Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2025L00287:reg:3:p98
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2025L00287
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 3 (pt 98/276)
Character Range: 408407–411470

to comprehensively track results across major management programs
Text in boxes indicates broad indicators that may require further refinement, including considering possible sub-indicators stratified spatially or by other relevant covariates. Many management indicators can be divided into two levels – the immediate management output (e.g. number of traps operated) and its direct result (number of animals removed). While presented as linear chains, there are interactions and feedback loops between these management programs (see Appendix A: Conceptual models).

4.6.2        Evaluation and reporting
As part of adaptive management, evaluation and reporting will utilise outputs from the monitoring and research activities to inform future reviews and updates of the plan. An integrated evaluation of the plan will be developed and implemented to track and evaluate trends in relevant indicators of (1) investment of resources, (2) delivered management actions, (3) state of pressures (relating to management targets) and (4) populations of threatened species. Interpretation of some management indicators, especially those relating to direct results, may be meaningful only in the context of the pressure indicators they relate to – for example removal of a given number of rats would be interpreted differently depending on whether rat density was estimated to be high or low.
Regular evaluation across these chains of indicators will enable adaptive adjustments to the management, ecological monitoring and research elements of the recovery plan to be made as the plan is delivered. Changes in the different indicators should be evaluated in relation to each other to help determine whether delivery of the plan is on track and, if not, where problems may lie (Figure 9).
Figure 9 A conceptual overview of evaluation across sets of linked resource, management, pressure and value indicators, and some of the management decisions that might be considered under different scenarios
Evaluating results across chains of indicators in this way will also enable testing of assumptions and improved understanding of relationships—for example, the number of feral cats on Norfolk Island will have density-dependent impacts on a number of threatened species, but reducing the cat population will not necessarily benefit those threatened species if it leads to an increase in the population sizes of the introduced rodent species.
The effectiveness of the management actions implemented as part of the plan should be evaluated regularly. Feedback from these evaluations will be used to adjust actions as necessary. Simple evaluations (including, at least, tracking of resource and management indicators) should be undertaken annually. More in-depth evaluation (possibly conducted independently) including evaluation of all indicators should occur after five years and nine years. The results of evaluation should be reported as appropriate to organisations involved in delivery of the plan, to community members and to external stakeholders (this should be reflected