The ELM Group (ELM)'s approach to environmental planning is to understand the goals and values of the local community while recognizing the regional influences and pressures on natural resources. Assessment, management and restoration plans emphasize sustainability of the natural resource services and minimization of the need for active management. In addition, a guiding principal adopted by ELM is that disturbance to natural systems unavoidably causes interrelated impacts that often can not be fully predicted. Therefore, enhancement of the natural structures and functions is the initial point of evaluation, rather than a redesign of a natural system or hard engineering in order to obtain services needed to support a particular land use. Where properties are highly disturbed due to historic uses, ELM evaluates future sustainable land use practices that are realistic and practical based on current and reasonable future resource needs.

To support its approach to environmental planning, ELM (primarily through its Environmental Planning Consultants (EPC) company) has the capacity to inventory natural resources (functions, values and structure) to ensure its management plans are compatible with the natural system and competing demands for resources. These inventories typically include characterization of the physical, chemical and biological components of the system with a recognition of the permitting and engineering limitations on resource uses.

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