Effects of adaptive management on conflicts in establishing duck hunting regulations in the United States 1980–2022

Abstract A formal framework for the adaptive management of duck harvests (Adaptive Harvest Management; AHM) was adopted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1995. In addition to concomitantly facilitating management decision making and reducing uncertainty, the process can reduce conflict among stakeholders within the regulation‐setting process. However, evidence for reductions in conflict due to adaptive management has been largely anecdotal. We examined Federal Register documents to characterize and quantify the number and types of conflicts that occurred before and after the implementation of AHM for setting annual duck hunting regulations. We used Poisson regression models to test the effects of AHM implementation, habitat quality, and duck abundance on the number of conflicts documented in the regulation‐setting process. Exponentiated coefficients from the best model indicated a 38% decrease in conflicts per additional one million ponds and a 9% decrease per additional one million total ducks. The number of annual conflicts before AHM was adopted was 1.72‐fold greater than after its implementation.