Human Dimensions of Fisheries & Wildlife Management

1. Human Dimensions ofFisheries & Wildlife Management Steve L. McMullin

2. Natural resource management is “The manipulation of organismal populations, their habitats, and people to achieve specific human objectives” Habitat Organisms People

3. Management of people has several dimensions. . People Social Dimension Economic Dimension Political Dimension Legal Dimension

4. What famous people say about human dimensions of natural resource mgmt. “To begin with, I had to know something about the people, the country and the trees. And of the three, the first was the most important.” Gifford Pinchot

5. Famous people (cont.) “The problem of game management is not how we shall handle the deer… the real problem is one of human management. Wildlife management is comparatively easy; human management difficult.” Aldo Leopold

6. Famous people (cont.) “Our most neglected and crucial research needs are those concerning human social behavior.” Durward Allen

7. What is Human Dimensions? “The challenge of understanding and clarifying stakeholders’ perspectives on [resource] management programs and issues, and systematically incorporating such insight into decision making.”   Decker and Enck 1996 Stakeholder: anyone who will be affected by a management decision or action, or who thinks he/she will be affected

8. Who are stakeholders? Stakeholdersare people who stand to benefit from or be negatively affected by management decisions or actions. -including those who believe they will be affected -and those who don’t know they will be affected

9. Four Major Human Dimensions Concerns For Fish & Wildlife managers Decker and Enck (1996) • Identify stakeholders • Understand forces affecting stakeholder participation in fish &wildlife related activities • Involving stakeholders in management decision making • Weighting disparate stakeholder input in management decisions

10. Identifying and Understanding Stakeholders • Probably the most important and critical HD need for successful management • Who are the stakeholders? • What are their attitudes & opinions regarding conservation of fish and wildlife?

11. Understanding Forces Affecting Participation • Traditionally focused on participation in hunting & fishing • Nonconsumptive activities gaining greater importance • Motivation, specialization, what constitutes a “quality experience”

12. Involving stakeholders or obtaining input for decision making • Social science methods to gauge public opinion • Assist managers in making decisions

13. Weight disparate stakeholder input in making decisions • Stakeholders are diverse • HD info should not be used to make resource management a process of counting votes • Not a substitute for professional judgment and management in the public interest • Need to understand your values & those of the stakeholders

14. “Good biology is needed to set bounds on what is possible, but biology alone does not tell us what is best for the many stakeholders served by the manager.” Decker and Enck (1996)

15. Case Study: Montana’s Bighorn River

16. When You Think of Montana…

17. Perhaps You Think of Winter

18. But Half of Montana is Prairie

19. Yellowtail Dam created trout habitat And hatchery trucks created a trout fishery

20. A mixed fishery of brown trout and rainbow trout

21. Including some trophy sized fish!

22. Fishing pressure grew rapidly

23. The character of the fishery changed Percent of all anglers

24. Higher use and changing users created a controversy that had to be addressed

25. Fish Population Monitoring

26. We modeled effects of flows and regulations on fish populations What do these graphs suggest about potential management strategies?

27. What did we do?