The thing about counterfactuals...

Counterfactuals are:

Adaptive management and counterfactuals...

so does my fox baiting work?
ok... I'll try to measure my inputs, the direct outcomes (dead foxes/ fox population) and the indirect/desired biological outcomes (small mammal, bird etc populations)

this will hopefully tell me whether there is a change in either of those factors... (although it might not - see "when to stop monitoring paper" and foxes stuff by Jess (Walsh?)

even if it does.. and if my method appears to be working (i.e. dead foxes) I still have a problem... other things have changed too... so I can't say whether my e.g. bilby population has increased as a result of the foxes being dead, or because something else, like the climate or competitor density has changed. I can make some inferences, but even then there are difficulties... i.e. ok, so climate and foxes have a likely impact... but how much of the impact is due to fox baiting?

what you need is a counterfactual... a "similar" area where fox baiting is not going on and the climate is changing in the same way where you can also look at the bilbies... et voila!!

there are some problems with this though... what if there are no counterfactuals...
e.g. Rhinos... there are zeros everywhere outside of managed zones... how does one evaluate zeros?? this is hard... LPI is probs conservative because populations that decline to zero (or v. close to it) drop out of the line.

e.g. Funding, access, infrastructure etc... all the things you have on public lands that maybe you won't be able to get on "counterfactual lands"... if they exist that is

e.g. Smart use of resources... do we really want to spend money on monitoring random pieces of land etc with little conservation value?? The short answer is YES (at least sometimes 0 see Ferraro piece). Example - when concerted mammal and fire monitoring data was collected and examined in NT they realised that their fire management was flawed and causing small mammal declines!!





So what if there actually ISN'T a counterfactual, or even, what if the counterfactuals available are not entirely appropriate?