Forest invasive adaptive management on national wildlife refuge lands in the central hardwood region

Approximately 2.4 million acres of National Wildlife Refuge System lands are impacted by invasive plants and are the primary challenge for habitat management in the Central Hardwood region. In 2011, biologists, managers, and contracted support staff from six national wildlife refuges in southern Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri developed an adaptive management project to control 42 forest-adapted invasive plant species on refuge lands. Structured decisionmaking was used to identify and refine the management problem, objectives, and alternative management actions, and to assess consequences and tradeoffs among selected management alternatives. Objective hierarchies and an influence diagram were developed to link our monitoring and objectives at two scales, the refuge scale and a management grid scale (1 ha). The project formalized a step-by-step process for prioritizing actions at the refuge scale and for applying management actions at the grid scale. Both inventory and monitoring has provided a feedback loop to inform future management. The grid scale model has allowed formal learning about the effectiveness of prior and ongoing management actions. We demonstrate the approach using data collected from Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge (30.9 km2) during 2011-2013.