Measuring success of adaptive management projects

Examples linking natural resource management with improved ecological health are few compared to the dominant narrative of environmental degradation—more robust evaluation and reporting of these successes may increase the scope and scale of future natural resource management and conservation efforts. In many cases, critical research on how to evaluate a given management paradigm lags significantly behind the wave of experimentation and promotion of the approach and this appears to be the case with adaptive management, as well. For these reasons, a critical evaluation of efforts to measure success in adaptive management seems timely. Its use as a natural resource management technique is widespread and growing, with a demonstrated commitment to the approach in natural resource management and conservation literature, agency direction, and in statutory language, as exemplified by the numerous examples of adaptive management projects.