Conservation Program Participation and Adaptive Rangeland Decision-Making

This paper analyzes rancher participation in conservation programs in the context of a social-ecological framework for adaptive rangeland decision-making. We argue that conservation programs are best understood as one of many strategies of adaptively managing rangelands in ways that sustain liveliho...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Rangeland ecology & management 2013-11, Vol.66 (6), p.609-620
Main Authors: Lubell, M. N., Cutts, B. B., Roche, L. M., Hamilton, M., Derner, J. D., Kachergis, E., Tate, K. W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural management
California
citizen participation
Conservation programs
Decision making
ecosystem services
Ecosystems
Environmental protection
Information resources
livelihood
logit analysis
management
Natural resources conservation
Opinion leaders
Participation
public opinion
ranchers
Ranching
Range management
Rangeland ecology
rangelands
Research s
social behavior
Social networking
social networks
surveys
Sustainability
Sustainable agriculture
Tax assessments
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper analyzes rancher participation in conservation programs in the context of a social-ecological framework for adaptive rangeland decision-making. We argue that conservation programs are best understood as one of many strategies of adaptively managing rangelands in ways that sustain livelihoods and ecosystem services. The framework hypothesizes four categories of variables affecting conservation program participation: operation/operator characteristics, time horizon, social network connections, and social values. Based on a mail survey of California ranchers, multinomial logit models are used to estimate the impact of these variables on different levels of rancher involvement in conservation programs. The findings suggest that ranchers with larger amounts of land, an orientation towards the future, and who are opinion leaders with access to conservation information, are more likely to participate in conservation programs.
ISSN:1550-7424
1551-5028
DOI:10.2111/REM-D-13-00025.1