Home

WAFWA Mule Deer Working Group

What's in a Name?

Of Shipwrecks and Captives

The West that Was . . . No Longer Is

Losing Ground

The Mounting Pressure of Development

A Place for Predators

Precipitation - A Driving Force

Wilderness Breakup

Elk and Mule Deer Interactions

Mule Deer Regions - No Two are Alike

Plant Communities in Trouble . .

Mule Deer Diseases

Supplemental Feeding - Just Say No

Learning By Doing

Managing Deer Herds with Harvest

Our Summary

WAFWA

Learning by Doing
Managing Mule Deer with Uncertainty

The similarities between managing fish, forests and wildlife and playing the stock market are uncanny. When playing the stock market, you establish clear objectives for how you want your money to work for you over the long-term, then you tweak and make adjustments as changes in the market occur and new information becomes available. When you're managing species with fins, feathers, fur or leaves, the same conditions exist, including the inherent risks and uncertainties.

Biologists began to get a handle on describing the uncertainties of managing natural resources in the mid 1980s. Until that time, natural resource managers used a very traditional approach to managing fish, forests and wildlife that was often reactive and passive. The traditional approach was based on precise predictions, single answers, and the belief that management policies could be effective if they were long-term and stable. It was an approach destined for conflict and failure. It was a lot like dumping a large sum of money into one stock market fund, then walking away from it, despite changes in the economy, age to retirement and new information about stocks.

Biologists recognized the traditional approach was failing them in four basic ways.

- They were not setting clear longterm management objectives.

- They were not monitoring the results of regulations, harvest and policie.

- They were not adjusting management activities based on the results of their actions and program.

- Tthere was more conflict with the public who didn’t have much opportunity to understand what agency managers did and why.

These shortcomings created a system of managing wildlife that could be likened to a dog chasing its tail, where seasons and harvest "chase" habitat conditions and population levels. One of the biggest casualties of this approach to management was an uninformed public that expected wildlife populations to respond exactly to the predictions of biologists, a no-win situation for both parties.

Recognition of these shortcomings led to the birth of a new way of managing called adaptive resource management. Also called adaptive harvest management because harvest is often used to help regulate mule deer numbers, adaptive resource management introduces the uncertainty of managing natural resources - and attempts to minimize that uncertainty with consistent monitoring and evaluation of programs. In other words, it uses the "feedback" from past decisions and actions to make adjustments and future decisions.

The goal of this approach is to adapt management practices to fit the changing values of society, and the habitat conditions that affect our fish, forest and wildlife populations. It's a method of learning by doing that allows biologists to better understand how, for example, a watershed and the natural resources that live in that watershed respond to alternative policies and management practices. Using this approach can better define how a mule deer population responds to a specific land management practice and harvest program.

Adaptive resource management is a way managers can better meet goals, learn from and respond to management actions, and share that information so that others can benefit. There are four to six steps to adaptive resource management:

1. Gather existing information about a population and its habitat, define a management objective, forecast outcomes of several management actions, and identify areas where knowledge and information is needed.

2. Design a management plan and monitoring program that will meet the desired management objectives, yield information where it is needed, and provide feedback about management actions.

3. Implement the plan.

4. Monitor the results of the plan.

5. Compare actual outcomes to forecasts and interpret results.

6. Make adjustments to forecasting models and management objectives to reflect new information and understanding. Repeat the process with adjustments.

The first observations about adaptive resource management are that it isn't easy to do, it can be very costly for individual states, and it may be very difficult to coordinate throughout the West.

Len Carpenter is the Wildlife Management Institute field representative for eight states in the West and Southwest. He believes adaptive resource management would work well for mule deer, but recognizes there are inherent problems with implementing it across a large landscape with numerous political boundaries. Unlike waterfowl management, in which the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has key responsibility for management of migratory birds across all states, mule deer are state-regulated.

"The USFWS is one entity, and across all states they can dictate what can go on," said Carpenter. When it comes to mule deer management, "All states like to do their own thing. To impose the will of one system on all states collectively is difficult. Each state has its own agency and commission - those groups are all different, and they see things through different colored glasses. Adaptive resource management is going to have to be done state by state, recognizing that problems with mule deer are common across all states."

He cites the need for a multi-state approach to coordinate mule deer census, herd composition, fawn survival and harvests, and standardized data analysis. Goals for harvest management activities could include buck:doe ratios, fawn:doe ratios, or population densities. States could use these goals to develop models to evaluate the response of mule deer populations to different harvest and regulation strategies.

"Adaptive resource management per se is very complex and rigorous," said Carpenter. "It requires the establishment of objectives, the development of models, and monitoring and testing of models. Many states don't have the facilities or resources needed, and often can't follow all of the steps necessary to truly implement adaptive resource management."

Carpenter emphasized what adaptive resource management is not - "We'll try something, and if it doesn't work, we'll do something else." It's going to take time for western states and provinces to fully implement adaptive resource management.

One of the first states out of the chute to apply adaptive resource management to manage mule deer is Montana. And they're taking the public along with them for the ride via their Internet site, www.fwp.state.mt.us/hunting/ahm/ content.asp.

Anything and everything you ever wanted to know about adaptive resource management and how Montana is using it to manage their mule deer can be found on this site. One portion of the site is titled, "Mule Deer Hunters - Are You in the Know?" The site asks hunters questions, then provides a hyperlink with the answer.

The interested public can learn about surveying mule deer, using computer modeling to estimate population numbers, and managing herds using different harvest strategies. And through the use of questions and answers, Montana clearly explains that the driving force behind whether or not a mule deer herd is holding its own, shrinking or growing is the number of fawns that survive to adults.

When asked about the management goal of Montana's mule deer, Montana doesn't throw out a number. Instead, they describe the long-term health of mule deer populations and optimal hunting opportunities.

The Big Sky state also does a great job of explaining that adaptive resource management is a work in progress. "With more consistent data collection on mule deer populations around the state and this computer modeling capability, biologists will increasingly be able to compare what is actually observed each year with what the computer modeling predicted the year before. Over time repetition of this modeling/in-the-field monitoring feedback loop will improve wildlife management performance by reducing the amount of uncertainty."

Glenn Erickson, Wildlife Management Bureau Chief for Montana, said public reaction on adaptive harvest management strategies for mule deer has been guarded.

"Everyone has accepted the process and the objectives as general consensus," said Erickson. " A lot of what people are doing is waiting. We haven't had a lot of complaints about the process or the directions we're going. The public has supported our approach to adaptive resource management process to this point. Things are good now as deer numbers are starting to increase."

Erickson commented that keeping people updated is critical. "Sometimes, what tends to happen is we put out an informational piece, and as we're halfway through implementation, some other crisis happens. By the time you get to a point where you have to have everyone supporting you, they or you have forgotten to keep people informed. To prevent that from happening, we developed an informational plan along with this process to keep everything in front of everybody."

"No matter how much data are collected and analyzed, some level of uncertainty will always exist. A land manager must make decisions with the information available and continue to learn from both mistakes and accomplishments."

Adaptive resource management can only be successful if state agencies take a proactive approach to keep interested constituents involved and informed.

Today, adaptive resource management is being used throughout the world to manage intercontinental waterfowl populations, quail, pronghorns, and mule deer, to name a few. Biologists are even using the concepts of adaptive resource management to conduct prescribed burns.

Will adaptive resource management ever be fine-tuned such that responses by wildlife to management activities will always be predictable? Not likely.

J.E. Mitchell and D.R. Freeman, in their 1993 technical report on wildlife-livestock-fire interactions on the Kaibab Plateau, said it best.

If western states and Canadian provinces can overcome the political and economic barriers to implementing adaptive resource management, both mule deer, and the publics that reap the benefits from healthy mule deer populations, will profit - even in the face of uncertainty.