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Integrative conservation problem solving: the policy sciences as a tool to bridge the natural and social sciencesorganized by Richard Wallace (Ursinus College), Tim Clark (Yale University), and Murray Rutherford (Simon Fraser University)IMPROVING CONSERVATION BIOLOGY THROUGH INTEGRATING BIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: NEEDS, METHODS, EXAMPLES, AND OPPORTUNITIES Tim Clark, Murray Rutherford, Richard Wallace, and David Mattson, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA (TC), School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada (MR), Environmental Studies Program, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA (RW), USGS Southwest Biological Science Center, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA (DM) It can be reasonably expected that a fully integrated approach to conservation will be more effective than partial or single disciplinary approaches. This raises two questions: (1) what is to be integrated and how should it be integrated? and (2) how to develop skills to be genuinely integrative (interdisciplinary), as opposed to superficially multi-disciplinary? These will be answered using theory, cases, and experience. Theory comes from the policy sciences. Cases and experience include parks in Latin America, koalas in Australia, grizzly bears in Canada, and wildlife (antelope) migrations / ecosystem management in the United States. Moving from fragmented approaches toward integrative ones may require changes in knowledge, epistemology, and skills for some people—a shift in paradigms of practice. To address the biodiversity loss problems successfully, we must be clear about our goals and the alternatives to achieve them, and integrative approaches are one of these. We must learn from experience, and we must continue to employ state-of-the-art principles and practices. CONSERVATION CONUNDRUMS: UNRAVELING SOCIAL PROCESS IN COMMUNITY-BASED CONSERVATION PETER WILSHUSEN, Environmental Studies Program, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA, pwilshus@bucknell.edu Community-based conservation (CBC) constitutes one of the principal strategies for joining biodiversity conservation with sustainable development worldwide. Since CBC tends to focus on remote agrarian regions, it produces interesting social encounters among rural communities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international conservation organizations, donor agencies, and government bureaucracies. More often than not, these interactions produce tensions that lead to delays, cost overruns, open conflict, and even abandonment of conservation and development projects. This paper will unravel key elements of social process associated with CBC initiatives in Mexico and Colombia to illustrate how a greater understanding of political dynamics can help to diffuse the inevitable conflicts of interest that arise in these settings. WHAT THE HISTORY OF THE MARINE MAMMAL PROTECTION ACT TEACHES US ABOUT INNOVATION IN U.S. GOVERNMENT CONSERVATION RICHARD WALLACE and Kathryn Semmens, Environmental Studies Program, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA, rwallace@ursinus.edu The U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (MMPA) is a flagship statute in natural resource conservation, codifying for the first time in U.S. history many provisions of species and ecosystem conservation, and serving as the basis for the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973. Among the most influential provisions of the MMPA are those that mandate an ecosystem approach to research and management and create and delineate the responsibilities of the Marine Mammal Commission (MMC), an agency designed explicitly to provide integrative appraisal of actions under the MMPA. The MMPA’s introduction into federal resource management of both large-scale ecological conservation and an explicit appraisal function were trendsetting proposals at the time and remain profoundly influential in federal conservation. MMPA history provides important lessons to conservation practitioners, both within and outside the marine mammal conservation arena, concerning how to address conservation from multiple perspectives, integrate scientific and social processes in decision making, and utilize empirical evaluative methods. We will provide a brief history of the implementation of the MMPA’s ecosystem-level mandates and the operations of the MMC in order to illustrate the foresight of the framers of the MMPA in addressing the challenges of 21st century conservation. OVERSIGHT TO INSIGHT: THE U.S. MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION AS A PROTOTYPE OF GOVERNMENT EVALUATION KATHRYN SEMMENS and Richard Wallace, Environmental Studies Program, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA, kasemmens@ursinus.edu The Marine Mammal Commission (MMC), created under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (MMPA) to provide oversight for federal programs relating to marine mammal conservation and management, serves a unique function not seen elsewhere in the conservation field. Since the MMC’s creation there have been several successes to which the MMC has given substantial contribution. The MMC is a unique model with three Commissioners, a Scientific Committee, and a regular staff. Though small and with a limited budget, the MMC is able to initiate action and influence through quick action not tied down by bureaucracy or politics. The MMC is also a superb facilitator with proven success in collaborative efforts and in gathering all stakeholders together to share information. The MMC model is a prototype that we believe would greatly benefit conservation programs under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). By applying the model to several endangered species cases (the black-footed ferret and the dusky seaside sparrow) we will illustrate the benefits of having such an oversight agency within the Endangered Species Act (ESA) arena. The ESA owes much of its language and structure to the MMPA, but the idea of an oversight agency was not carried over. Changing this and implementing the MMC prototype will improve the success of the ESA and contribute to the conservation of endangered species. SEARCHING FOR GREATER YELLOWSTONE’S SCIENCE POLICY: A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION INTO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE, SOCIETY, AND NATURE DAVID CHERNEY, Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative, Jackson, WY, USA, david@nrccooperative.org There is little room for argument that science holds a privileged place in natural resource policy. We depend on science to provide a trustworthy body of knowledge for the formulation of sound policy. However, in most high-profile cases in Greater Yellowstone (e.g., grizzly bears, wolves, ungulate migrations, disease, fire ecology), the translation from sound science to sound policy does not occur. Often this failure is blamed on misguided “politics” and “values.” In response, we typically observe scientists engaging in boundary work to insulate science from politics. I suggest that this failure of translation in Greater Yellowstone is not simply due to politics or values. Rather, it is our misguided dependence on the linear model of science. The role of science in policy is more complex than simply producing a reservoir of objective knowledge for decision making. As such, a more sophisticated solution is necessary. I suggest confronting these “problematic” aspects of the policy process in a context-sensitive science. Context-sensitive science recognizes that in highly politicized situations it is impossible to separate science from politics and values. To ensure an effective relationship between science, society, and nature, a context-sensitive strives to be policy relevant. It focuses on clarifying and securing a range of potential policy options, in contrast to favoring a single solution. INTERDISCIPLINARY PROBLEM SOLVING FOR GRIZZLY BEAR CONSERVATION IN THE BANFF-BOW VALLEY REGION OF ALBERTA, CANADA MURRAY RUTHERFORD and Mike Gibeau, School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada(MR), Parks Canada and University of Calgary, Lake Louise, AB, Canada (MG), mbr@sfu.ca We used the policy sciences as an organizing framework for a series of three workshops with stakeholders in the Banff-Bow Valley region on interdisciplinary problem solving in grizzly bear conservation and management. In recent years, bear conservation in this region has been hindered by acrimonious disputes about scientific knowledge and its application in management. The workshops introduced the policy sciences as a means of thinking more effectively about problems, and encouraged participants to use these new skills to find innovative solutions to the problems of grizzly bear conservation. We set the stage for the workshops by conducting a Q method study of stakeholders’ existing views about the problems of bear management and possible solutions. Each of the workshops then addressed a different component of the policy sciences framework: (1) Problem Orientation, in which participants learned to construct more comprehensive and useful problem definitions; (2) Social Process Mapping, where they identified key variables in the political and administrative context for bear conservation; and (3) Decision Process Mapping, where they evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the existing decision-making processes (including how conservation science is used in decisions) and recommended alternatives for improvement. We discuss the design and outcomes of the workshops and assess their effectiveness in integrating knowledge to find common ground for grizzly bear conservation. CONFLICT OVER CARNIVORES: A WINDOW ON NATURAL RESOURCES GOVERNANCE DAVID MATTSON, USGS Southwest Biological Science Center, Colorado Plateau Research Station, Flagstaff, AZ, USA, David.Mattson@nau.edu Conflict over management of large carnivores has intensified in the United States and promises to continue intensifying if institutions and participants’ demands do not change. The challenge is to create adaptive and civil policy processes that serve human dignity and societal common interests. I examine state-level management of hunted cougars (Puma concolor) and federal-level management of protected grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) to illustrate currently problematic conditions and to ground recommendations for improvement of institutions and processes. In the case of cougars, agency cultures, reliance on hunting-related revenues, and composition of governing commissions lead most state game management agencies to prioritize service of agrarian and utilitarian hunting interests, often identified as “clients” under a business model of governance. In the case of grizzly bears, extra-regional political elites and the U.S. Endangered Species Act empower those promoting conservation. Opposing utilitarian interests are empowered by an ideologically homogenous block of regional political elites. In both the cougar and grizzly bear cases, conditions have fostered antipathy, polarization, and conflict, largely organized around symbolic rather than pragmatic considerations, and exacerbated by a bureaucratic model of governance. I recommend finer-scale institutions focused on practical rather than symbolic issues to foster civil discourse. LESSONS FROM INTEGRATIVE CONSERVATION RICHARD WALLACE, Tim Clark, Murray Rutherford, and David Mattson, Environmental Studies Program, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA (RW), School of Forestry and Enviornmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA (TC), School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Brunaby, BC, Canada (MR), USGS Southwest Biological Science Center, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA (DM), rwallace@ursinus.edu Cases in conservation problem solving help us learn how to improve future efforts. In the field of integrative conservation—where experience is limited due to the lack of a long history of successful integration—highlighting existing cases with heuristic value is needed to build a foundation from which to learn and improve experience. Several lessons emerge from cases of integrative conservation problem solving in the policy sciences: integration requires practitioners who are skilled at discerning and delineating both the social and ecological complexity that often confounds conservation; that integration will allow for a greater understanding of the relationships between conservation and these social and ecological processes; there are opportunities for creating prototypes of successes that are generalizable; that successful integration involves collaborative sharing and exploring of diverse fields of knowledge by practitioners who share at least a common understanding of conservation goals; that integration provides a greater likelihood that conservation problems will be accurately understood; that integration will more fully address the values and perspectives of participants in a given conservation problem; and that integration more effectively promotes the formation of alternatives to address problems than do partial or piecemeal (i.e., disciplinary, or non-integrated) approaches to conservation. | |||||||||||||||||
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