In August 1817, the learned men of the Linnaean Society of New England had studied their Bestiaries, ancient, illustrated volumes of all the animals. They set out from Boston for Gloucester’s high rocky shore to survey the seascape. There, they found what they were looking for. The sea serpent was a “60 to 100-foot long, black, shiny, leathery, scaly, reptilian beast with humps, large eyes, and sharp teeth.” Had they heard the local fishermen, the scientists would have dismissed claims that their sea serpent was a school of bluefin tuna.

Not too many years earlier, in 1798, the English economist, cleric, and scholar Thomas Robert Malthus published anonymously the idea that increased food production would improve the population’s well-being. However, with abundance, population growth would be geometric, while the means of subsistence increase would be arithmetic. The standard of living would go down, and people would suffer “the Malthusian trap.” In short, Malthusians believe the population will inevitably outgrow available food supplies.

Models Aren’t Always Right, But Nature Is

In 1972, the authors of the publication The Limits to Growth used computer modeling to predict what would happen with exponential economic and population growth. Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, they presented three scenarios. Two of the scenarios saw population “overshoot” and societal collapse. A third scenario resulted in a “stabilized world.”

Based on The Limits to Growth and other publications of the 1970s, many people believe that human numbers will always grow until they reach the limit of subsistence and that overpopulation may only be avoided, to use Malthus’s words, by “vice” (including “the commission of war”), “misery” (including famine or want of food and ill health), and “moral restraint” (i.e., abstinence). Books and articles inform the way they look at the world. Fortunately, the intricate relationships for humans as part of nature are not as straightforward as calculations and computer models portend.

For example, cattle were observed deteriorating in a pasture. Consistent with their expectations, experts proclaimed that this was over-grazing and that the population must be reduced to a sustainable level consistent with what the resource was providing. In a large African elephant park, they found that the carrying capacity for elephants had been exceeded, and the resource base was being destroyed. Over the span of twenty-seven years, they called for the culling of more than 14,000 elephants. Their belief system dictated that many elephants must die for the elephant population to survive.

In both cases, the experts had assessed the situation, prescribed the solution, and left others to manage it. When they returned to find neither the pasture nor the elephant park improved despite the removal of animals, they clung to their science, blamed the managers, wrote off the loss, and carried on.

When he introduced adaptive management, C.S. Hollings (1978) took a very different approach to the certainty of the Malthusians. Hollings and other researchers identified critical uncertainties that shaped existing ecosystem dynamics and designed diagnostic management experiments to reduce those unknowns. They took the radical step of including all stakeholders in the management deliberations because the greater the diversity of perspectives, the more robust the solutions would be. Having more partiers holding a stake in solving the problem led to more effective implementation of systems management.

There were outcries from the scientific community in response to Hollings’ ideas. They knew the best practices through extensive research and juried publications. Doing anything different would be less effective and might cause more damage when time is of the essence. In other words, adaptive management is too risky, and management should be left to the scientists who know best.