Influences of Society, Politics and Local Knowledge on Ranch Management
PI: Steve Woods, School of Natural Resources and the Environment and the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Arid Land Resources (Steve Archer, Advisor)
Co-PI: George Ruyle, Extension Specialist
Funding Agency: USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program
Amount: $25,000
The practical importance of understanding land management as a combination of
human and ecological systems is increasingly recognized. Rancher decision
making likely relies on both science-based and locally acquired knowledge of
the natural environment. Choices can be constrained by public perceptions and
threats of legal action to control ranchers’ use of public lands, an essential component to ranching in Arizona. However, with the exception of economics and policy, the human dimension has rarely been integrated with U.S. ranch management and ecology.
The goal of this project is to better understand the influences on ranch management of society, politics and local environmental knowledge. The views and experiences of ranchers, university extension personnel and government land agency staff will be compared with regard to the natural and social environments of ranch management. These views will be validated against a detailed environmental history of one ranch. In so doing we should better understand whether formal planning would be improved by accounting for political, legal and social pressures on the decision making process, and by incorporating different understandings of the natural environment.
Rangeland trend monitoring and the forage utilization concept are the focus of
rangeland extension, coordinating agencies’ and ranchers’ collaborative
efforts to support conservation ranching in Arizona. This project should
clarify whether such formal planning would be improved by accounting for
political, legal and social pressures on the decision making process, and by
incorporating different understandings of the natural environment.
For more information contact Steve Archer at sarcher@ag.arizona.edu.
