Adaptive management is an approach to ecological management that states that managers should treat their actions as scientific experiments. It is suggested that monitoring the effects of these experiments - and basing future actions on the knowledge gained - will improve management. However, this approach has been difficult to implement, because managers rarely have the time, money and human resources to do this. Moreover, when they do, the scientific knowledge produced is often uncertain and does not necessarily indicate a clear path of action (especially when the issue is controversial and there are many competing opinions about what to do). These problems have so far been portrayed as "barriers" to adaptive management, and research has focused on removing them. However, the problems are arguably an intrinsic part of social life, and will simply not 'disappear.' This project therefore aims to update the theory of adaptive management by providing a more realistic picture of adaptive management that attempts to work with the everyday challenges and experiences of practising managers. The project provides a case study of an attempt at adaptive management in the Wyperfeld National Park, Australia, where managers have been trying to encourage native vegetation to grow back over a landscape that has been heavily grazed by kangaroos and rabbits.

The project makes some suggestions for a) how managers might better go about adaptive management, given real-world constraints, and b) how scientists might better think about adaptive management given the realities of practice.

Researcher: Simon West, SRC, SU. Writing and reading at Askö.