Reconciling Social and Biological Needs in an Endangered Ecosystem: the Palouse as a Model for Bioregional Planning

Abstract

The Palouse region of southeastern Washington State and an adjacent portion of northern Idaho is a working landscape dominated by agricultural production, with less than 1% of the original bunchgrass prairie remaining. Government agencies and conservation groups have begun efforts to conserve Palouse prairie remnants, but they lack critical information about attitudes and perceptions among local landowners toward biological conservation. Knowledge about the location and condition of native biological communities also remains sparse. Using a bioregional approach, we integrated data collected through biological surveys and social interviews to investigate relationships between biologically and socially meaningful aspects of the landscape. We combined GIS layers of participant-identified meaningful places with maps of native biological communities to identify the overlap between these data sets. We used these maps and interview narratives to interpret how stakeholder perceptions of the landscape corresponded with patterns of native biodiversity. We found several prominent landscape features on the Palouse that supported diverse biological communities and were important to stakeholders for multiple reasons. These places may be expedient focal points for conservation efforts. However, the many small prairie remnants on the Palouse, although ecologically important, were mostly unidentified by participants in this study and thus warrant a different conservation approach. These findings will assist government agencies and conservation groups in crafting conservation strategies that consider stakeholder perceptions and their connection with the Palouse landscape. This study also demonstrates how GIS tools can link biological and social data sets to aid conservation efforts on private land.

The use of public participation GIS (PPGIS) for park visitor management: A case study of mountain biking

“…In PPGIS mapping, information is solicited by requesting participants to identify and mark locations on a map about perceived place attributes. PPGIS mapping may be administered in the field (e.g., private homes, park visitor centres) through mail surveys (Brown, 2004), stakeholder workshops (Donovan et al, 2009) or personal interviews and surveys (Donovan et al, 2009;Raymond et al, 2009) that typically use a hardcopy form of data collection. In contrast, internet-based implementations of PPGIS mapping, as advertised through mass media, email lists or online panels have numerous advantages (as reviewed by Pocewicz, Nielsen-Pincus, Brown, & Schnitzer, 2012) especially in the reduction of costs and the increased efficiency of data collection and entry (Couper & Miller, 2008).…”

Rethinking the Landscape: New Theoretical Perspectives for a Powerful Agency

“…These two elements are tangible, measurable, can be managed by local governmental actions, and can supplement economic accounting (e.g. Donovan et al 2009). …”

The native bee fauna of the Palouse Prairie (Hymenoptera: Apoidea)

“…Additionally, one species of bumble bee listed as vulnerable [B. morrisoni Cresson (Hatfield et al, 2014)] and one listed as critically endangered [B. suckleyi Greene (Hatfield et al, 2015)] were not observed in this survey, despite likely past records of occurrence (GBIF, 2015). The Palouse Prairie is a unique region that has been heavily impacted through fragmentation and habitat loss caused by conversion to agriculture (Donovan et al, 2009). This study adds bees to this list of distinctive and diverse Palouse fauna and contributes to our limited but growing knowledge of the bees of the inland Northwest.…”