Role of adaptive management for watershed councils.
Recent findings in the Umpqua River Basin in southwestern Oregon illustrate a tension in the rise of both community-based and watershed-based approaches to aquatic resource management. While community-based institutions such as watershed councils offer relief from the government control landowners dislike, community-based approaches impinge on landowners' strong belief in independence and private property rights. Watershed councils do offer the local control landowners advocate; however, institutional success hinges on watershed councils' ability to reduce bureaucracy, foster productive discussion and understanding among stakeholders, and provide financial, technical, and coordination support. Yet, to accomplish these tasks current watershed councils rely on the fiscal and technical capital of the very governmental entities that landowners distrust. Adaptive management provides a basis for addressing the apparent tension by incorporating landowners' belief in environmental resilience and acceptance of experimentation that rejects "one size fits all solutions." Therefore community-based adaptive watershed management provides watershed councils a framework that balances landowners' independence and fear of government intrusion, acknowledges the benefits of community cooperation through watershed councils, and enables ecological assessment of landowner-preferred practices. Community-based adaptive management integrates social and ecological suitability to achieve conservation outcomes by providing landowners the flexibility to use a diverse set of conservation practices to achieve desired ecological outcomes, instead of imposing regulations or specific practices.
Habron
Geoffrey
G
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, 13 Natural Resources Building, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA. habrong@msu.edu
D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D004777:Environment; D006801:Humans; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D009922:Oregon; D010067:Ownership; D011050:Policy Making; D017149:Private Sector; D017150:Public Sector; D014876:Water Pollution / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000517:prevention & control; D014881:Water Supply