432 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
management actions are working, as intended, towards identified goals. A
conceptual model is developed to identify key knowledge gaps and highlight areas
requiring further investigation, relationships between outcomes, management
actions and other potential factors inf luencing the system. This visual depiction of
how different components in a system interact helps to elucidate which
components can and cannot be inf luenced by management, what assumptions are
made in defining these relationships, and thus what data are needed to test these
assumptions. The MER process enables questions, hypotheses and predictions to
be proposed that can be investigated through monitoring programs (Principle 3). A
similar, but more formal, version of the MER process is ‘adaptive management’ (see
examples in Chapters 30–32); the main difference being that adaptive management
typically has increased scientific rigour, with higher investment and effort required
to experimentally test different management approaches and implement
management change (Sutherland 2006).
If there is high uncertainty in a conceptual model, it may be difficult to
clearly describe relationships between various factors and species responses.
High levels of uncertainty may require general questions to be answered first to
inform and refine hypotheses around threatening processes. However, greater
transparency in decision making is enabled by identifying objectives, links
between management actions and species occurrence, assumptions in conceptual
models and levels of uncertainty.
The manner in which monitoring informs management actions can be made
explicit in the form of decision triggers. Such triggers are identified as being critical
stages along a species’ population trajectory (e.g. a population response above or
below a certain threshold) where an action is required (Addison et al. 2016; Cook et
al. 2016). Triggers can signal a re-direction or increase in recovery effort (e.g.
commence captive breeding) or withdrawal from an action because it is ineffective
or no longer required. Decision triggers are identified in advance of reaching
critical stages in a population’s trajectory in an effort to minimise indecision, and
enforce action and accountability in a timely fashion (Martin et al. 2012). To ensure
this, monitoring data should be regularly evaluated and reported to alert managers
when critical stages are reached. However, limited data and incomplete knowledge
may, in some situations, restrict the capacity of setting reasonable decision triggers.
Principle 3. Plan, design and implement a fit-for-purpose program
To understand and detect causes of decline, and ultimately avert extinction,
threatened species monitoring needs to be targeted and question-driven, with the
design and methods tailored to suit the specific attributes of the target species and
monitoring objectives (Lindenmayer and Likens 2010). Threatened species
monitoring can rarely be a by-product of a generic monitoring program because
this will often not capture adequate and informative data on threatened species
(Field et al. 2005; Chapter 20). The planning, design and implementation of a