Collaborative strategies for managing animal migrations: insights from the history of ecosystem-based management.

• Author: Yaffee, Steven L.

1. Introduction II. Ecosystem-Based Management and Migration Conservation A. Spatial Scale and Complex Systems in EBM B. Collaboration and Adaptation in EBM C. EBM Principles in Migration Conservation III. Implementation Challenges Facing EBM and Migration Conservation IV. Promoting Successful EBM and Migration Conservation A. Incentives to Cooperate B. Using Existing Governmental Structures and Planning Processes C. Obtaining Adequate Resources Through Partnerships D. Monitoring for Adaptive Management E. Enhancing Political Support F. Tapping into the Energy of Dedicated "Champions" V. The Lifecycle of EBM Efforts A. Stages in the EBM Lifecycle 1. Planning and Early Implementation 2. Later Implementation 3. Social and Ecological Improvements B. Lessons for Migration Conservation VI. Balancing Coercion and Collaboration--The Role of Legal Structures A. Legal Mandates or Public Lands Plans as Incentives for Collaboration B. Legal Mandates to Improve Accountability VII. Conclusion I. INTRODUCTION

   Over the last two decades, efforts to conserve large landscapes in North America have involved scientists, managers, policy makers, and a range of nongovernmental stakeholders in a variety of collaborative processes. Sometimes called ecosystem-based management (EBM), (1) these efforts have attempted to manage at larger, more ecologically-relevant scales than traditionally was the case in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems. Because these efforts have important similarities to migration conservation, they can be viewed as a suite of experiments that can inform the development of collaborative arrangements for managing wide-ranging animal species.

   This Article describes lessons that have emerged from these EBM efforts, highlighting the challenges that people have faced and the factors that seem to account for success. Given a pluralistic political system and a land base that is fragmented among multiple public and private owners, future strategies must be collaborative while still creating the incentives for the collaboration to yield conservation outcomes. How can this be done?

   Part II identifies the key principles of EBM and how they relate to emerging principles of migration conservation, noting strong similarities of the two approaches. Both EBM and migration conservation involve management at larger spatial scales and longer and more sophisticated temporal scales. They focus on maintenance or restoration of key ecosystem processes (such as disturbance and migratory movement), not just the structural components of ecosystems (such as species and communities). Larger scales and more complex management strategies require cooperation and collaboration across boundaries and force decision makers to include more stakeholders in management decisions. To deal effectively with uncertainty and change, such as the potential impacts of climate change on habitat quality and migration behavior, adaptive management is needed to ensure ongoing learning and wiser strategic choices.

   Part III summarizes the challenges that have faced individuals attempting to implement EBM projects and examines the limited evidence of challenges associated with cases of migration conservation. These challenges include: institutional and political barriers due to conflicting agency missions and competing demands for resources; attitudinal issues due to mistrust and conflicting cultures; and process management difficulties associated with complex, multiparty decision-making processes.

   Since the principles and challenges of EBM and migration conservation appear similar, there is reason to believe that the factors promoting success in EBM efforts will help to promote similar migration conservation efforts, and Part TV summarizes these factors based on numerous case studies of EBM projects. These include factors that create motivation and momentum; structures that help to organize efforts effectively; and ways to access resources that help projects secure scientific information, manage processes efficiently, and create the potential for successes that in turn help to sustain collaborative efforts. EBM efforts also benefitted from evaluation and joint learning that promoted adaptability; legitimacy provided by involvement, accountability, and follow-through; and energy provided by key individuals or process champions.

   Key to understanding EBM success--and hence the potential for migration conservation success--is that these efforts generally require sustained effort over relatively long periods of time. Studies of EBM projects suggest that they progress through a somewhat predictable life cycle, where strategies and outcomes tend to occur in iterative patterns. Part V presents a rough lifecycle model of EBM projects drawing on experience with more than twenty years of history of a number of EBM efforts. By understanding the dynamic nature of these processes, managers can better participate in and facilitate them, and policy makers can learn what they can expect from these processes and how policies can help produce conservation outcomes by assisting these processes at key points in time.

   Finally, the collaborative, often extra-level, nature of these protection efforts raise questions about how they are accountable to statutory direction and how legal inducements relate to effective collaboration. In Part VI, I argue that well-managed collaborative processes usually benefit from legal and scientific boundaries that define the decision space onto which creative multiparty attention can be placed. Hence, a legal mandate to protect migrations is not at all at odds with a landscape-scale protection strategy that relies on collaborative action. At bottom, collaborative action for migration conservation needs to be incentivized and well-informed while giving the space and process skills to find solutions.

2. ECOSYSTEM-BASED MANAGEMENT AND MIGRATION CONSERVATION

   EBM developed in the early- to mid-1990s as a way out of crises caused by a set of stalemated endangered species and public lands conflicts, and a mechanism for incorporating new landscape-scale understanding of ecosystem science. (2)

   1. Spatial Scale and Complex Systems in EBM

      EBM called for expanding the spatial and temporal scale of planning and management with managers considering ecologically-relevant boundaries, such as landscape ecosystems or marine spatial units, rather than traditional administrative or political boundaries. (3) Instead of simplifying systems to promote industrial-scale production of single species, such as fish or trees, EBM embraced complexity and highlighted the need to protect critical ecosystem processes as a way to ensure the health of ecosystem components, including plant and animal species. Managers sought to incorporate more variables critical to the integrity of the system including disturbances, such as fire, and variability, such as fluctuations in hydrologie flow. (4) Overall, management aimed at finding balance among the demands of different user groups in a way that maintained or restored ecosystem integrity.

   2. Collaboration and Adaptation in EBM

      To accomplish larger scale, longer term, and more complex management regimes, EBM called for collaboration and adaptive management. (5) To achieve adequate scientific understanding, multiple scientists, agency managers, and nongovernmental parties were needed to pool information and participate in dialogue. (6) Since larger and more complex landscapes involved a mix of ownerships, interagency cooperation was needed to manage across geographic boundaries. (7) Often the broader set of public and private values involved in larger landscapes required decision makers to provide a place at the table for a larger set of affected and interested parties. (8) Finally, while traditional management tended to provide assurance through often erroneous images of certainty and predictability, EBM embraced adaptive management as a mechanism to deal with uncertainty and the inevitability of unplanned change. (9) In the best of cases, managers viewed decision making as a process of experimentation: strategies were explicitly linked to outcomes and their impact monitored, with results providing the basis for learning and adaptive change. (10)

      As management principles, EBM's focus on scale, complexity, ecosystem health, collaboration, and adaptive management are hard to dispute, and management in a number of places shifted from a single-species focus on commodity production to a more balanced emphasis on satisfying multiple demands while raising the priority of ecosystem integrity. (11) Ecological processes were more likely to be incorporated into management prescriptions and collaboration among stakeholders became much more of a norm. (12)

   3. EBM Principles in Migration Conservation

      Migration conservation exemplifies many of these same principles. In most cases, a proposal to protect migrations is a move to expand the spatial and temporal scale of management. (13) While traditional management might have focused on the place-based needs of a population, migration management must expand management boundaries to include pathways and far-flung places of importance to a species. The recognition that winter range and summer range are both important to the viability of a species expands the temporal considerations underlying management. Indeed a focus on migration itself highlights one key ecosystem process critical to the genetic fitness and biotic health of a species, and incorporates a complex-systems view of what is necessary to manage a wildlife population.

      The Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana) herd provides a good illustration. The herd travels up to 560 kilometers each year from winter range in the Upper Green River Basin to summer range in the GTNP and the surrounding areas of Jackson Hole valley.14 This migration may well be the longest migration undertaken by a non-avian species...