Title: Uncertainty, robustness, and the value of information in managing a population of northern bobwhites
Abstract: The Journal of Wildlife ManagementVolume 78, Issue 3 p. 531-539 Research Article Uncertainty, robustness, and the value of information in managing a population of northern bobwhites Fred A. Johnson, Corresponding Author Fred A. Johnson Southeast Ecological Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, 7920 NW 71st Street, Gainesville, FL, 32653 USAE-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorGreg Hagan, Greg Hagan Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 13093 Henry Beadel Drive, Tallahassee, FL, 32312 USASearch for more papers by this authorWilliam E. Palmer, William E. Palmer Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy, 13093 Henry Beadel Drive, Tallahassee, FL, 32312 USASearch for more papers by this authorMichael Kemmerer, Michael Kemmerer Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 29200 Tucker Grade Road, Punta Gorda, FL, 33955 USASearch for more papers by this author Fred A. Johnson, Corresponding Author Fred A. Johnson Southeast Ecological Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, 7920 NW 71st Street, Gainesville, FL, 32653 USAE-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorGreg Hagan, Greg Hagan Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 13093 Henry Beadel Drive, Tallahassee, FL, 32312 USASearch for more papers by this authorWilliam E. Palmer, William E. Palmer Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy, 13093 Henry Beadel Drive, Tallahassee, FL, 32312 USASearch for more papers by this authorMichael Kemmerer, Michael Kemmerer Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 29200 Tucker Grade Road, Punta Gorda, FL, 33955 USASearch for more papers by this author First published: 11 March 2014 https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.682Citations: 11 Associate Editor: Sarah Converse. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat ABSTRACT The abundance of northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) has decreased throughout their range. Managers often respond by considering improvements in harvest and habitat management practices, but this can be challenging if substantial uncertainty exists concerning the cause(s) of the decline. We were interested in how application of decision science could be used to help managers on a large, public management area in southwestern Florida where the bobwhite is a featured species and where abundance has severely declined. We conducted a workshop with managers and scientists to elicit management objectives, alternative hypotheses concerning population limitation in bobwhites, potential management actions, and predicted management outcomes. Using standard and robust approaches to decision making, we determined that improved water management and perhaps some changes in hunting practices would be expected to produce the best management outcomes in the face of uncertainty about what is limiting bobwhite abundance. We used a criterion called the expected value of perfect information to determine that a robust management strategy may perform nearly as well as an optimal management strategy (i.e., a strategy that is expected to perform best, given the relative importance of different management objectives) with all uncertainty resolved. We used the expected value of partial information to determine that management performance could be increased most by eliminating uncertainty over excessive-harvest and human-disturbance hypotheses. Beyond learning about the factors limiting bobwhites, adoption of a dynamic management strategy, which recognizes temporal changes in resource and environmental conditions, might produce the greatest management benefit. Our research demonstrates that robust approaches to decision making, combined with estimates of the value of information, can offer considerable insight into preferred management approaches when great uncertainty exists about system dynamics and the effects of management. Published 2014. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. LITERATURE CITED Arvai, J. L., R. Gregory, and T. L. McDaniels. 2001. Testing a structured decision approach: value-focused thinking for deliberative risk communication. Risk Analysis 21: 1065–1076. Berger, J. O. 1985. Statistical decision theory and Bayesian analysis. Second edition. Springer Science + Business Media, Inc., New York, New York, USA. Burgman, M. 2005. Risks and decisions for conservation and environmental management. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Clemen, R. T. 1996. Making hard decisions: an introduction to decision analysis. Second edition. Duxbury Press, Pacific Grove, California, USA. Conroy, M. J., and J. T. Peterson. 2013. Decision making in natural resource management: a structured, adaptive approach. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., West Sussex, United Kingdom. Converse, S. J., C. T. Moore, M. J. Folk, and M. C. Runge. 2013. A matter of tradeoffs: reintroduction as a multiple objective decision. Journal of Wildlife Management 77: 1145–1156. Doremus, H. 2011. Adaptive management as an information problem. North Carolina Law Review 89: 1455–1495. Gregory, R., L. Failing, M. Harstone, G. Long, T. McDaniels, and D. Ohlson. 2012. Structured decision making: a practical guide to environmental management choices. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., West Sussex, United Kingdom. Hajkowicz, S., and K. Collins 2007. A review of multiple criteria analysis for water resource planning and management. Water Resources Management 21: 1553–1566. Hauser, C. E., A. R. Pople, and H. P. Possingham. 2006. Should managed populations be monitored every year? Ecological Applications 16: 807–819. Hauser, C. E., and H. P. Possingham 2008. Experimental or precautionary? Adaptive management over a range of time horizons. Journal of Applied Ecology 45: 72–81. Hernández, F., L. A. Brennan, S. J. DeMaso, J. P. Sands, and D. B. Wester. 2013. On reversing the northern bobwhite population decline: 20 years later. Wildlife Society Bulletin 37: 177–188. Huang, I. B., J. Keisler, and I. Linkov. 2011. Multi-criteria decision analysis in environmental sciences: ten years of applications and trends. Science of the Total Environment 409: 3578–3594. Johnson, F. A., B. K. Williams, J. D. Nichols, J. E. Hines, W. E. Kendall, G. W. Smith, and D. F. Caithamer. 1993. Developing an adaptive management strategy for harvesting waterfowl in North America. Transactions of the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference 58: 565–583. Keefer, D. L., C. W. Kirkwood, and J. L. Corner. 2004. Perspective on decision analysis applications. Decision Analysis 1: 4–22. Keeney, R. L. 1992. Value-focused thinking: a path to creative decisionmaking. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Kiker, G. A., T. S. Bridges, A. Varghese, T. P. Seager, and I. Linkov. 2005. Application of muticriteria decision analysis in environmental decision makinig. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management 1: 95–108. Lee, K. N. 1993. Compass and gyroscope: integrating science and politics for the environment. Island Press, Washington, D.C., USA. McDonald-Madden, E., P. W. J. Baxter, R. A. Fuller, T. G. Martin, E. T. Game, J. Montambault, and H. P. Possingham. 2010. Monitoring does not always count. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 25: 547–550. Mendoza, G. A., and H. Martins. 2006. Multi-criteria decision analysis in natural resource management: a critical review of methods and new modelling paradigms. Forest Ecology and Management 230: 1–22. Moir, W. H., and W. M. Block. 2001. Adaptive management on public lands in the United States: commitment or rhetoric? Environmental Management 28: 141–148. Moore, A. L., C. E. Hauser, and M. A. McCarthy. 2008. How we value the future affects our desire to learn. Ecological Applications 18: 1061–1069. Moore, A. L., and M. A. McCarthy. 2010. On valuing information in adaptive-management models. Conservation Biology 24: 984–993. Palmer, W. E., and S. D. Wellendorf. 2007. Effect of radiotransmitters on northern bobwhite annual survival. Journal of Wildlife Management 71: 1281–1287. Pielke, R. A. Jr. 2007. The honest broker: making sense of science in policy and politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Polasky, S., S. R. Carpenter, C. Folke, and B. Keeler. 2011. Decision-making under great uncertainty: environmental management in an era of global change. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 26: 398–404. Rolland, V., J. Hostetler, T. Hines, F. Johnson, F. Percival, and M. Oli. 2011. Effects of harvest and climate on population dynamics of northern bobwhites in south Florida. Wildlife Research 38: 396–407. Runge, M. C., S. J. Converse, and J. E. Lyons. 2011. Which uncertainty? Using expert elicitation and expected value of information to design an adaptive program. Biological Conservation 144: 1214–1223. S. M. Scheiner, and J. Gurevitch editors. 2001. Design and analysis of ecological experiments. Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. Singh, A., T. C. Hines, J. A. Hostetler, H. F. Percival, and M. K. Oli. 2010. Patterns of space and habitat use by northern bobwhites in South Florida. European Journal of Wildlife Research 57: 15–26. Skinner, D. C. 2009. Introduction to decision analysis. Probabilistic Publishing, Sugar Land, Texas, USA. Tonn, B., M. English, and C. Travis. 2000. A framework for understanding and improving environmental decision making. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 43: 163–183. Walters, C. J. 1986. Adaptive management of renewable resources. MacMillan Publishing Co., New York, New York, USA. Williams, B. K., M. J. Eaton, and D. R. Breininger. 2011. Adaptive resource management and the value of information. Ecological Modelling 222: 3429–3436. Williams, B. K., and F. A. Johnson. 2013. Confronting dynamics and uncertainty in optimal decision making for conservation. Environmental Research Letters 8: 025004. Wintle, B. A., M. C. Runge, and S. A. Bekessy. 2010. Allocating monitoring effort in the face of unknown unknowns. Ecology Letters 13: 1325–1337. Citing Literature Volume78, Issue3April 2014Pages 531-539 ReferencesRelatedInformation
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-03-11
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 18
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot