Bridging the divide : incorporating local ecological knowledge into U.S. natural resource management

Abstract

For the past 100 years, natural resource management in the United States has reflected a belief that the top-down application of science to predict and control the natural world will, in the words of Gifford Pinchot, the Nation's first head of the U.S. Forest Service, "support the wise use of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men." However, over the past two decades, a growing number of critics have challenged the technocratic optimism of this "conventional management", arguing that the public should be more deeply engaged in the decision-making that drives natural resource management and policy. Part of the rationale for this argument is based on the growing recognition that Western, scientific management has discounted the value of local ecological knowledge (LEK), a system of knowledge developed over time through observation and interaction with the natural environment. Although advocates have expounded the benefits of using LEK, in practice, LEK is rarely integrated into the scientific assessments that drive management decisions. To understand what affects whether or not LEK is incorporated into management science, this thesis examines: 1. What are the particular barriers to integrating LEK into management science? 2. When LEK is integrated into management science, why is it used and how are specific barriers to its use overcome? These questions are addressed through an intensive examination of two U.S. cases: the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan in Pima County, Arizona and the evolution of fishery management science in the New England groundfishery. This study confirms academics and practitioners' claims that a major barrier to incorporating LEK is a "language" divide: LEK is rarely presented in scientific terms and thus it is difficult for scientists to understand its relevance or confirm its accuracy.

(cont.) Furthermore, scientific studies are often too complex for untrained locals to understand and thus engage with. However, this study also reveals that conflicting interests and values between scientists and bearers of LEK are not only common in resource management, but also significantly discourage knowledge exchange by embedding risk in the very acts of eliciting and divulging LEK. Furthermore, although individuals who are able "translate" between the local and scientific communities can overcome the language divide, interest and value conflicts are rarely overcome by similar translation. Instead, this analysis suggests that incentives must be created to encourage the sharing and eliciting of LEK and outweigh the associated perceived risks. Collaborative research programs in the New England fishery provide one such model. Based on these findings, recommendations for improving knowledge sharing and incorporating LEK into natural resource management are made