Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: all
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

A structured decision making (SDM) approach can help evaluate tradeoffs between conservation and human-benefit objectives by fostering communication and knowledge transfer among stakeholders, decision makers, and the public. However, the process is iterative and completing the full process may take years to accomplish. Thus, it can be difficult to initiate an SDM effort when problems seem insurmountable. In many instances, SDM may not even be the best or correct approach for addressing the conservation problem at hand. We describe the implementation of an SDM process to help inform difficult decisions related to competing objectives. We convened a diverse stakeholder group from the largest estuary in the western United States; the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Bay-Delta). The stakeholder group consisted of representatives from local, state, and federal agencies, non-profit organizations, and recreational fishermen. The stakeholder group agreed on a problem statement and identified four priority objectives related to Chinook salmon, delta smelt, water availability and reliability, and agricultural water use. Furthermore, they proposed 14 candidate management actions to achieve their objectives. The group then used existing quantitative models and data to evaluate trade-offs in proposed management actions to identify areas of agreement of proposed candidate actions. The clear communication of the problem statement and objectives among the stakeholder group, along with evaluation of tradeoffs and uncertainty via decision-support models suggest that SDM may work in the Bay-Delta. We further communicate lessons learned during our implementation of SDM to help guide future SDM efforts in the region and elsewhere.