Putting the M&E Back into Adaptive ManageM&Ent

True adaptive management (AM) is a rigorous approach for designing and implementing management actions to maximize learning about critical uncertainties that affect decisions, while simultaneously striving to meet multiple management objectives. While there is a healthy diversity of approaches amongst legitimate practitioners of rigorous AM, the term “adaptive management” has been widely misused, diluting both the concept and its application. Common misconceptions include: AM = public participation; AM can resolve conflicts over values; AM is a trial-and-error, adapt-as-you-go process; AM excuses the need for regulatory control (“we’ll adapt if we find a problem”); status quo monitoring is sufficient to determine action effectiveness. This presentation provides a foundation for the excellent examples of rigorous AM approaches included in this symposium. Using a range of examples from the Pacific Northwest, I will discuss the following: the 6-step cyclical process of AM (i.e., Assess → Design → Implement → Monitor → Evaluate → Adjust); the decision-analysis view of AM; technical challenges in applying AM to fisheries management (e.g,, replication, control, long response times, measurement error, confounding variables); institutional challenges (not the focus of this symposium, but essential to recognize); and guidelines for deciding if AM is or isn’t an appropriate approach. Technical and institutional challenges to rigorous AM both become more daunting at larger scales, suggesting that the greatest opportunities for success are at small to intermediate scales. This hypothesis will be examined by the range of scales included in the symposium’s presentations, each of which offers tools and insights for one or more the steps in the AM cycle, set within a diverse mix of institutional challenges.