Operationalizing Ecology under a New Paradigm: An African Perspective

Summary

Under the balance-of-nature paradigm, conservation managers adopted contrasting approaches to management of large national parks in Kenya, South Africa, and the United States. Whereas ecologists assumed omnipotence of the science as the driving force behind conservation, managers responded uniquely to multiple pressures from the societies they served. The managers’ need for pragmatic, adaptive action contrasts starkly with the scientists’ search for detailed understanding under a rather self-serving peer review system.

If ecology is to better serve conservation under a new paradigm it must discard the “strategy of hope” that good science will inevitably lead to informed management and develop an explicit interface for technology development and transfer. A review system that judges the utility of ecological research on a par with its quality, would promote technology transfer by turning the focus from the producer to the consumer. The emerging field of technology transfer has much to offer ecologists in their efforts to become more pragmatic in enhancing the ecological basis of conservation.

Patch dynamics provides a useful framework for dealing with heterogeneity in ecology and can be pragmatically reformulated to provide management with a set of forces to engineer the landscape mosaic to achieve conservation goals.

A program of research on the rivers of the Kruger National Park, South Africa, operates around a consensus-building management process facilitated by a decision support system (DSS). The DSS integrates an operational framework for setting and evaluating attainable and acceptable goals; a. predictive modeling framework for assessing the nature, rate, and direction of system change; and a system response framework for monitoring response to management action and natural disturbances. A hierarchical model of patch structure and dynamics provides the basis for incorporating heterogeneity into research and management.