Specific Ethical Question

My area of interest in science is restoration ecology.

Is the use of adaptive management (am) worth all the extra time and money incurred while being implemented?


Against:

There are a multitude of reasons that environmental agencies would choose to not implement am practices, the following is merely a synopsis of theses reasons. A pitfall of am is the amount of man hours and money that go into the process of implementing and monitoring managed sites. The majority of  environmental agencies have limited fiscal resources to place into long term restoration and monitoring projects. Another argument natural resources managers (managers) give against adaptive management, is the traditional management (tm) practices put into place gives results and have a failure rate that is comparable to am. Finally it is quite common for an environmental agency to experience a shift in political standing, which would result in a radical change to their management practices within their managed sites.


For:

Adaptive management allows a manger or agency to manage multiple similar sites with common problems on each site; i.e. proper fire regimes for oak savannas, and the total maximum daily load or TMLD for pollutants within a wetland or lake. This sets up an experiment within the common sites and allows the managers to more effectively collect data on management practices and their effects. The data found by this can then be given to other managers and used to implement similar practices on their sites.

I am of the opinion that am is the single best management strategy that is available to natural resource managers. The advancement of ecological knowledge obtained by using am is crucial in order for managers to one day be able to completely understand the processes that occur within our environment, and how our management actions effect those processes. While am may cost more money in the beginning, in the long run the knowledge gained will more then compensate for it, by allowing future managers to implement management practices that will achieve the wanted results instead of what is expected to happen.


References:



Johnson, B. L. 1999. The role of adaptive management as an operational approach for resource
   management agencies. Conservation Ecology 3(2): 8. [online]
   URL:http://www.consecol.org/vol3/iss2/art8/


Brunner, R. D., and T. W. Clark. 1997. A practice-based approach to ecosystem management.
   Conservation Biology 11:48-58.