Review of Grassland Management in south-eastern ... - Parks Victoria

Parks Victoria Technical Series No. 39
Grassland Management in SE Australia
4 MODELLING MANAGEMENT
One of the important roles of managers is to document the management approaches that
they utilize for reserve management. The documentation of the initial state of the reserve and
the management tools applied, and the predicted outcomes of these methods, are essential
components of this documentation. These outcomes are also essential for the use of
adaptive management techniques to refine and modify existing management practices. This
creates a management framework which is flexible and maintains or enhances the system
being managed rather than documenting decline and degradation of these systems or
reserves due to inflexibility of management.
4.1 Adaptive Management
Adaptive management is an essential tool to allow for the continued improvement of
grassland management and reserve management as a whole. The role of adaptive
management in improving our knowledge of grassland responses to alternate management
regimes appears to be little utilized, with minimal evolution of management due to its
implementation and often significant criticisms in the consistency of its implementation. The
process of adaptive management allows for the assessment of best management guesses in
situ and creates a situation in which these guesses can evolve towards a more appropriate
management regime. To successfully utilize adaptive management, the development of clear
and well-defined management goals, and the documentation of current and future reserve
conditions are required. The continued and rigorous implementation of these best guess
regimes is required for accurate and fair assessment of their outcomes.
The general aims of grassland management are clear and simple to define. The main
concerns are over the methods by which these outcomes are achieved and the
appropriateness of these methods. The aims of grassland management for the maintenance
of biodiversity values are clearly understood as:
1. the reduction of biomass and creation of gaps to allow for the regeneration of native
plant species; and
2. the maximization of habitat complexity and of the grassland structure to increase the
probability of faunal components persisting and reproducing in the remnant.
These may not always be the goal of grassland managers (e.g. in degraded grasslands,
shifting the balance between native and exotic species may be the management goal and
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