would an“Ecological Research Council” draw ecologists and policymakers together by just (and only just) the right amount?Consensual models seek to make the issue of distanceirrelevant by creating issue-based institutions to whicheveryone belongs. For instance, the National Council forScience and the Environment includes stakeholders indiscussions of research agendas and brings scientific infor-mation about the environment to the public and policymakers (Anonymous 2000, 2002). The real test of suchmodels may come when such consensual bodies are giventhe power not just to advise on policy, but also to decide it.The second controversial dimension of the role ecolo-gists play in policy is activism (Kaiser 2000). The debatehas commonly been framed as analysis (“here is what thedata say may happen if society does this”) versus advocacy(“here is what society should do”). One side argues thatby staying neutral, scientists preserve their credibility,which is really the only special advantage they have overnon-scientists in influencing policy. The counterargu-ment holds that, by stepping out as advocates, scientistswill gain much more in the exposure of their work thanthey will lose in credibility (although they may first wantto wait until they are already famous, or else seek safety innumbers). Adherents of the “one head, two hats” strategyclaim that one can finesse the dilemma by providinganalysis as a professional scientist and advocating policyas a private citizen (Kaiser 2000; Wagner 2001).Steel et al. (2001) point out that the potential range ofactivism by ecologists does not begin with analysis nor endwith advocacy. Scientists might be seen as even morecredible if they simply provided the results without discus-sion, instead of interpreting what their data say. Similarly,they may be seen as even more effective at putting scienceinto policy if they could just go ahead and make the regu-lations themselves. However, their survey of scientists,resource managers, environmentalists, and the public sug-gested that none of these groups wanted scientists to be so45© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.orgFORUM FORUM FORUMThe ecology–policy interfacePeter Alpert1and Ann Keller21Dept of Biology, University ofMassachusetts, MA, USA2Dept of Political Science, University ofColorado at Boulder, CO, USAThe ecology–policy interface Forumtimid as to refrain from interpreting their results, nor soempowered as to decide policy (Steel et al. 2001).Personal values add yet another wrinkle (Rykiel 2001).The values that scientists inevitably bring to their work arelikely to be shaped by their professional role (Bell 1985). Tothe extent that scientists work for governmental agencies orother policy organizations, they may allow their organiza-tional commitments to constrain and direct their behavior.Advocacy is necessarily value-laden, because a scientist’sopinion as to what society should do clearly depends onwhat outcomes he or she holds dear.What is an ecologist to do? Are there potential modelsfor cooperation that