Uncertainty and adaptive management for biodiversity conservation

Abstract

Adaptive management of natural resources is widely supported, but in biodiversity conservation there have been few practical applications of the approach in its entirety. Some of the contributions to this special publication examine progress in the implementation of adaptive approaches into conservation policy, while others explore novel theoretical and modeling approaches that seek to accommodate the complexities of real-world applications. Several of the papers address the treatment of uncertainty in adaptive management through innovative approaches to experimentation and monitoring, use and characterisation of expert knowledge and reconciliation of differences of opinion about parameters or systems. Drawing on these contributions, we discuss the major impediments to implementing adaptive management, why adaptive management has been slow to be implemented and how this can be redressed.

Introduction

Since Walter and Hilborn’s (1976) and Holling’s (1978) seminal work, the idea of adaptive management has gained worldwide interest and support as an approach to ecosystem management for conservation of biodiversity. Its key elements include explicit definition of management goals, development of plausible alternative management strategies to achieve those goals, implementation of two or more strategies in a comparative experimental framework to spread risks of management failure and improve understanding of system responses to management, monitoring to evaluate the relative merits and limitations of alternate strategies, and iterative modification of management strategies to improve management outcomes (Lindenmayer and Burgman, 2005). An important quality of the adaptive approach is that it deals with uncertainty through a structured improvement of relevant knowledge, while seeking to minimise risks associated with ongoing management, which inevitably arise from imperfect information about system response.

Despite the much-lauded strengths of this approach in both scientific literature and land management discourse, there are very few examples where the approach has been applied in its entirety to real-world conservation problems. For example, many applications examine only one management option at a time, monitoring outcomes and changing strategy only when the favoured option has failed, an approach labelled ‘trial and error management’ (Duncan and Wintle, 2008). In spite of this, adaptive management has become central in the dialogue of natural resource management policy of most environmental agencies. Given this continued interest in applying adaptive management, a special issue bringing together recent developments in adaptive management science and its application in policy is timely.

Papers in this issue arose out of symposia at the International Ecology Conference held in Brisbane Australia, in August 2009. Contributions address both theoretical and practical aspects of adaptive approaches to dealing with uncertainty in ecosystem management for conservation. The subject matter spans a wide range of important conservation problems, landscape types and cultural settings. The contributions address terrestrial and freshwater applications that deal with management of invasive species, fire and water regimes, herbivores and predators, human exploitation of natural resources and threatened species management. The contributed papers include novel theoretical and modeling perspectives designed to accommodate the complexities of real-world applications of adaptive management. Several papers examine the treatment of uncertainty in adaptive management through innovative approaches to monitoring and experimentation, use and characterisation of expert knowledge, and reconciliation of divergent opinions about parameters or systems. Drawing on these contributions, we discuss the major issues in adaptive management, why adaptive management has been slow to be implemented and finally how impediments to adaptive management can be overcome.