Table 2. A schematic appraisal of adaptive management.

ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT
treats management policies as experiments that probe the responses of ecosystems as human behavior changes.
Conceptual soundness
Hypotheses, controls, replication
Is the idea sensible? Learning is valuable, but learning is always a precarious value compared to action.

Technical
Models, cost-effective monitoring, value of learning in making decisions
Is the idea translated into practice well? Too little attention to the cost and delays of gathering information.

Equity
People live in and use ecosystems
Who loses? When conflict pushes aside learning, the ecosystem and resource-dependent communities decline while struggle continues.

Pragmatic
Does it work? We don’t know (yet).