Monitoring for Fish and Wildlife Management

1. Monitoring for Fish and Wildlife Management David R. Smith USGS – Leetown Science Center

2. Why Monitor? Monitoring is the systematic acquisition of information over time to support management decisions Determine if management objectives are being met, Assess the status of populations or habitats being managed, or Reduce the uncertainty that is impeding decision making.

3. The “old way”delivery of monitoring design to natural resource manager Here’s my report. You’re welcome. Goodbye. Um, thanks, I think.

5. Adaptive Management • Monitoring design comes after • Objectives • Alternatives • Models • First figure out what needs to be measured, and then figure out how to measure it.

6. Adaptive Management Monitoring Observation System Model System Model* Learning Adapt Prediction Slide credit: Michael C. Runge & James D. Nichols USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center

7. Monitoring Types Management objectives A priori list of management actions that could affect populations or habitats and models to predict consequences of actions Yes No Targeted monitoring for adaptive management Surveillance monitoring for sequential evaluation of resource condition

8. Targeted Tightly focused on decision at hand or specific management actions Linked to predictive models or specific a priori hypotheses Predictive models are conceptual or quantitative Monitor measurable attributes determined for specific management objectives Designed to be efficient for the decision at hand Surveillance Not focused on a particular decision or management actions Can be linked to conceptual models, but not always Typically broad geographic, temporal, and taxonomic scope Trend detection is often the objective, and power might be low or unevaluated Monitoring Types

9. Targeted Adaptive Harvest Management Program for Waterfowl Adaptive Management of Horseshoe Crabs and Red Knots in Delaware Bay Integrated Waterbird Management and Monitoring Salt Marsh Management and Monitoring Surveillance Breeding Bird Survey EMAP NPS I&M Networks NASA Earth System Research Laboratory: carbon dioxide monitoring Monitoring Types (examples)

10. Targeted Monitoring for Adaptive Management Monitoring Observation System Model System Model* Learning Adapt Prediction Slide credit: Michael C. Runge & James D. Nichols USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center

11. Surveillance Monitoring Monitoring Observation Observation Significant decline? Yes Initiate study to determine cause of decline Active management Active management

12. Critique of Surveillance Monitoring • A time-lag is imposed when active management is delayed until significant trend • It’s costly to initiate study after decline is detected, and it might not be effective at determining best management action. • “We believe that this approach to monitoring [i.e., surveillance] is inefficient and frequently ineffective.” Nichols and Williams (2006) Monitoring for conservation. TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution 21:668-673.

13. Discovering ‘unknown unknowns’ Not everything important can be foreseen – there are surprises in life Emerging diseases and pollutants Surveillance monitoring might be better at discovering surprises because typically broad geographic, temporal, and taxonomic scale However, targeted monitoring also has a chance of discovering emerging and unanticipated issues And, neither surveillance or targeted monitoring can guarantee discovery of emerging and unanticipated issues

14. Discovering ‘unknown unknowns’ Wintle et al. (2010) Allocating monitoring effort in the face of unknown unknowns. Ecology Letters 13:1325-1337 Surveillance monitoring is justified when it has a better chance of discovering emerging and unanticipated issues than targeted monitoring, and expected benefits from discovery are higher than benefits from targeted monitoring

15. Summary • Limited budgets requires tradeoffs in what and how we monitor for fish and wildlife management • Targeted monitoring supports decision making by integrating with management • Monitoring design comes after objectives, alternatives, and predictive modeling • Surveillance monitoring is not directly linked to specific management, but can be justified when • It has a better chance of discovering emerging and unanticipated issues and • The benefit of discovery outweighs benefit of targeted monitoring

16. Recent pubs • Nichols and Williams (2006) Monitoring for conservation. TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution 21:668-673 • Lyons et al. (2008) Monitoring in the context of structured decision-making and adaptive management. JWM 72:1683-1692 • Wintle et al. (2010) Allocating monitoring effort in the face of unknown unknowns. Ecology Letters 13:1325-1337