Adaptive management in species recovery planning

Adaptive management is the process of exploring a range of strategies to meet management objectives, implementing the most promising strategy, monitoring closely, and using the results to adjust management actions as needed. While in theory this management tool has great promise for problems where the predicted results of management actions are highly uncertain, it is rarely applied to endangered species management, due in part to uncertainty about how and when to apply it effectively. I will provide examples from the US-associated Pacific Islands of situations where adaptive management could be a useful tool for managing threatened and endangered species.