An ecosystem approach to managing public natural areas requires that land planners and managers thoroughly understand the stakeholders who live within these ecosystems and are emotionally connected to the lands. Building on previous research conducted on community attachment, place attachment, and sense of place, this article explores how local stakeholders in two areas of Florida identify with and account for the natural landscape within their sense of community. To better capture the physical-natural landscape element currently unaccounted for in community attachment research, researchers explored how stakeholders identified with their communities and examined their attitudes and behaviors regarding local public natural areas. Results show the physical-natural landscape is an important part of how stakeholders identify with their community. Stakeholders who frequently visit surrounding public natural areas and identify these areas as an important part of why they live in the area are likely to identify more with the physical-natural landscape of their community than the social-cultural elements of their community. Determining how stakeholders identify with their community (natural landscape or social elements), offers public land managers a better understanding of the role the areas they manage play in local stakeholders' daily lives, and how to best communicate with those stakeholders.
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