A Management Framework for the Transition from Livestock Production toward Biodiversity Conservation on Great Plains Rangelands

Abstract

Management for biodiversity and other ecosystem services from North America's rangelands has received increasing attention as recognition of the societal value of those services and payment mechanisms for them have grown. This, combined with adverse effects of livestock management on North American rangeland biodiversity and predictions of a warmer and drier climate reducing rangeland productivity, has led some rangeland scientists to call for a paradigm shift from utilitarian-driven management to biodiversity conservation management. A challenge for rangeland science is to describe management changes required for this shift and to elucidate consequent ecological and economic tradeoffs. On the basis of two criteria, direct alteration of biodiversity and alteration of one or more drivers of biodiversity, a framework of ten ecological conditions is proposed for making the transition from livestock-centered management toward biodiversity-centered management on Great Plains rangelands: (1) composition and productivity of plant communities;(2) herbivory patterns; (3) fire regimes; (4) habitat contiguity; (5) stream hydrology; (6) temporal ecological variability; (7) herbivorous mammal communities; (8) fate of ungulate production; (9) apex predators; and (10) size of management units. Reflecting trends in rangelands elsewhere around the world, a shift toward management for biodiversity on the Great Plains may be facilitated by changes underway in land ownership and by a potentially increasing number of landowners for whom livestock production is of secondary importance to lifestyle and natural amenity benefits from the land.

Factors influencing ranchers’ intentions to manage for vegetation heterogeneity and promote cross-boundary management in the northern Great Plains

“…The result that the scale measuring attitudes toward heterogeneity strategies as originally developed did not have high reliability is likely related to the complexity of the concept of heterogeneity itself and the framework on which we based scale development (i.e., Freese et al 2014). Participants could easily hold positive attitudes about some aspects of heterogeneity and negative attitudes about others, without relating the attitudes directly to heterogeneity.…”

“…Exploratory information seeking is the search for information on various topics or products and may not Table 1. Scale developed following Freese et al (2014) to measure attitudes toward strategies for increasing vegetation heterogeneity. Constructs or management strategies are in the first column, items associated with each construct are in the second column.…”

“…Improved livestock distribution and grazing efficiency across the Northern Great Plains have led to structurally homogenous rangelands that greatly limit rangeland plant and animal biodiversity (Toombs et al 2010, Becerra et al 2013) and threatens ecosystem services and resilience (Hovick et al 2014, McGranahan et al 2018. Some range scientists are calling for a shift to managing rangeland ecosystems for structural heterogeneity and biodiversity at larger scales, rather than managing for grazing distribution at smaller scales; Fuhlendorf et al (2012) and Freese et al (2014) suggest that range beef cattle production is compatible with this shift.…”

“…The word "heterogeneity" was not used in our survey sent to producers because the management strategies that lead to heterogeneity in practice are likely more important than a direct attitude about heterogeneity. Thus, we developed a scale based on 8 of the 10 strategies proposed by Freese et al (2014) for managing for heterogeneity. Strategies included (1) composition and productivity of plant communities, (2) grazing patterns, (3) fire regimes, (4) habitat contiguity, (5) stream hydrology, (6) herbivorous mammal communities, (7) fate of ungulate production, and (8) predators.…”

Conserving socio-ecological landscapes: An analysis of traditional and responsive management practices for floodplain meadows in England

“…Debates revolve around not only clarity of survey design, aims and objectives, but also the relevance of much biodiversity monitoring to management decision-making (Danielsen et al, 2005), as well as more fundamental questions of what kind of data should be collected and the utility of expert versus experiential data (Fazey et al, 2006). Some authors have noted the need to close and tighten the adaptive management cycle (Uychiaoco et al, 2005;Carruthers et al, 2013), although the impacts of management operations are not always well understood (Crofts and Jefferson, 1999;Freese et al, 2014).…”