Heuristics for the sustainable harvest of wildlife in stochastic social-ecological systems.

Sustainable wildlife harvest is challenging due to the complexity of uncertain social-ecological systems, and diverse stakeholder perspectives of sustainability. In these systems, semi-complex stochastic simulation models can provide heuristics that bridge the gap between highly simplified theoretic...

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Autores principales: Elizabeth A Law, John D C Linnell, Bram van Moorter, Erlend B Nilsen
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Publicado: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/fd97e2e9a67a49588f111a6db2712fe7
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:fd97e2e9a67a49588f111a6db2712fe72021-12-02T20:12:39ZHeuristics for the sustainable harvest of wildlife in stochastic social-ecological systems.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0260159https://doaj.org/article/fd97e2e9a67a49588f111a6db2712fe72021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260159https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Sustainable wildlife harvest is challenging due to the complexity of uncertain social-ecological systems, and diverse stakeholder perspectives of sustainability. In these systems, semi-complex stochastic simulation models can provide heuristics that bridge the gap between highly simplified theoretical models and highly context-specific case-studies. Such heuristics allow for more nuanced recommendations in low-knowledge contexts, and an improved understanding of model sensitivity and transferability to novel contexts. We develop semi-complex Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) models capturing dynamics and variability in ecological processes, monitoring, decision-making, and harvest implementation, under a diverse range of contexts. Results reveal the fundamental challenges of achieving sustainability in wildlife harvest. Environmental contexts were important in determining optimal harvest parameters, but overall, evaluation contexts more strongly influenced perceived outcomes, optimal harvest parameters and optimal harvest strategies. Importantly, simple composite metrics popular in the theoretical literature (e.g. focusing on maximizing yield and population persistence only) often diverged from more holistic composite metrics that include a wider range of population and harvest objectives, and better reflect the trade-offs in real world applied contexts. While adaptive harvest strategies were most frequently preferred, particularly for more complex environmental contexts (e.g. high uncertainty or variability), our simulations map out cases where these heuristics may not hold. Despite not always being the optimal solution, overall adaptive harvest strategies resulted in the least value forgone, and are likely to give the best outcomes under future climatic variability and uncertainty. This demonstrates the potential value of heuristics for guiding applied management.Elizabeth A LawJohn D C LinnellBram van MoorterErlend B NilsenPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 11, p e0260159 (2021)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Medicine
R
Science
Q
spellingShingle Medicine
R
Science
Q
Elizabeth A Law
John D C Linnell
Bram van Moorter
Erlend B Nilsen
Heuristics for the sustainable harvest of wildlife in stochastic social-ecological systems.
description Sustainable wildlife harvest is challenging due to the complexity of uncertain social-ecological systems, and diverse stakeholder perspectives of sustainability. In these systems, semi-complex stochastic simulation models can provide heuristics that bridge the gap between highly simplified theoretical models and highly context-specific case-studies. Such heuristics allow for more nuanced recommendations in low-knowledge contexts, and an improved understanding of model sensitivity and transferability to novel contexts. We develop semi-complex Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) models capturing dynamics and variability in ecological processes, monitoring, decision-making, and harvest implementation, under a diverse range of contexts. Results reveal the fundamental challenges of achieving sustainability in wildlife harvest. Environmental contexts were important in determining optimal harvest parameters, but overall, evaluation contexts more strongly influenced perceived outcomes, optimal harvest parameters and optimal harvest strategies. Importantly, simple composite metrics popular in the theoretical literature (e.g. focusing on maximizing yield and population persistence only) often diverged from more holistic composite metrics that include a wider range of population and harvest objectives, and better reflect the trade-offs in real world applied contexts. While adaptive harvest strategies were most frequently preferred, particularly for more complex environmental contexts (e.g. high uncertainty or variability), our simulations map out cases where these heuristics may not hold. Despite not always being the optimal solution, overall adaptive harvest strategies resulted in the least value forgone, and are likely to give the best outcomes under future climatic variability and uncertainty. This demonstrates the potential value of heuristics for guiding applied management.
format article
author Elizabeth A Law
John D C Linnell
Bram van Moorter
Erlend B Nilsen
author_facet Elizabeth A Law
John D C Linnell
Bram van Moorter
Erlend B Nilsen
author_sort Elizabeth A Law
title Heuristics for the sustainable harvest of wildlife in stochastic social-ecological systems.
title_short Heuristics for the sustainable harvest of wildlife in stochastic social-ecological systems.
title_full Heuristics for the sustainable harvest of wildlife in stochastic social-ecological systems.
title_fullStr Heuristics for the sustainable harvest of wildlife in stochastic social-ecological systems.
title_full_unstemmed Heuristics for the sustainable harvest of wildlife in stochastic social-ecological systems.
title_sort heuristics for the sustainable harvest of wildlife in stochastic social-ecological systems.
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate 2021
url https://doaj.org/article/fd97e2e9a67a49588f111a6db2712fe7
work_keys_str_mv AT elizabethalaw heuristicsforthesustainableharvestofwildlifeinstochasticsocialecologicalsystems
AT johndclinnell heuristicsforthesustainableharvestofwildlifeinstochasticsocialecologicalsystems
AT bramvanmoorter heuristicsforthesustainableharvestofwildlifeinstochasticsocialecologicalsystems
AT erlendbnilsen heuristicsforthesustainableharvestofwildlifeinstochasticsocialecologicalsystems
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