“…Alternatively, the current engagement and interest of some rangeland landowners in mob grazing to manage Kentucky bluegrass may provide a fruitful area for more participatory research, building on existing experiments at the USDA-Agricultural Research Services-Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory. While potentially disheartening to rangeland scientists and managers interested in restoring fire to the northern Great Plains for a suite of additional ecological benefits, a step back from fire may allow for more authentic participatory exploration and co-creation of solutions that better account for existing values, beliefs, and management needs of North Dakota landowners (e.g., Sorice and Donlan 2015 ;DeLong et al 2022 ). Additionally, a sole focus to simultaneously overcome landowner ambivalence about Kentucky bluegrass, as well as entrenched negative beliefs about fire, may slow actors in the social-ecological system into a state of nonresponse.…”