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Texts on nature conservation attempt
to demonstrate the principles of management by analogy.
There are historically so many instances of the interaction
of people the environment that this empirical approach
can be used with a fair degree of success. However,
since management is concerned not only with the administration
of the present state of the resource but also with predicting
the future course of the resource, it would be preferable
to incorporate ecological theory into the practices
of conservation.
What should be the approach to conservation
or biological management? Should it be via 'pure ecology',
basing the procedures of conservation and biological
management upon ecological theory, mathematical models
and statistical analysis? Or alternatively, should it
be via 'applied ecology', mostly using the empirical
experience of past management as a basis for future
management? Forest management tends to follow the latter
approach since there is a long tradition of forest management.
Wildlife conservation is still a very young movement,
and although there is a basis of past management experience
this is not nearly as great as is that of forestry.
Indeed, there is as yet no general tradition of wildlife
management. Partly because of this scarcity of tradition,
and because of the greater precision and predictive
value of modelling and statistical analysis, the design
of this book has been on the former, the 'pure ecology',
approach. When ecological theory has been developed
and expressed in the form of a model, this model should
incorporate sufficient insight to represent the process
that it describes (in the sense of a statistically satisfactory
fit) and to predict the future course of the process.
A classical model is the lynx/prey cycle,
which shows that prediction is possible, but that as
prediction is taken further and further into the future
so the accuracy of the prediction became less and less.
The model therefore more and more closely approximated
to the mean population size as the length of prediction
was increased.
Thus, in conservation management there
should be a prediction of the consequences of a particular
action. If the model yields only the expected result
then it can be described as being deterministic, since the model will always
yield the same result if given the same input data.
However, this predicted result is not usually sufficient,
since one will want to know something about the variance.
What is the probability of reaching the predicted result,
or what is the probability that some other condition
will be reached? Such stochastic models are still comparatively
rare in the ecological literature, but it may be that
the demand for such information from models that are
used in conservation management will stimulate more
interest in their general application in ecology.
Thus one restriction that is imposed
on the breadth of biological management or conservation
is that there should be as firm a basis as possible
of ecological theory, statistical analysis and mathematical
modelling. One other limitation that will be imposed
concerns the categories of land use. Each category involves
some form of conservation if the management is not to
deplete the resource.
Conservation management of green assets
is organised on the ground to meet operational targets.
Managers are practical people, usually short of time
and resources, who are never happier than when they
are out and about. In this respect, they tend to begrudge
time spent on 'paper work'. Nevertheless, to get the
best out of limited resources it is vital to work to
a mangement plan and keep it up to date by recording
inputs and outputs that link operational and strategic
targets.
It is important for managers to have
access to the latest thinking and resources to faciliate
their plans. This section contains examples of conservation
plans and projects that are actually being used and/or
developed for rural and urban green assets. The aim
is to avoid reinvention of wheels and promote new ideas.
The particular approach to management
being taken by Baywatch is a '
rational decision making process'
using a systems approach which is often referred to
as 'planning
by objective'.
The aim of such management systems is to evaluate outcomes
of decision-making in the light of initial expectations
with the following series of sequential steps;
initiation of the planning process at
a strategic level;
identification of alternative actions;
forecasting of the consequences of these
actions;
statement of objectives;
allocation of factors aiding or impeding
targetting the objectives;
ranking of combinations of actions (prescriptions)
and their consequences;
formulation of action plans to manage
key factors and report on outcomes;
scheduling of operations on the ground;
feedback from operational performance
indicators to the strategic level.
There is a particular shortage of examples
of alternative decision- making schemes - such as the
need to pursue several objectives simultaneously, the
need to juggle with a combination of possible strategies,
the need to recognise that goals and strategies vary
in relative and absolute importance between different
interested parties, and the need to accommodate intangible
costs and benefits which cannot readily be expressed
in monetary terms.
The examples demonstrate some current
approaches to handling these issues. |
