Adaptive management is a new yet increasingly important tool for cooperative conservation.

When engaged collaboratively, it can create a science-based framework for broad citizen participation in all aspects of natural resource stewardship. Adaptive management is defined as “… a system of management practices based on clearly identified outcomes, monitoring to determine if management actions are meeting outcomes, and, if not, facilitating management changes that will best ensure that outcomes are met or to re-evaluate the outcomes.” (OEPC ESMO3-6)

Key elements of adaptive management (AM) practice include:

• AM acknowledges uncertainty about what policy or practice is "best" for the particular management issue
• AM links credible science, values, and experience of stakeholders and managers for effective management decision making
• AM treats management policies and actions as experiments in order to improve management by learning from the conditions being affected
• AM seeks monitoring of key response indicators
• AM analyzes management outcomes in consideration of the original objectives, and
• AM incorporates the results into future decisions and actions

More information on adaptive management can be found at:
http://student.lincoln.ac.nz/am%2Dlinks/
http://www.iatp.org/AEAM/
http://web.mit.edu/dusp/epg/music/pdf/ashcraft.pdf

The Department of the Interior has developed procedures to implement adptive management

Joint Fact Finding (JFF) is a tool of cooperative conservation that is complementary to adaptive management.

JFF is about how information is acquired collaboratively; AM is about how information is used collaboratively. Joint Fact Finding refers to the procedures or "best practices" that have evolved over the past several decades for ensuring that science and politics are appropriately balanced in environmental decision-making at the federal, state and local levels. JFF is a procedure for involving those affected by policy decisions in a continual process of generating and analyzing the technical information needed to inform those decisions, while preserving the best practices of scientific inquiry. JFF is also a process that allows for the consideration of local and cultural knowledge, as well as expert knowledge.

Three features of a JFF process are notable:

• Representation: Joint Fact Finding is most often convened by the governmental agency having final decision-making power. Stakeholders are all those who believe they will be affected by the decision the convener will make. All key stakeholder groups need to be involved in framing the scientific/information inquiry. They need to choose who will represent them and who will do the research.
• Neutral Process Management: A trained professional neutral must manage the conversations; all the stakeholders—including scientists and technical experts— must be engaged in face-to-face conversations. Scientists and technical experts must stay at the table even after they deliver their technical reports.
• Written Agreement: The agency or organization convening the JFF process, and the stakeholders participating in it, must agree to a written statement that sets the ground rules of the JFF process.

Additional information on Joint Fact Finding is available at:
http://web.mit.edu/dusp/epg/music/
http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/treatment/jfactf.htm
http://www.unce.unr.edu/publications/FS00/FS0005.pdf