A guideline for ecological risk management procedures

A practical guideline for community-level ecological risk management is proposed, with particular emphasis on the mutual interdependencies of the scientific analysis, public consensus building, and an adaptive management. The procedure we recommend spans the screening of potential ecological risks, the involvement of related stakeholders, the conceptual development from the undesired event over assessment endpoints to measures of effect and stress factors, the risk assessment for the no-action case, the planning phase from the public decision to become active and the setting of goals over a specification of monitoring and control methods to an assessment of feasibility and a public approval of the management plan and finally the adaptive management from initiation over continued monitoring to revisions of the plan, if required. The procedure contains several checkpoints, alternative routes, and possibilities to correct previous decisions.