The Transition from Resistance to Acceptance: Managing a Marine Invasive Species in a Changing World
Abigail Keller, University of California, Berkeley
Marine invasive species can transform coastal ecosystems, yet mitigating their effects can be difficult, and even impractical. Often, invasive species are managed at poorly matched spatial and temporal scales. At the same time, rates of spread and establishment are increasing under climate change and can outpace resources available for population suppression. These circumstances challenge traditional conservation goals of maintaining an historic environmental state. Thus, a new management paradigm where decision alternatives include resisting or accepting change may be needed. Here we apply mathematical concepts from decision theory to develop a quantitative framework for navigating management decisions in this new resist-accept paradigm. We establish conditions where species density becomes decoupled from a decision maker’s actions, such that invasive species population control can no longer shape the invasion trajectory. We show that assuming stationary system dynamics can result in sub-optimal levels of invasive species removal effort, highlighting the importance of developing anticipatory management strategies by accounting for non-stationary dynamics. For natural resource managers facing possible ecosystem transformation, this decision framework can enable proactive and strategic decisions made under uncertainty in a changing world.