Whac-a-mole Planning in Protected Areas

Last week, I remarked on the complexity, contentiousness, uncertainty and change that typifies protected areas in the 21st century. I noted that one of the ways that we can become more effective in planning and protecting these very special places is to start using systems thinking to help us develop new insights about the causes of the events (many managers would call them problems) that occur over and over.

This event-oriented thinking, in my judgment is the most fundamental barrier to advancing the practice of effective protected area planning. This may be a bit unclear. So …

We attack a management problem and it reappears elsewhere, perhaps in the park we administer, perhaps in another one someplace else. We attack the problem there, and guess what, it appears someplace else again. This is what I call “Whac-a-mole” planning, after the popular children’s game. In Whac a mole, a mole suddenly appears at one of several holes; it must be immediately whacked back into the hole to score points. As soon as it is whacked, another one appears in another hole. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whac-A-Mole.

And just as there is a mechanical system underlying, and invisible, to the Whac-a-mole player, there are systems, patterns and structures underlying the events we see repeated everyday in protected areas. To understand these events, and what causes them, we need to switch our mind set, from responding to specific events to understanding the structures underlying them.

Using Senge’s example of an iceberg, which he developed in his book, The Necessary Revolution, we need to dive deeper alongside that iceberg. We all know that the vast majority of an iceberg’s mass is hidden from our eyes below the water’s surface. Protected area managers only see the visible top, the events, but not the structures, patterns and paradigms underlying the iceberg. When we see the world only as a series of events, all we can do is react. When we dive deeper, and see the underlying patterns and trends, then we can better anticipate events and respond ahead to prevent them from occurring. When we dive still deeper to understand the systemic structures giving rise to patterns and trends, we can then design structures to prevent underdesireable events from occurring. And diving deeper still, the murky waters at the bottom of the iceberg leads us to the mental models giving rise to how we perceive the world. With mental models in hand, we can transform management.—This in brief is Senge’s argument.

It plays well with my experience in dealing with protected area planning issues. Diving deeper, however, is not without its costs. A shallow dive, down to seeing patterns and trends, may require simply holding our breath or using a snorkel. Not a high cost, but lots of benefits. Diving deeper still requires more investment, such as in SCUBA gear and training, but again, benefits arise. Finally, diving into the deep realm of mental models may require hard sided diving gear, and lots of training.

The point here is that by diving deeper we can increase the leverage of our actions, but such deeper diving will require some training and continuing education. This training will involve systems thinking, as well as the content area, whether its tourism or landscape ecology.

Next time, I will share some results of needed capacities for managing tourism and visitation.