Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
objective: maximize long-term waterfowl harvest while ensuring long-term viabil-
ity of waterfowl populations. The development and agreement by stakeholders to
a concise set of fundamental objectives is paramount to ensuring the success of any
adaptive management program. Failure to agree upon fundamental objectives and
unwarranted attempts to alter objectives will ensure any attempt to manage,
whether adaptive or not, will fail. The second key to the AHM success was due
to simultaneous support for management, research, and monitoring. Waterfowl
research and management in North America are nearly unequaled by almost any
natural resource management program in terms of history, scope, and investment
[
27
]. The enormity of historical and current data and the availability of resources
for researchers and managers to utilize that data have facilitated the development of
innumerable research and management activities all of which have fed back into the
AHM process. In addition, the AHM program has arguably one of the most
comprehensive monitoring programs for any ecological system currently under
study. The combination of well-supported management, research, and monitoring
programs has resulted in a clear reduction in the uncertainty of how waterfowl
populations respond to management and enabled managers and policy makers to
more effectively meet their stated objectives. Unfortunately, too often, attempts to
implement adaptive management fail to address all of the requirements. In particu-
lar, resources for monitoring and research are often undervalued with the resultant
outcome being a series of management actions with no understanding of their
implications.
The final key to the success of AHM has been the ability to implement
management and policy decisions based on the best information available. In
many historical and current attempts to implement adaptive management, the
regulatory body charged with implementation of management recommendations
either is unable, or worse, is unwilling to implement actions proposed by the
outcome of the adaptive management process. The body in charge of regulatory
control is too often a stakeholder in the process of adaptive management with an
agenda independent of regulating the resource alone. There may even be, and often
are, several regulatory agencies controlling resources, each an independent stake-
holder, each with an independent agenda. Such a situation can make implementa-
tion of a management recommendation challenging, especially if it contradicts
long-standing dogma. Consider for example, the management of Glen Canyon
Dam and the waters of the Colorado River. Heralded by Congress as an adaptive
management success story, the Colorado River Adaptive Management Program
has fallen short of success because despite 13 years of work, the ecological status
of the Colorado River and the conflict inherent to the development of an adaptive
management program continue to worsen [
28
]. This is because the regulatory
agency that controls the flow of water throughout the Colorado River Basin, the
Bureau of Reclamation, is also one of the major stakeholders in the adaptive
management process with an agenda (water storage) that conflicts with several
other stakeholders and regulatory agencies that manage people and wildlife along
the Colorado River (e.g., California Department of Water Resources, Mexican
National Water Commission, USFWS). In contrast to the management of the
