Contrasting visions of science in ecological restoration: Expert-lay dynamics between professional practitioners and volunteers

Abstract

a b s t r a c tEcological restoration as a popular form of volunteer participation has been praised as an example of democratic natural resource management. However, the involvement of volunteers in projects guided by professionals does not necessarily ensure democratic knowledge exchange and production. Drawing insights from citizen science and political ecology, this paper investigates the role of science in mediating the dynamics between professional practitioners and volunteers. Using case studies of ecological restoration programs at two university arboreta in the American Midwest, this paper argues that the contrasting visions of science between professional practitioners and volunteers led to conflicts and presented challenges for the institutions to genuinely engage the public in contributing local knowledge and framing management priorities. While both groups emphasized the practical aspect of science in guiding restoration work, they differed in how they conceptualized the role of humans in restoration, work priorities, and how to apply scientific theories and methods in restoration. Moreover, at the university arboreta, science defined institutional identity and claims to scientific authority further delineated boundaries between professional practitioners and volunteers. As a result, distrust, tensions, lack of engagement, and different levels of desired public participation existed in these seemingly participatory programs. Theoretically, this paper contributes to the cross-fertilization between citizen science and political ecology by underscoring the politics of participation and the role of science (and its interpretations) in challenging expert-lay dynamics in environmental volunteering programs. Practical recommendations are included for deconstructing the expert-lay hierarchy and moving restoration toward a democratic practice.

The Community-Conservation Conundrum: Is Citizen Science the Answer?

“…The generalised aims and objectives may reflect a gap identified in other studies (e.g., [52]) between a professional perspective of ecological restoration (e.g., that of a government agency, with a legislative obligation to focus on the scientific foundations of restoration), and a community perspective where general restoration objectives support social environmental benefits that avocational participants relate to. Avocational volunteers (or lay ecological restorationists [16,93]) have been shown to conceptualise restoration differently to ecological professionals [52].…”

“…Avocational volunteers (or lay ecological restorationists [16,93]) have been shown to conceptualise restoration differently to ecological professionals [52]. However, we believe that, despite the general language used in the community groups' goals and aims, the key words and multi-word expressions can still be aligned to the broad attributes of ecological restoration (Table 3).…”

“…In a study of ecological restoration groups in New Zealand [24], at least 75% were involved in animal pest control. Should communities embark on ambitious habitat restoration projects that involve killing unwanted organisms, they will lurch unsuspectingly into the realm of "wicked" problems [49,50], which are those with complex and interconnected components, uncertain biological and social outcomes, which may operate over short or long time-scales, have ambiguous definition of scope and boundaries, and be subject to controversy and locally variable social constraints [38,51,52].…”

Practitioners' viewpoints on citizen science in water management: a case study in Dutch regional water resource management

“…Rotman et al, 2012). Weng (2015) identifies three areas of friction between the vision of scientists and volunteers with regard to citizen science. The first area of friction is often short-term participation of volunteers that conflicts with scientists' interest in long-term processes.…”

“…First, scientists are concerned with scientific data collection (Rotman et al, 2012), while practitioners are often interested in improving management practices (Weng, 2015) and government agencies are concerned with policymaking (Hollow et al, 2015). Second, the different role of authorities leads to different expectations.…”