Adaptive Management
According to the Department of the Interior, adaptive management is an iterative approach to natural resource policy that entails "...learning and adapting, through partnerships of managers, scientists, and other stakeholders...to create and maintain sustainable ecosystems." The adjacent figure shows that the adaptive management process embodies a simple imperative: on-the-ground management policies are experiments. After assessing the problem, we design the experiment, implement it, monitor the results, evaluate the monitoring data, and learn from it. From what we learn, we modify our plans and repeat the process.
This change in the IBMP Adaptive Management (AM) Plan reflects additions and modifications resulting from Governor Bullock's EA Decision On Year-Round Habitat for Yellowstone Bison (see item in December 2015 below). The changes were applied to the previous (2014) AM Plan. As of its completed signing date of May 6, 2016, the 2016 IBMP Adaptive Management Plan supercedes all previous IBMP adaptive management documents.
[Note: At their April 6, 2016 meeting the Partners recognized that the 2016 Operations Plan would need to be updated to reflect the new 2016 IBMP AM Plan. Given how late into the operations season the signing of the 2016 AM Plan came, the Partners decided to simply add a sentence to the Operations Plan saying, effectively, that their management operations will be carried out to meet the prescripts of the newly signed 2016 IBMP AM Plan.]