Public Perceptions of Sagebrush Ecosystem Management in the Great Basin

Shindler, Bruce; Gordon, Ryan; Brunson, Mark W.; Olsen, Christine S.

doi:10.2111/rem-d-10-00012.1

Cited by 45 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 42 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In Missouri, respondents only slightly agreed that the government did a good job of communicating about forest issues (Vogt et al 2007). Shindler et al (2011) found that the majority of respondents from the Great Basin in the western United States gave low ratings to government outreach efforts. A similar study in the Midwest found slightly more positive views; roughly equal proportions either agreed, disagreed, had a neutral opinion, or had no opinion about whether the Forest Service was doing a good job of providing information about its management activities, being open to public input in management decisions, and building trust and cooperation with citizens (Shindler et al 2009).…”

Section: Trusted Sources Of Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research perspectives on the public and fire management: a synthesis of current social science on eight essential questions

McCaffrey¹,

Olsen²

2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As part of a Joint Fire Science Program project, a team of social scientists reviewed existing fire social science literature to develop a targeted synthesis of scientific knowledge on the following questions: 1. What is the public's understanding of fire's role in the ecosystem? 2. Who are trusted sources of information about fire? 3. What are the public's views of fuels reduction methods, and how do those views vary depending on citizens' location in the wildland-urban interface or elsewhere? 4. What is the public's understanding of smoke effects on human health, and what shapes the public's tolerance for smoke? 5. What are homeowners' views of their responsibilities for home and property protection and mitigation, e.g., defensible space measures? 6. What role does human health and safety play in the public's perceptions of fire and fire management? 7. What are the public's views on the role and importance of costs in wildfire incident response decisions? 8. To the extent that information is available, how do findings differ among ethnic and cultural groups, and across regions of the country?Despite limited fire research specific to the questions on costs, and human health and safety, common findings on all these interrelated topics are summarized in this document. Research has found that the public has a fairly sophisticated understanding of fire's ecological role and the environmental factors that can increase fire risk. The public obtains information on fire from a wide variety of sources, but findings consistently show that interactive information sources are both generally preferred and more effective than unidirectional sources. As a way to improve ecosystem health and reduce fire risk, active land management generally has greater citizen support than a no-action alternative. Most respondents accept the practice of prescribed fire for active forest management and tolerate the accompanying smoke; in contrast, smoke is a highly salient issue for households with health concerns. The public tends to see mitigating the fire risk as a shared responsibility with landowners, whether public or private, responsible for taking appropriate action on their own property. Cost figures in to citizens' decisionmaking about actions to protect property before a wildfire but may be less of a priority during incident response. Except for ethnicity or race, little evidence was found of meaningful variation in public response to fire management based on socio-demographic characteristics or geographic variation.

show abstract

Section: Trusted Sources Of Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research perspectives on the public and fire management: a synthesis of current social science on eight essential questions

McCaffrey¹,

Olsen²

2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For this reason, it is often difficult to set scientific goals for restoration projects. Therefore, restoration efforts require an understanding of community values and preferences, which are highly context-dependent (Shindler et al 2011) and should necessitate a participatory process to identify goals and aspirations for the site (Schaich 2009;Schultz et al 2012). For example, Alam (2011) found that people's willingness to pay for restoration of a river in Bangladesh varies with their proximity to resources, their length of residence in the area, and their depth of experience with the area.…”

Section: Social Value Could Influence the Objectives Of Restoration Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Restoring ecosystem services on private farmlands: Lessons from economics

Iftekhar¹,

Polyakov²,

Gibson³

2016

Learning From Agri-Environment Schemes in Australia: Investing in Biodiversity and Other Ecosystem Services on Farms

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…The distinct differences in how alternative restoration treatments function on the landscape present opportunities for managers to select different tools for particular purposes, especially given the fact that the public will generally accept the types of treatments studied by SageSTEP (Shindler et al 2011;Gordon et al 2014), if circumstances are believed to warrant it.…”

Section: Fire Vs Fire Surrogatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There may be circumstances in which managers determine it is worthwhile for ecological reasons to treat an invaded site in an effort to increase resilience to fire, even if the economic equation doesn't come out in favor of treatment. Similarly, because herbicide application is the least socially acceptable treatment (Shindler et al 2011;Gordon et al 2014), managers may opt against applying imazapic as part of a restoration treatment in an especially sensitive location, even though doing so could have benefits for suppressing reinvasion by cheatgrass. Acceptance of treatment options depends not only on public perceptions of trade-offs between ecosystem health and risks to rangeland values, but even more so on their trust in land managers to apply the treatments safely and effectively (Gordon et al 2014).…”

Section: Trade-offsmentioning

confidence: 99%