Doctoral Dissertation Research: Community-Based Natural Resource Management for Wildlife

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the Northern Rocky Mountains region has experienced a population shift, often referred to as the New West or rural gentrification, in which wealthier people from other parts of the county move into a region historically home to a mostly white population engaged in ranching and extractive land uses such as mining, energy exploration, and logging. The population shift has coincided with the emergence of a number of conflicts over the proper relationship between humans and nature. Most research on wildlife and natural resource management comes from the natural sciences and applied natural science fields, often focusing either on technical solutions to natural resource management challenges, or on studies of attitudes toward wildlife. Existing scholarship on wildlife conflicts in North America and Europe focus on explaining why conflicts between people occur and persist, but not how they can be managed or resolved. This project will study a non-profit organization in a rural cattle ranching area in the Northern Rocky Mountains that uses citizen science and participatory natural resource management methods to prevent and mitigate human-wildlife conflict. The project will provide findings relevant to several aspects of social life and policy. First, by studying a case of successful wildlife management, the project will contribute to understanding the social components of how to resolve human conflicts around wildlife management and improve overall natural resource management. Second, the project will also contribute to understanding how and why farmers and ranchers adopt sustainable wildlife management methods. Third, the project will show how citizen science can improve the effectiveness of participatory natural resource management. Last, by examining a case in which a rural organization has promoted cooperation in a region that is divided and on an issue that causes polarization, this study can provide tools for reducing or resolving conflicts more generally. This project analyzes how an organization uses participatory methods to facilitate human-wildlife conflict reduction in an area in which humans clash over wildlife management and the proper relationship of humans to nature in general. The project will use case study ethnography to study a unique case of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). The project will triangulate data obtained through interviews, observations, organizational documents, and government data to compare individuals' accounts with their behavior, build a coherent narrative of how participants developed and implemented wildlife management practices over time, and to understand how this was interpreted from different vantage points. The project will analyze data by creating timelines, analyzing spoken texts and process tracing. Findings from the project will inform sociological theories of sustainable agriculture and natural resource management conflict and accommodation; they will also inform theories relating to social identity and participatory democracy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.