Wildlife Management IIWildlife Management IIES118 Spring 2008

RemindersReminders

Thursday: EXAM 7:00 pm Exam—Material through last weekPowerpoint lectures on course

web siteFriday: Video THIS ROOM (not

Friday discussion rooms)

OverviewOverview

Ecosystem managementAdaptive managementComplexity and wildlife

management– Resilience– Scenario planning

Changing philosophiesChanging philosophies Over past 50 years, emphasis in natural

resource management on public lands, resource extraction, recreation– Legacy of multiple-use paradigm of Pinchot

More recently, growing shift in philosophy and direction of natural resource management– From: Top-down, government-mandated,

expert-driven approaches– To: Model of shared decision-making,

cooperation over confrontation, local involvement

Ecosystem ManagementEcosystem Management

“An approach to maintaining or restoring the composition, structure, and function of natural and modified ecosystems for the goal of long-term sustainability…that integrates ecological, socioeconomic, and institutional perspectives…”

Source: Meffe et al. 2002, p. 298

Ecosystem Management

Ecological Context

Institutional Context

Soioeconomic Context

““Traditional” vs “Ecosystem” Traditional” vs “Ecosystem” ManagementManagement

Traditional Management

Ecosystem Management

Emphasis on commodities and natural resource extraction

Emphasis on balance between commodities, amenities, ecological integrity

Stable and “equilibrium” perspective Dynamic and resilient

Reductionism, site specificity Holism

Predictability and control Uncertainty and flexibilitySolutions developed by resource management agencies

Solutions developed through discussions with stakeholders

Confrontation, single-issue polarization, public as adversary

Consensus building; multiple issues, partnerships

Source: Meffe et al. 2002

Example of ecosystem Example of ecosystem managementmanagement Northwest Forest Plan

– Coordinated management of 24 million acres of Federal land in Washington, Oregon, California

Goals: Protect “old-growth” forest home to spotted owls and other species

Sustainability of logging President Clinton held “forest summit” in

1993 Created multi-agency “Forest Ecosystem

Management Assessment Team”

How we learnHow we learn

Tradition (“local knowledge”)Trial-and-error (“college of hard

knocks”, “on-the-job-training”)Scientific experiment (objective,

explicit, replicable, but often reductionist)

Adaptive management: Combine advantages of trial-and-error and scientific learning (C.S. Hollings and Carl Walters, 1960s)

Adaptive Adaptive managementmanagement The process of

treating management as an experiment

Gypsy moth Gypsy moth exampleexample Options: Insecticide spraying,

spot treatments, salvage logging (no spraying), etc.

Modeling: How do insecticides affect native species?

Gaps: Do seasons matter? Management actions: Could we

test by spraying different seasons or not spraying at all and study impact (large scale, not plots)?

Measure performance: Collect data

Determine policy options: Summer spraying better, stop spring spraying, or stop altogether

Adaptive management and Adaptive management and NWFPNWFPExamples of “Passive adaptive

management”– How to integrate timber production

with restoration and maintenance of habitat?

– How use schools to generate water quality information?

The world is complexThe world is complex

Understanding complexity requires

– High degree of interdisciplinarity

– Focus on complex environmental systems that include interactions of non-human biota or humans

– Focus on systems with high potential for exhibiting nonlinear behavior

Types of complexity Types of complexity Environmental variation Biological variation in small

populations Synergistic effects (e.g,. multiple

stresses like drought and disease)

Cumulative effects– E.g., accumulation of chemicals in

food chain– Spatial effects (many small

decisions make up big decision, like with migratory birds)

Dusky Seaside Sparrow (Florida)

Guaranteed to go extinct when last 6 known individuals males

ResilienceResilience Humans and ecosystems share a number of

properties, for example: – Resilience: The capacity of a system to absorb

disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure

– Sudden shifts can alter ecosystems, as well as human understanding and the institutions that carry out management

Example: Walking with coffee in a ship in the harbor or at sea

In wildlife management (and ES generally) we often assume systems are linear and changes incremental, but often not the case

Resilience and ecological Resilience and ecological systemssystems Ecological and human systems are

dynamic (like boat at sea)– Constantly confronted with “surprise”

events– What is optimal one year, is not the next– Structure and function of ecosystems

change over time Not just amount of knowledge that is

important (e.g., species, ecosystems) but also kind of knowledge– How we perceive connections, consider

uncertainty, consider resiliance

Example: Pines and fireExample: Pines and fire

Longleaf pine ecosystems in southeastern US adapted to burning in summer (lightning)

In trying to control, we instituted fire suppression policies because fire seen as problem, not natural process– Result? More fire prone because

woody debris builds up so fires more intenseforests become less resilient

ThresholdsThresholds

Social-ecological systems can exist in more than one kind of stable state– If system changes too much it can

cross a threshold and begin behaving in new and unexpected ways (it has undergone a “regime shift”)

– Example: Landscape that is eroded and shifts from fertile to barren (e.g., Aral Sea ecosystem)

Ecological thresholdsEcological thresholds

Point at which there is an abrupt change in an ecosystem quality, property, or phenomenon

Disturbance can change the state of an ecosystem

State A State B

Example of sudden changeExample of sudden change

Shift in lake from clear (“Shift in lake from clear (“oligotrophicoligotrophic”) state to ”) state to turbid (“turbid (“eutrophiceutrophic”) state from nutrient inputs”) state from nutrient inputs

Clear Turbid

Add phosphorus

Adaptive CyclesAdaptive Cycles Most systems have cycles

– Important to recognize that systems behave differently depending on the phase of the cycle

– Ecological systems and human systems can go through recurring cycles

Many systems move through Adaptive cycles, periods of:– Rapid growth– Conservation– Release– Reorganization

Phases of adaptive cyclesPhases of adaptive cycles Rapid growth phase

– Ex: growth of population of invasive species or growth of start-up like Google

Conservation phase– Shift from opportunists to specialists– More connections, more stable, but system

becomes less flexible and vulnerable Release phase

– Disturbance exceeds system’s resilience and system breaks apart

– Ex: fire breaks out and burns old trees; new technology upsets existing companies

Reorganization phase– Reorganization and renewal– Ex: after volcano, new pioneer species may take

hold; possibly begin like original “rapid growth phase” or simply emerge as novel system or collapse into degraded state

Example: spruce budwormExample: spruce budworm Spruce/fir forests common across N.A.

– Spruce budworm (moth larvae) populations explode every 40-120 years, killing up to 80% of trees (populations grow until outstrip ability of birds to control them)

Traditional management approach ignored cycles– Initially, after WWII, massive spraying, but only effective

on young trees (harder for birds to find in mature forest until finally passes threshold and erupts)

– Outbreaks only held in check if sprayed, but expensive and made worse because eventually more trees and more budworms

– Eventually resulted in catastrophic explosions of pests New management approach recognizing cycles

– Only targeted pesticide application– Smaller patches of forests in different stages of growth– Recognition that outbreaks part of the system

Changing scalesChanging scales

Growing emphasis on large natural systems– Example: Watersheds over

biologically artificial political boundaries drawn on maps

Growing emphasis on complex coupled (“linked”) relationships between humans and the environment

Reprinted from Gunderson and Holling 2001

Fast & slow scales in natureFast & slow scales in nature

Time and space scales of the boreal forest and the atmosphere

(Gunderson and others 1995; Westley and others 2001). (Reprinted from Gunderson and Holling 2001)

Scale in human systemsScale in human systems

Institutions have scales as well. Hierarchy is structured along:– Dimensions of

number of people involved

– Approximate turnover time

How manage for How manage for uncertainty? uncertainty? Traditional planning typically assumes

we know how the world will look in the future

Scenario planning offers way to make decisions in face of uncontrollable, irreducible uncertainty– Offers policy makers way to develop more

resilient policies– Not predictions of what will happen, but

exploration of what might happen

Scenario example: WI N. Scenario example: WI N. HighlandsHighlands Northern Wisconsin, like ME, many lakes and forests

– Historically not many people, now population growing for recreation and tourism

– More roads, lake lots developed, congestion, invasive species, exotic fish

Series of scenarios developed to plan for future– “Common baseline”: growing congestion, conflict over

resources, unhappiness– “WalMart nation”: tourism takes over, theme parks, big

business, urban sprawl– “Walley commons”: Deregulation, visitor population

declines, real estate collapse, ecosystem recovers– “Northwoods Quilt”: retirees and lake associations work

to develop conservation strategies, economy diversifies, conflicts resolve

All are plausible scenarios, allows individuals, communities, and policymakers to consider different futures and what to do to get there

Final thoughts- Scale matters- Humans matter- We need to be adaptive and

think like nature- We need to recognize that

nature is complex, and manage appropriately

- We need to be creative