Adaptive management is a systematic process for improving management by ‘learning by doing’. Actions are adjusted in response to feedback on the progress towards the desired outcomes or management objectives. Adaptive management is practised by implementing and then reviewing policy, or by predicting the outcomes of management activities and then strategically monitoring the actual outcomes to gather information to improve future management. While the theory of adaptive management has become popular in natural resource management, there are scientific limitations, social issues and institutional constraints to its practical application.

The Victorian Waterway Management Program has undergone a process of reviewing and updating its state policy and is in the process of updating regional planning strategies. The new Victorian Waterway Management Strategy (2013) outlines an improved approach to the way the program undertakes adaptive management. The strength of the improved approach is the use of logic models, based on best available knowledge, to define the relationships (known or assumed) between management outputs, management outcomes and long-term resource condition outcomes. The logic models are used to target monitoring efforts and prioritise research into knowledge gaps or relationships with uncertain evidence.

Despite the improvements to the adaptive management approach, challenges remain. Monitoring costs are prohibitive and gaining landholder support for long-term monitoring of management outcomes on private land has proven to be difficult. There is little scientific knowledge on how much management activity needs to occur to generate specific environmental outcomes. Additionally, separating the influence on environmental change of extreme events (including droughts, flood and fire) from management actions is complex.