Adaptive management: Is there a golden toolbox hidden behind a buzz word and a utopian panacea?

The main objective of ADMAN was to address adaptive management of the wild reindeer range. Domestic and international trends show a shift from central to local governance, with an increased focus on growing local businesses, a knowledge-based management of natural resources, and broad participation in important decisions. A common definition of adaptive management is a dynamic governance process that integrates use and protection, involving all legitimate stakeholders in the management plan work. By ?use? we mean access to and use of the mountain for local development. In the project, we shed light on key aspects of adaptive management in the context of local communities and anthropogenic disturbance to wildlife, and we have explored in detail concrete case studies in the wild reindeer management areas of Snøhetta and Rondane. We explored pros and cons of transferring decision-making responsibilities to local authorities. It is crucial that adaptive management processes are integrated with existing plans, and that local businesses participate. The main goal for adaptive processes in the wild reindeer range is to reduce adverse effects of human activity on the reindeer. There are more than 60 scientific works dealing with the effects of human activity on wild and domestic reindeer in the Nordic countries. The problem with many of these studies is that infrastructure (roads, rail, power lines, etc.) has been treated as a constant factor that does not reflect the variable effects of the instalments or the dynamics of human use. Recently, radio tagging animals with GPS collars has offered an improved look into the herd?s habitat use throughout the year, and hence, a better opportunity to assess the effects of fragmentation on space use. The results show that reindeer avoid areas with increasing density of roads, trails, cabins, hydropower, and other types of infrastructure. The propensity of the animal to cross a trail decreases successively with increasing human traffic on the trail. However, although these overall results are significant on a national scale, the effects depend on the local context, which make generalizations problematic. Nonetheless the most promising tool to alter human use of sensitive reindeer areas is to manipulate the quantity or location of infrastructure. Areal restriction and prohibition by law is controversial in Norway due to the right of common access. We tested how different approaches affect different user groups. Local users were more flexible and accepted changes in infrastructure better than tourists, but opposed areal restrictions that limit their freedom of action. This knowledge is important in adaptive processes, because it sets the stage for what is possible to achieve. The main management strategy is to "push" people away from sensitive areas by decreasing access, and to ?pull? people towards less sensitive fringe areas by making these areas more attractive for recreation. In the project, we studied methods of monitoring human use, and documented visitor volume and trends. In an adaptive process, it is important that the knowledge are broadly legitimated among the stakeholder groups. Adaptive processes have been widely discussed internationally. The literature points to several reasons why adaptive processes can fail. The Snøhetta wild reindeer range was the area with the greatest opportunity to study the process of balancing the conservation of the herd while allowing for recreational use and local development. In the beginning of the process there was great uncertainty due to lack of knowledge, major conflicts between key stakeholders, and forthcoming comprehensive changing of values and management in the area. It proved difficult to establish robust adaptive recommendations of the management of the area, despite the fact that a broad stakeholder group was established, they accepted the knowledge obtained for description of the situation, the process had adequate economical and human resources and the stakeholder got obvious benefits of the output. The main pitfalls is related to competition between stakeholders groups, and because the process have become political, politicians are afraid of unpopular decisions in the local community. There is always a danger that the relationship between the stakeholders evolves to become winners and losers, with the subsequent risk of degradation of the ecological system. We see that an important prerequisite for adaptive management is that the actions implemented must be reversible if the measuree did not have the effects as intended. In practice, not only physical manipulation of the landscape will be difficult to reverse (e.g. tourist cabins, roads, marked trails), but also practice and institutional framework for the activity. A good example of this is the shuttle bus to Snøheim. The conclusion is that adaptive management processes are challenging. We have described some points for what must be present to succeed.

This project aims clarifying the too often misunderstood and misused concept of Adaptive Management, AM, and at identifying key-factors granting its optimal use in real-case integrated management strategies of wildlife and land-use at both local and natio nal scales. By reviewing different strategies adopted during more than 50 years of management of the last wild mountain reindeer populations, we will identify key ecological, societal and policy factors associated with successes and failures of AM strateg ies. We will provide concrete guidelines for an optimal choice and cost-effective use of different management strategies, based on socio-ecological settings. We propose the following three work packages tightly integrating ecology and social sciences, aim ing at: (1) Learning from past experiences by reviewing successes, failures and associated causes at both the national scale and within 52 previously defined Focal Areas, where particularly high levels of human-wildlife conflicts have been identified; bas ed on these results, we will provide concrete guidelines for an optimal cost-effective use of different management strategies for the integrated management of wildlife populations and landscapes. (2) Setting-up and testing robust alternative AM strategies to minimize current reindeer-human conflicts in Focal Areas under different scenarios; to reach this aim we will adopt rigorous experimental settings to test for alternative mitigation options, within the AM framework, and we will use an impressive datas et from 250 GPS-monitored reindeer together with spatio-temporal tracking data on hikers and hunters in mountain ecosystems. (3) Establish a long-needed User Forum gathering social scientists, ecologists and decision-makers to identify jointly and at an e arly stage management issues, exchange data through advanced platforms, and develop from an early-stage commonly accepted research and management goals and approaches.