Crisis as a Positive Role in Implementing Adaptive Management After the Biscuit Fire, Pacific Northwest, U.S.A.

Environmental crises develop from undesired, generally large, and u n e xpected events. They often result in a crisis response by natural-resource managers, especially in the absence of advance planning. These crises, however, have the potential to be harnessed to help overcome typical barriers to adaptive management, including little-noticed uncertainty, societal and scientific polarization, and institutional inertia, aversion to risk, and limited resources. Crisis can ripple across polarized groups, getting them to better tolerate others' views — and ripple through institutions, getting them to question what is known, frame bigger questions, and take risks by employing new strategies. If crisis responses can be harnessed to help formalize adaptive management, new understandings are likely to emerge that support decisions that can help avoid or better respond to future events. We look for evidence of this theory in adaptive management generally unfolding under the Northwest Forest Plan, responding to the spotted-owl injunction in the Pacific Northwest states, U.S.; and specifically under the post-fire management plan, responding to the 200,000-ha Biscuit fire in southwestern Oregon in 2002.