Beneath the Straw: In Defense of Participatory Adaptive Management

Our recent paper advocating adaptive management of invasive nonnative species (INS) in Kings Bay, Florida received detailed responses from both Daniel Simberloff, a prominent invasion biologist, and Mark Sagoff, a prominent critic of invasion biology. Simberloff offers several significant lines of criticism that compel detailed rebuttals, and, as such, most of this reply is dedicated to this purpose. Ultimately, we find it quite significant that Simberloff, despite his other stated objections to our paper, apparently agrees with our argument that proposals for alternative management of established INS (i.e., alternatives to minimization/eradication) should not be rejected on an a priori basis. We argue that more specific development and application of adaptive approaches toward INS management, whether in Kings Bay or other appropriate case studies, would be facilitated if ecosystem managers and invasion biologists follow Simberloff’s lead on this key point. While Sagoff largely shares (and, indeed, served as a primary source for developing) our general arguments that challenge common moral and scientific assumptions associated with invasion biology, he does question our suggestion that participatory adaptive management provides an appropriate framework for approaching environmental problems in which science and politics are inherently entangled. We attempt to answer this criticism through a brief sketch of what participatory adaptive management might look like for Kings Bay and how such an approach would differ from past management approaches. J. M. Evans (&) Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-6455, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. C. Wilkie Soil and Water Science Department, University of Florida – IFAS, PO Box 110960, Gainesville, FL 32611-0960, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. Burkhardt Food and Resource Economics Department, University of Florida – IFAS, PO Box 110240, Gainesville, FL 32611-0240, USA e-mail: [email protected] 123 J Agric Environ Ethics (2009) 22:169–180 DOI 10.1007/s10806-008-9135-4