Decision Making In Conservation And Natural Resource Management

A guide to making good decisions about wildlife management and biodiversity conservation against a backdrop of socio-environmental change.

This book is intended for use by natural resource managers and scientists, and students in the fields of natural resource management, ecology, and conservation biology, who are confronted with complex and difficult decision making problems. The book takes readers through the process of developing a structured approach to decision making, by firstly deconstructing decisions into component parts, which are each fully analyzed and then reassembled to form a working decision model. The book integrates common-sense ideas about problem definitions, such as the need for decisions to be driven by explicit objectives, with sophisticated approaches for modeling decision influence and incorporating feedback from monitoring programs into decision making via adaptive management. Numerous worked examples are provided for illustration, along with detailed case studies illustrating the authors’ experience in applying structured approaches. There is also a series of detailed technical appendices. An accompanying website provides computer code and data used in the worked examples. Additional resources for this book can be found at: www.wiley.com/go/conroy/naturalresourcemanagement.

Smith, Jennifer A. Szymanski, Terry Walshe, Nicolas Zuël

Decision making in land management involves preferential selection among competing alternatives. Often, such choices are difficult owing to the complexity of the decision context. Because the analytic hierarchy process (AHP, developed by Thomas Saaty in the 1970s) has been successfully applied to many complex planning, resource allocation, and priority setting problems in business, energy, health, marketing, natural resources, and transportation, more applications of the AHP in natural resources and environmental sciences are appearing regularly. This realization has prompted the authors to collect some of the important works in this area and present them as a single volume for managers and scholars. Because land management contains a somewhat unique set of features not found in other AHP application areas, such as site-specific decisions, group participation and collaboration, and incomplete scientific knowledge, this text fills a void in the literature on management science and decision analysis for forest resources.

The responsible management of natural resources for present-day needs and future generations requires integrated approaches that are place-based, embrace systems thinking, and incorporate the social, economic, and environmental considerations of sustainability. Landscape-scale analysis takes this holistic view by focusing on the spatial scales most appropriate for the resource types and values being managed. Landscape-scale analysis involves assessing landscape features in relation to a group of influencing factors such as land use change, hydrologic changes or other disturbances, topography, and historical vegetation conditions. As such, different types of data and multiple disciplines may be required for landscape analysis, depending on the question of interest and scale of analysis. Multi-resource analysis (MRA) is an approach to landscape-scale analysis that integrates information among multiple natural resources, including ecosystem services, and is designed to evaluate impacts and tradeoffs between development and conservation at landscape scales to inform public resource managers. This approach implicitly addresses social, economic, and ecological functional relationships; for example, actions to realize the benefits of one type of natural resource (e.g., minerals, oil, and gas) may influence behavior and potential benefits related to other types of natural resources (e.g., recreational opportunities). In June 2015, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop on using landscape-based approaches and MRA to better inform federal decision making for the sustainable management of natural resources. Participants discussed knowledge gaps and priority areas for research and presentations of case studies of approaches that have been used to effectively integrate landscape-based approaches and MRA into practice. This report summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Provides and analyzes real examples of how structured decision making (SDM) can help solve complex problems involving natural resources. When faced with complicated, potentially controversial decisions that affect our environment, many resource management agencies have come to realize the value of structured decision making (SDM)—the systematic use of principles and tools of decision analysis. Few professionals, however, have extensive experience implementing SDM. Structured Decision Making provides key information to both current adopters of the method and those who are deploying it for the first time by demonstrating the formal use of decision analysis to support difficult, real-world natural resource management decisions. Drawing on case studies from multiple public agencies in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Mauritius, the editors present an overview of decision analysis, a classification of decision types, and a catalog of decision analysis methods. Dozens of detailed charts and maps help contextualize the material. These case studies examine a rich variety of topics, including • keeping forest birds free from disease • conserving imperiled freshwater mussels • managing water for oil sands mining • dealing with coastal wetlands in the face of sea-level rise • designing networks for prairie-dependent taxa • combatting invasive alpine shrubs • managing vernal pool habitats for obligate amphibian species • and much more Aimed at decision makers tackling natural resource challenges in government agencies around the world, as well as advanced undergraduate and graduate students preparing to work in natural resource management, Structured Decision Making shows how SDM can be implemented to achieve optimal outcomes that integrate social values and scientific understanding. Contributors: Taber D. Allison, Larissa L. Bailey, Ellen A. Bean, Clint W. Boal, Gregory Breese, Stefano Canessa, Jean Fitts Cochrane, Sarah J. Converse, Cami S. Dixon, John G. Ewen, Christelle Ferrière, Jill J. Gannon, Beth Gardner, Adam W. Green, Justin A. Gude, Victoria M. Hunt, Kevin S. Kalasz, Melinda G. Knutson, Jim Kraus, Graham Long, Eric V. Lonsdorf, James E. Lyons, Conor P. McGowan, Sarah E. McRae, Michael S. Mitchell, Clinton T. Moore, Joslin L. Moore, Steven Morey, Dan W. Ohlson, Charlie Pascoe, Andrew Paul, Eben H. Paxton, Lori B. Pruitt, Michael C. Runge, Sarah N. Sells, Terry L. Shaffer, Stephanie Slade, David R. Smith, Jennifer A. Szymanski, Terry Walshe, Nicolas Zuël

Today's natural resource managers must be able to navigate among the complicated interactions and conflicting interests of diverse stakeholders and decisionmakers. Technical and scientific knowledge, though necessary, are not sufficient. Science is merely one component in a multifaceted world of decision making. And while the demands of resource management have changed greatly, natural resource education and textbooks have not. Until now. Ecosystem Management represents a different kind of textbook for a different kind of course. It offers a new and exciting approach that engages students in active problem solving by using detailed landscape scenarios that reflect the complex issues and conflicting interests that face today's resource managers and scientists. Focusing on the application of the sciences of ecology and conservation biology to real-world concerns, it emphasizes the intricate ecological, socioeconomic, and institutional matrix in which natural resource management functions, and illustrates how to be more effective in that challenging arena. Each chapter is rich with exercises to help facilitate problem-based learning. The main text is supplemented by boxes and figures that provide examples, perspectives, definitions, summaries, and learning tools, along with a variety of essays written by practitioners with on-the-ground experience in applying the principles of ecosystem management. Accompanying the textbook is an instructor's manual that provides a detailed overview of the book and specific guidance on designing a course around it. Ecosystem Management grew out of a training course developed and presented by the authors for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at its National Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. In 20 offerings to more than 600 natural resource professionals, the authors learned a great deal about what is needed to function successfully as a professional resource manager. The book offers important insights and a unique perspective dervied from that invaluable experience.

This book outlines the creative process of making environmental management decisions using the approach called Structured Decision Making. It is a short introductory guide to this popular form of decision making and is aimed at environmental managers and scientists. This is a distinctly pragmatic label given to ways for helping individuals and groups think through tough multidimensional choices characterized by uncertain science, diverse stakeholders, and difficult tradeoffs. This is the everyday reality of environmental management, yet many important decisions currently are made on an ad hoc basis that lacks a solid value-based foundation, ignores key information, and results in selection of an inferior alternative. Making progress – in a way that is rigorous, inclusive, defensible and transparent – requires combining analytical methods drawn from the decision sciences and applied ecology with deliberative insights from cognitive psychology, facilitation and negotiation. The authors review key methods and discuss case-study examples based in their experiences in communities, boardrooms, and stakeholder meetings. The goal of this book is to lay out a compelling guide that will change how you think about making environmental decisions. Visit www.wiley.com/go/gregory/ to access the figures and tables from the book.