By Sofie McComb, Kephra Beckett, T’awaxwultun (Joe) Akerman, Peter Arcese, Derek Bedford, Peter Dunwiddie, Jason T. Fisher, Todd Golumbia, Emily K. Gonzales, Robyn Irvine, Alvin James, Eric S. Long, Jean-Louis Martin, Steve Michel, W̱IĆKINEM (Eric) Pelkey, Thi’h’elum (August) Sylvester, Ken Thomas, Nadine Thomas, and Tara G. Martin.

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Photos of oak meadows in the Salish Sea during flowering season, on islands with deer absent (left) and deer hyperabundant (right)—highlighting the magnitude of ecological and cultural loss occurring over time under hyperabundant browsing pressures. Photo credits: Sofie McComb & Tara Martin

Across the globe, changing relationships between Peoples and place has led to overly abundant herbivore populations that strain ecosystems’ capacities to sustain them. This persistent, human-driven increase in herbivore densities is called hyperabundance. Hyperabundant populations drastically alter understory vegetation through long-term over browsing, resulting in large-scale degradation of keystone ecosystems.

While a widely recognized conservation issue, implementing timely and effective management actions for hyperabundant wildlife is challenging, as the inherently complex nature of the problem means there is no one solution, and choice overload and fears of unintended outcomes can prolong inaction. Structured decision-making (SDM) offers a transparent and defensible method to tackle the complex problem of herbivore hyperabundance and to design socially-acceptable and cost-effective strategies.

We applied SDM analysis to the Salish Sea region of British Columbia (BC), Canada—an area where land managers have significant concerns about the impacts of hyperabundant herbivores. The co-authors of this work—a group of Indigenous and Western scientists, land stewards, hunters, and knowledge holders in the region—iteratively worked through the steps of structured decision-making to identify effective solutions for addressing hyperabundant black-tailed deer and recovering keystone ecosystems while respecting multiple value and knowledge systems. Relying on data elicited from expert knowledge and ecological population modeling, we assessed the likelihood that various management strategies could meet regional objectives. We then evaluated trade-offs in cost-effectiveness between outcomes.

We found that honoring Indigenous perspectives and accounting for not only ecological wellbeing but also human wellbeing in cost-effectiveness calculations altered the prioritization of strategies. When we only included Western perspectives, increased licensed hunting by local communities and hiring professional deer reduction specialists were ranked the most cost-effective. Whereas, when we accounted for both Indigenous and Western science worldviews, hunting led by local Indigenous Nations was ranked the most cost-effective strategy.

Our work highlights the importance of honoring distinct knowledge and value systems equitably in decision-making, tailoring methodological approaches in respectful ways that do not perpetuate ongoing inequalities in wildlife management decision-making. We provide here a roadmap for bringing together multiple knowledge systems to steward wildlife effectively across worldviews—and for ensuring decision analyses are strongly rooted in place-based contexts and values.