Ratcheting up rigor in wildlife management decision making

The wildlife management institution has been transforming to ensure relevance and positive conservation outcomes into the future. Continuous improvement of decision making is one aspect of this transformation, but many obstacles hinder systematic approaches to decision making. One can point to examples of formal decision science applications by state and federal agencies in the United States, but generally decision making is not as methodical as the biological, ecological, or social sciences that inform wildlife policy and management decisions. We describe our observations — based on first-hand experiences — with decision making in wildlife management, present reasons why making decisions is difficult, identify challenges faced by wildlife managers at various levels of governance, and address measures wildlife managers can employ to overcome these challenges. We acknowledge that no panacea, simple recipe or one-size-fits-all prescription exists for wildlife management decision making. Nevertheless, we hope the combination of (a) describing how a systematic framework for decision making can benefit stakeholders, managers and conservation outcomes and (b) providing specific suggestions for such a framework will encourage agencies to continue taking steps to improve decision making processes.