Collaborative partnerships in rangeland management

I’m just back from this year’s Society for Range Management Annual meeting in Denver.

A big focus of talks and workshops at the meeting this year was collaboration among the many stakeholders that manage rangeland ecosystems. In line with this focus, Working Lands Conservation organized a symposium titled: Transforming Public Rangeland Management Through Collaborative Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships.

This focus on collaboration and partnerships at the SRM meeting was timely.

In rangeland management, we have some grand challenges. Things like how to sustainably manage these multi-use landscapes so they support livelihoods, while also providing environmental goods like clean water, wildlife habitat, and places for recreation. …Or how to control the spread of weeds like cheatgrass across landscapes managed by different groups, with different use goals, and different jurisdictional boundaries.

Solving these challenges is difficult both because of the scale of the management issues, and also because of the complex group of stakeholders that mange rangelands. These include stakeholders as varied as ranchers, agency managers, and research scientists. Each of these groups brings different values, culture, occupational jargon, and resources to the management table.

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Our six invited speakers discussed general principles and practices of collaboration, plus show-cased three collaboratives in the Intermountain West that are approaching rangeland management in novel ways. Our speaker line-up included:

  • Laura Van Riper, BLM: Social Scientist/ROGER facilitator – Collaboration Principles and Practices

  • Jon Griggs, Maggie Creek: Ranch Manager –Transforming Conflict and Fostering Collaborative Action: The Results Oriented Grazing for Ecological Resilience (ROGER) Collaborative

  • James Rogers, Winecup-Gamble Ranch: Ranch Manager & Liz Munn, The Nature Conservancy Sagebrush Ecosystem Program Manager – Collaborative development of outcome-based management alternatives: From value-scoping to policy creation

  • Taylor Payne, Utah Grazing Improvement Program: Regional Coordinator & Mellissa Wood, BLM: Sage-Grouse Plan Implementation Coordinator – The Three Creeks Grazing Project: Reimagining partnerships on public-lands from legal structures to adaptive management

If you are interested in learning more about these collaboratives and the work they are doing, you can find information here: ROGER, Three Creeks Grazing Project. You can also read a recent piece on collaboration across large landscapes written by Kris Hulvey (Working Land Conservation’s Lead Scientist) for the The California Society for Ecological Restoration (SERCAL) newsletter here.

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