Decision Making in the Face of Scientific Uncertainty: Adaptive Management for Climate Change

An Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Workshop 

2010 North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference  

Milwaukee, WI 
8am-12pm March 22^nd

Resource managers are often required to make tough decisions, especially when the science is uncertain. However, these decisions must be defensible if called into question. It is often unclear what the full impact of an environmental problem will be and what kind of impacts (both intended and unintended) the solution may have. There is growing scientific consensus that a major shift in climate is underway worldwide, with profound implications for natural resource management. Adaptation to climate change will be an especially challenging issue for management agencies because decisions will be made, in many cases, based on an incomplete understanding of climate change impacts, particularly at the local level. Adaptive management and structured decision making are critical tools for making management decisions with incomplete information and high levels of uncertainty. Adaptive management allows decision making to proceed even in the face of profound uncertainty about outcomes by treating management decisions as testable hypotheses. Structured decision making is a decision analysis process that can help overcome challenges by breaking down difficult decisions such that a decision can be acceptable to a broad range of stakeholders.

Recognizing the importance of these tools, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Science & Research Committee is developing a series of workshops for state fish and wildlife agencies to provide them with the tools for making decisions in a scientifically defensible manner. The first workshop at the 2009 North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference focused on using adaptive management and structured decision making for invasive species management. For the second workshop the Science & Research Committee, in collaboration with the Associations Climate Change Committee, will co-sponsor a workshop to present how adaptive management and the structured decision making process can be used to address local climate change adaptation issues and can also be built into State Wildlife Action Plans revisions, as well as revisions for other plans, for climate change adaptation. The workshop will use local examples to demonstrate how adaptive management and structured decision making can be used for climate change-based, natural resource issues.

The workshop will be held at the 2010 North American Wildlife & Natural Resources Conference in Milwaukee, WI on the morning (8am-12pm) of March 22nd. The National Wildlife Federations Climate Change Town Hall meeting will follow in the afternoon to complete a day of climate change discussions.

If you have any questions please contact Dr. Arpita Choudhury at achoudhury@fishwildlife.org