Local ecological learning: creating place-based knowledge through collaborative wildlife research on private lands

Abstract

Wildlife on private land is under threat from anthropogenic drivers including climate change, invasive species, and habitat loss. Effective management of private lands for wildlife conservation requires locally relevant knowledge about wildlife populations, habitat condition, threatening ecological processes, and social drivers of and barriers to conservation. Collaborative socio-ecological research can inform wildlife management by integrating the local ecological and social knowledge of private landholders with the scientific and applied knowledge of researchers and practitioners. In privately owned landscapes, landholders are an often-overlooked source of local ecological knowledge, which develops and changes through continuous interaction and engagement with their environment and community. Here we report on a transdisciplinary socio-ecological research collaboration called WildTracker involving 160 landholders in Tasmania, Australia. This wildlife-focused citizen science project generated and integrated local ecological and social knowledge in the research process. The project gathered quantitative and qualitative data on wildlife ecology, land management practices, and landholder learning via wildlife cameras, sound recorders, workshops, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. Through this on-going collaboration, landholders, researchers, and conservation practitioners established relationships based on mutual learning, gathering, and sharing knowledge and insights about wildlife conservation. Our project highlights how local ecological knowledge develops and changes continuously through processes of enquiry and interaction with other knowledge holders including researchers and conservation practitioners. Collaborative enquiry involving landholders and researchers can produce rich cultural and ecological insights derived from the direct experience and observation of landholders, complementing quantitative assessments of wildlife populations and habitat condition.