Implementing the Endangered Species Act on the Platte Basin Water Commons

28: Adaptive Management: Lashing Together Conflicting Visions with a Chinese Wall

365 At its core, the struggle over the draft biological opinion (DBO) was a fight about how adaptive management would be conducted on the Platte River. That fight, in turn, was about how the interests would govern themselves under uncertain conditions. Whatever adaptive management was going to mean, it had to offer a way to manage intensified conflicts regarding (1) regulatory requirements for specific front-loaded program substance—how could state commitments be tied to the delivery of measurable benefits to species while also acknowledging the states’ defined contribution stance and their refusal to share in any natural flow vision; (2) politics—how to arrange for two conflicting program visions at the very center of the program to coexist; and (3) science—whose hypotheses were to be tested in the service of which river vision? A viable adaptive management plan would have to accomplish all this. The problems tormented negotiators for years, especially from 2003 to 2005. Defining Program Sufficiency The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has rested on the premise that there will always be a clear-cut problem in the form of demonstrated jeopardy for a given species (Rohlf 2001). Furthermore, there will be identifiable ways to fix the problem that could constitute a “reasonable and prudent alternative” (RPA). RPAs, in turn, can be scientifically evaluated by biologists and other technical people. The legislation did not address issues posed by the huge uncertainties that accompany large landscape–scale, multiple-phase habitat recovery efforts C h a p t e r 2 8 adaptive management Lashing Together Conflicting Visions with a Chinese Wall A dApT iV e MA nA g eMen T 366 (National Research Council of the National Academies 1995; Rohlf 2001). How can anyone determine at a given point in time what will be “sufficient” in a first program increment when all known program impacts will be modest at best and will take decades before they provide substantial habitat recovery ? Habitat restoration programs must necessarily conduct only partially controlled quasi-experiments in field settings open to various interpretations (Poff et al. 1997). At best, there can be only a tentative and incomplete understanding of interactions among the many critical variables. Practitioners cannot pretend to forecast with any certainty specific outcomes over many years in complex ecosystems. Given all this, what could be done? It is clear that under the ESA (Endangered Species Act 1973: section 7.a.2) each federal agency has an obligation to ensure that its actions are “not likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of federally listed species or “result in the destruction or adverse modification” of their designated critical habitat. The ESA is therefore simultaneously weak and strong. It is weak in the sense that the law only requires that agency actions not hurt listed species. It is strong in the sense that it makes not doing damage to species absolute. There can be no tradeoffs between small hurts to a listed species and substantial gains in other dimensions—for example, economic gains or political coalition-building needs. Therefore, given the history of injury to habitats on the Platte, to pass muster, any proposed habitat recovery program had to demonstrate that the historical trend of habitat degradation would be reversed in a manner that would do no harm in any knowing way and provide something measurably beneficial to each of the four listed target species, as determined by the best available science. That general mandate left open a rich variety of possibilities. Except in general terms, biology cannot specify exactly what a river ought to look like. Furthermore, even if all parties could agree on the relative worth of various restoration outcomes, there would be optional ways to pursue them. A commitment to examine clearly stated hypotheses using peer-reviewed, open civic science was necessary, but in itself it was insufficient for recovery program building. Can adaptive management alone, as a systematic investigation and technical interpretation of empirically testable hypotheses in ecosystems of theory-defying complexity, lead the way to viable river and wet meadow habitat restoration? The answer is no. The program governance process that must guide adaptive management will obtain essential information from many other sources—such as refereed literature, best guesses, understanding provided by river experience, and common sense. Adaptive management must be governed by people engaged in sustained, open civic discourse wherein generalized principles of scientific understanding are embedded with local site-specific knowledge. A dA pT iV...