Adaptive management
What is adaptive management?
Adaptive management, developed in the United States during the 1970s, is a method for working out what to do when a natural resource is causing concern. The resource could be a population of animals, a stretch of river, or a piece of wilderness. It could also be a marine fishery, a production forest, or a spreading pest population.
People might disagree on the need to act, or on what course of action to take. There could be uncertainty about how the resource will change or benefit from the proposed management.
In situations like this, adaptive management allows us to resolve the uncertainties by organising the new management like a scientific experiment. It usually means that there is a managed and an unmanaged site for comparison, people make very clear predictions about what should happen based on their understanding of the resource, and measurements are made throughout the exercise to see if the predictions were correct.
The results are used in two ways.
- They are used to develop or strengthen a mathematical model of the system that is being probed by the experiment. This model becomes a valuable tool for simulating what could happen in future under different management regimes and its value increases with time as more data are collected from the place that is being adaptively managed.
- They are used to make a decision. Based on the results, people will be more confident about what would happen if the resource was managed in a new way. The disagreement about whether to adopt the proposed change can be resolved.
Learn more
Deer farming notice
Find out where deer can be farmed and what regulations apply to deer farms and safari parks.
Contacts
Clare Veltman
Animal pest ecologist
Research, Development and Improvement
Telephone +64 6 353 4803
Email Deer Forest Study Project manager