How adaptive is adaptive management? Implementing adaptive management in Washington State and British Columbia

The purpose of this paper is to analyze contraints to the effective implementation of adaptive management from a sociological and institutional perspective. Although formal adoption and institutionalization of adaptive management is critical, it is however insufficient to ensure successful implementation. Successful implementation of adaptive management requires management to take risk‐prone actions while providing institutional patience and stability. The experimental nature of adaptive management requires that managers and politicians redefine success so that learning from error becomes an acceptable part of the learning process. In addition, information must be collected and analyzed over time frames that often exceed the typical tenure of politicians. Adaptive management also needs to be predicated on clearly established goals and decision criteria that will allow for accountability and evaluation of how goals are being met. Furthermore, the goals must be compatible with natural processes, existing or achievable technology, and social norms. One of the fundamental problems to the effective implementation of adaptive management is an agreed‐upon definition of that term and how and if it should be implemented. Its application would have far greater success in resolving natural resource management conflicts if it were universally defined as both (1) linking science with management and (2) implementing management itself as an experiment.