In the context of this work, management strategies include actions which can be taken to pre-empt or react to stressors and events which may affect the Kimberly marine environment. In general, a wide range of intervention options are available to manage the marine environment which can be applied at different spatial and temporal scales. At the local scale, a manager may need to consider small scale, possibly temporary interventions to address a specific problem at hand. At the regional scale, it is important to ensure a certain level of coordination to reduce possible conflicts or increase synergies between multiple interventions. At a national or international level, interventions also need to both reflect and adhere to current political and social expectations towards conservation, which often apply to several environmental issues simultaneously. It is for this reason that in the Future Studies and Foresight literature, it is common to address environmental management in terms of political and social appetite for or acceptance of different levels of regulations. In this literature, regulations are broadly understood as determining the politically and socially acceptable balance between individual freedoms and enterprise (favouring resource exploitation) vs socially negotiated institutions (favouring resource conservation) (see reviews in [2, 4] and [16] for an application to marine ecosystems).

Our approach in defining the management strategies is based on the belief that while these strategies will be applied at the regional scale, they need to reflect both a regional and national scope, for several reasons. First, this project addresses a regional spatial scale and a multi-decade temporal scale. This prevents us from addressing local, short-tem interventions. Second, because of the national, iconic significance of the Kimberly environment, efforts to protect its marine environment cannot be disconnected from the overall national attitude towards conservation. Third, over the next 35 years, this attitude may change considerably: it may oscillates towards and against more environmental conservation and may even reverse conservation values which we now consider unshakable

In the Future Studies and Foresight literature, appetite for or acceptance of different levels of regulations are treated as scenarios: they are understood as large-scale social processes beyond management control. In this project, we want to explore strategies: interventions which are under management control. Here is where the interface between regional and national scopes mentioned above is crucial: management strategies available at the regional scale will likely be constrained and negotiated within the scope of the acceptance for environmental regulation at the national level.

Within the limitations of the resources available to this project, the definition of the management strategies tries to capture this tension. On one hand, we define four broad levels of regulation pressure which reflect political and social attitudes towards environmental conservation (columns in Table 3), ‘high’, ‘medium’, ‘low’, ‘reversed’ and ‘worst case’:

‘Medium’ regulation pressure is based around current regulations and expectations about proposed regulations currently in the pipeline.
‘Low’ regulation pressure is based around current regulations, in which the proposed regulations currently in the pipeline do not materialise.
‘High’ regulation pressure is based around an increasing appetite for environmental conservation.
‘Reversed’ regulation pressure describes a U turn in political and social mood which reverses most current conservation initiatives and reflects a society which is increasingly unconcerned or sceptical towards environmental conservation.
‘Worst case’ represents the collapse of most forms of regulation.

Within these broad levels of regulation pressure, we assume that interventions under management control are based around three broad management tools (rows in Table 3). The first tool consists of the existing and proposed marine parks, including the restrictions on the activities allowed in different zones within these parks. The second management tool consists of regulations on fishing (as one of the key pressures on marine resources), which include the amount of virgin (or spawning) biomass that is allowed to be taken through commercial or recreational fishing across the region, as well as strategies such as reducing bag and size limits for specific species. The third tool consists of regulating the impact of other human uses, such as tourism and mineral, oil and gas exploration and extraction.

Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3 show how these three management tools may be implemented (rows) within the four levels of regulations pressure (columns). As for the scenarios above, we assume that the political and social acceptance of different levels of regulations will impose a strong correlation in the use and implementation of the available management tools. However, different strategies can be tested independently should some scenario outcome require it so.

Table 1. Description of the proposed Management Strategies with regards to marine parks

Management Tools / Regulation pressure	High	Medium	Low	Reversed	Worst case
80 Mile Beach Park	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Lalang-garram / Camden Sound Park	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Yawuru Nagulagun / Roebuck Bay Park	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
North Lalang-garram Park	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Lalang-garram / Horizontal Falls Park	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
North Kimberley Marine Park	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
80Mile Beach Commonwealth Marine Reserve	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Roebuck Commonwealth Marine Reserve	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Kimberley Commonwealth Marine Reserve	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Sanctuary Zone extension (% of total park area)	30%	20%	current	0	0

Table 2. Description of the proposed Management Strategies with regards to fishing regulation

Management Tools / Regulation pressure	High	Medium	Low	Reversed	Worst case
Fishing regulation (% virgin biomass)	20%	Mixture of low and high regulations in different area	90% (prawns) 70% (finfish)	90% (prawns) 70% (finfish)	90% (prawns) 70% (finfish)
Fish size limits	Current fish size (status quo)	Current fish size (status quo)	Status quo - ~10 cm	Status quo - ~15 cm	No limit
Bag size limits	Current bag size (status quo)	2 * Current bag size	5 * Current bag size	10 * Current bag size	10 * Current bag size (status quo)

Table 3. Description of the proposed Management Strategies with regards to Other Human Uses

Management Tools / Regulation pressure	High	Medium	Low	Reversed	Worst case
Accepted cumulative tourism-induced mortality²	0.30%	1%	5%²	No limit	No limit
Accepted cumulative mortality³ from other marine uses	0.30%	1%	5%	No limit	No limit

1 - This includes overall mortality due to presence on tourism in remote region as a result of pollution from boats, human presence on reefs/coastline, etc.
2 - The mortalities in this section of the table are only guesses and will be better tuned during the first EwE runs.
3 - This includes overall mortality due to other human uses, including Oil and Gas exploration and extraction, due to pollution, infrastructure, boat collisions, etc.

Alternative approach to the analysis of Management Strategies (optional)

The approach described in the previous section is based on forecasting the possible outcome of combinations of different strategies and scenarios. It aims to answer the question ‘what is the possible outcome if scenario X materialises and we implement strategy Y?’. In this approach the ‘outcome’ is the result of the modelling process. An alternative approach, backcasting, is possible in which a desired outcome is first defined and a search is performed for strategies which could lead to its realisation. This approach aims to answer the question ‘what strategy do we need to implement to achieve Z if scenario X materialises?’. In this approach the management strategy is the result of the modelling process. In applied mathematics, these two approaches are usually defined as forward (forecasting) vs inverse modelling or optimisation (backcasting). Unfortunately, backcasting is much more complex than forecasting [17] for several reasons, including that it generally requires a much larger computational effort. The EwE team will attempt to include a backcasting approach in this project. However, given the limited resources and a current delay in the delivery of Alces simulations, we are in no position to commit to this task. Should this task appear to be achievable, we will interact with the Node leaders to discuss the details of this approach.

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