ABSTRACT
Adaptive management (AM), also known as adaptive resource management (ARM) or adaptive environmental assessment and management (AEAM), is a process developed in the early 1970s for adjusting management practices when original management operations do not produce the desired results: progress toward achieving goals is not reached (see Walters 2002). The impetus for the trial-and-error approach of adaptive management was simple: there was no established research available to help managers determine how to change management approaches that were not working. Managers with deer management failures were forced to alter what they were doing without guidelines.
