The Practice of Collaborative Conservation and Getting Stuff Done on the Ground
Todd Graham1
1Ranch Advisory Partners, Manhattan, MT, USA; tgraham@ranchadvisory.com
Successful stewardship of natural resources is becoming increasingly complex with greater occurrence of droughts and floods, heat and cold, fires, insect outbreaks, invasive species, and disease. Furthermore, public lands use in the Western US has substantially increased. With more people in the backcountry, wildlife are moving to private lands for shelter and placing more pressure on lands used in agriculture. The West is struggling to adapt fast enough.
It is time to expand the practice of collaborative resource stewardship to help manage this increased complexity. Instead of focusing on simply getting along with one another, we must expand our thinking across property boundaries, ecological entrepreneurship, and creating a learning organization capable of growing together through time. Resource managers, both public and private, seek a sense of belonging to a larger movement where they can share achievements, build trust, and work through mistakes. A collaborative stewardship group creates that sense of place.
When a group innovates and pursues new projects together, they should start at a small scale. Mistakes happen. But make them at a small scale and make them together, for the shared learning is highly important. Then, once group learning has occurred, scaling can follow resulting in larger shared successes. Only a slow process of group learning can produce the collective awareness required to successfully steward complex non-linear systems. In this presentation, I will highlight work in three western states that showcase a collaborative, innovative approach to conservation on private land that also happen to improve improve profitability. These will include successes and failures and strategies for interacting with interested groups.
Looking forward, a fundamental shift is required in the practice of conservation within these rapidly changing times. Historically, when working with landowners, conservation has been practiced on the balance sheet. Conservation easements, riparian projects, and habitat improvement projects are all items that affect a landowner’s balance sheet. But it’s time to begin focusing more on the income statement, helping stakeholders generate additional income and reduce expenses through conservation practices. Only then will widespread adoption of restorative conservation practices be embraced.