32 – Difficulties in fitting an adaptive management approach^399which AM has actually been practised is remarkable. The formal systematic
review of the scientific literature by Westgate et al. (2013) yielded 6982 articles
with AM in the title, abstract or keywords. From these, there was a subset of 1336
papers in which the concept was discussed in some detail (i.e. beyond a passing
reference to the context such as ‘adaptive management should be done’). However,
only 61 papers, or 5% of the 1336 articles where AM was discussed in some detail,
actually claimed to have conducted AM. Further analyses of these 61 papers
revealed that only 13 contained empirical, field-based monitoring data. Moreover,
most of these 13 studies were based on relatively short-term monitoring and it was
therefore not possible to be confident that the evidence of responses to changes
was robust (Westgate et al. 2013). Finally, and in the particular context of this
book, virtually none of the papers related to AM for a particular threatened
species or threatened ecosystem.
Fig. 32 .1. Key steps in the adaptive management approach. Adapted from Westgate et al. (2013).