Re-thinking rural-amenity ecologies for environmental management in the Anthropocene

The migration of lifestyle-orientated landholders (amenity migrants) to rural landscapes is resulting in the production of new rural ecologies. To date, the future implications of these ecologies for environmental management have been framed largely in 'traditional' conservation biology terms, focusing on how we can conserve or restore natural environments to a past ecological benchmark. However, the Anthropocene provides an opportunity to critically examine how we can progress environmental management in a way that locates ecologies as emergent products of human-environment interaction through time. We extend from Tim Ingold's work on wayfaring to position people and plants in environmental management as cohabitants who are traversing a world that is continually in the making. We conducted qualitative research in the hinterlands of Melbourne, Australia, involving narrative interviews with landholders and walking their property with them, using a form of participant observation called the 'walkabout' method. We found that the conservation aspirations of amenity migrants were mediated by the landscape histories that were embodied in the plants they engaged with on their property. These embodied landscape histories served to structure the trajectory of ecological emergence in which landholders were a part. We develop the concept of 'landscape legacy' to explain how past actions and future aspirations come together in management practice to produce novel and often unanticipated ecologies. Landscape legacy grounds the Anthropocene in everyday environments, capturing the need to progress environmental management as a wild experiment in rural-amenity landscapes, focusing on ecological form, function, relationship and process

The practice of conservation management in rural-amenity landscapes: a dwelt human-environment perspective

Rural regions once dominated by productive agriculture in many post-industrial nations are experiencing an increasing transition towards non-productive land use. This transition has raised community and academic concern over potential environmental impacts to rural land. However, strong interest in conservation issues amongst rural-amenity in-migrants has supported a counter narrative of positive ecological implications. I argue there is a gap in this debate on the ecological implications of rural-amenity migration; limited attention has been paid to how amenity in-migrants actually practice land management on their property. To address this gap, the key question of my research is ‘How do social and landscape interactions shape the practices and outcomes of land management in rural-amenity landscapes?’ This work has implications for environmental policy amidst the changing land use and social dynamics of rural-amenity landscapes. This is particularly important in the face of increasing policy attention to conservation issues on private land. I concentrate on the growing political emphasis on voluntary conservation initiatives, addressing the limited understanding of how these programs are actually operationalised by landholders on the ground. To investigate the primary research question, an ethnographically-inspired case study project was undertaken in the hinterland regions of Melbourne, Australia. Narrative interviews and property-walks comprised the primary data collection methods. Interviews with staff involved in conservation policy, and reviews of policy documents provided supporting material. Landholders involved in three different voluntary conservation schemes (representing three distinct policy approaches) were targeted, as well as a non-participant cohort. My research found that the strong amenity values held by participants underscored individualised, property-centric management aspirations. This resulted in preferred channels for knowledge generation that favoured experiential learning and communities of practice. Little knowledge for informing management was shared between neighbours in an effort to avoid neighbourly conflict. Over time, this knowledge settled into a durable disposition for stewardship that reflected a prevailing tendency for either ‘active’ or ‘passive’ management. Dynamic ecologies were being created on private land as landholders navigated the tensions between their diverse aspirations for management and land use. This dynamism was seen in the way ecologies were spatially and temporally enacted; boundaries around the home were created through ornamental nature plantings, while the ‘bring back’ of indigenous nature through revegetation was mediated by non-conservation amenity values. In adopting voluntary conservation schemes, landholders were pursuing creative conservation outcomes that accord with existing practices and ecologies, often departing from the biodiversity-centric objectives of the schemes. Of key interest was the adoption of market-based schemes to enhance regulatory protection for vegetation, rather than for financial reward. In exposing landholders’ desires for social and ecological outcomes through program participation, I suggest the need for a more humanistic approach to conservation policy in rural-amenity landscapes. Overall, my research shows how the ecologies of rural-amenity landscapes embody a negotiation of amenity values and stewardship, as landholders come to establish a new rural lifestyle. Advancing nature conservation policy in this context requires consideration of the diverse and multiple ways in which landholders create and value these ecologies

Dual Language Elementary Teacher Supports in Rocky Mountain Resort Communities

Dual language (DL) programs have been proven to increase student achievement (Thomas & Collier, 2002; Thomas, Collier, & Collier, 2010) but a gap remains in how to support teachers in their instruction of Spanish to both English home language and Spanish home language students. This mixed methods, explanatory, sequential design study was conducted in two Rocky Mountain resort communities in two school districts. Participants were chosen based on the research criterion of being DL elementary teachers in rural amenity-based destinations. The Guiding Principles for Dual-language Education (Howard et al., 2018) was used as the conceptual framework. Data were obtained from three sources: an online survey using demographic data, the Guiding Principles for Dual-language Education, face-to-face interviews, and field notes. The online survey was sent to 116 elementary DL teachers in eight schools; 44 participants responded. In the follow-up face-to-face interviews, eight participants were interviewed. Data from the online survey were triangulated with transcripts from the interviews and field notes. The main results from this study revealed elementary dual language teachers in rural amenity destinations identified several important supports related to the implementation and maintenance of a successful DL: support through human interaction such as principals and coordinators, collaboration time, a collaborative culture, PTA/conferences, family, and community. Teachers recognized they would feel more supported if needed or desired supports were not lacking. A lack of Spanish resources and retaining qualified Spanish teachers were identified as having an impact on both English and Spanish DL elementary teachers. The implications of sharing the identified supports of this study could illuminate educators regarding the implementation or maintenance of DL programs

We Didn\u27t Move Here to Move to Aspen : Community Making and Community Development in an Emerging Rural Amenity Destination

Residents of high amenity rural areas in the U.S. are grappling with the community-level impacts of their small towns increasingly becoming destinations for in-migrants, seasonal residents, and tourists. This case study of an emerging destination uses alterity theory to examine how amenity migration affects residents\u27 community making and subsequently their community development efforts. Residents tend to see their community as divided into two social groups based upon opposed stances towards development; one resistant to any form of change and the other open. The \u27Keepers\u27 are seen as stuck in their ways and closed to any form of development while the \u27Changers\u27 are perceived as trying to change too much and turn the community into a more established amenity destination - like Aspen - through various local development projects. In-depth interviews with residents and observations in one amenity destination show how two groups exist and differ along key social and demographic dimensions, but how residents\u27 interests in community development are more intertwined than they assume. The negative perceptions that residents have of each other, however, have real consequences for the town because it fosters misunderstandings, prevents cooperation, and inhibits the building of social capital which prevents integrated community development efforts. Specifically, it creates the reality and perception that various development projects do not have everyone\u27s support or input and it has prevented some efforts from occurring at all. This research provides rural sociologists and community developers with a more nuanced understanding of how the growing trend of amenity migration can shape residents\u27 daily interactions as well as overarching community development efforts

Land Ownership Change in Rural NSW: Riverina Transect Report

The Riverina transect report is an output from the Australian Research Council Linkage Project ‘The impacts of land ownership change on rural social and economic change’ (LP170101125) undertaken by the University of Sydney in partnership with the NSW Department of Primary Industries. Research reported here has the approval of the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (Protocols 2018/020 and 2019/749). This report is one of four transect reports covering different regions of NSW. The aim of the broader project is to identify and explain key trends in the spatial and temporal patterns of changes in the ownership of land in rural NSW. The core component for achieving this objective is the construction of a unique, research-ready, spatially informed database that records and maps every land transaction in rural NSW over the 16-year period from January 2004 to January 2020

Participatory Planning for a Promised Land: Citizen-Led, Comprehensive Land Use Planning in New York’s Adirondack Park

New York’s Adirondack Park is internationally recognized for its biological diversity. Greater in size than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon National Park combined, the Adirondacks are the largest protected area within the Northern Appalachian/Acadian Eco-Region and within the contiguous United States. Ecologists, residents of the Park, and others are concerned about rapid land use change occurring within the borders of the Park. Almost half of the six million acres encompassed by the Park boundary is privately-owned, where 80% of land use decisions fall within the jurisdiction of local governments. The comprehensive planning process of one such local government, the Town of Willsboro, New York, was the focus of a Participatory Action Research (PAR), single case study. Using a PAR, mixed methods approach, community-led comprehensive planning integrated natural science, technology and citizen participation. I evaluated the role of PAR in helping to transform conventional land use planning practice into a more democratic, environmentally conscious, and durable civic responsibility. Stakeholder viewpoints about the local environmental setting revealed deep connections to nature. Findings of the research indicate that comprehensive land use planning capacity increases when citizens increase their scientific and ecological literacy, especially when tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used for data collection and analysis. Applying ecologically-based comprehensive planning utilizing a PAR framework improved citizen’s confidence in land use decision-making and also expanded science literacy. PAR holds great promise as a methodological framework to bring together ecologically-focused natural science with citizen-led collaborative land use planning. Areas of further research identified during this study include assessing age-specific gaps in stakeholder participation, evaluating the relationship between plan recommendations and regulatory implementation, and investigating factors that contribute to a culture of community engagement. Local land use planning decisions have important cumulative impacts on protected area land development at the local and regional scale. A comprehensive plan can reflect an emergent process, where the primacy of community self-determination and consensus-building yields recognition of the link between, and sanctity of, nature, home, and homeland

The Influences on and Impact of Economic and Community Development Policies in a Micropolitan City

As the U.S. economy changed from industry to information, small cities suffered a decline in quality of life and an increase in poverty. The existing research has focused on demographics and descriptive attributes of micropolitan cities, but not on efforts to overcome these challenges. The purpose of this study was to explore and understand how a micropolitan city used economic and community development policies to rebuild its economy and improve quality of life. Using Holland\u27s conceptualization of complex adaptive systems, research questions focused on triggers for policy creation and its use to create social change by improving the local economy and reducing the effects of poverty. Data for this qualitative case study were collected through open-ended questions in semi structured interviews with policymakers (elected officials), policy implementers (city employees), and policy influencers (community leaders). Interviews were supplemented with document review and photographic observation. The data were analyzed using descriptive coding, categorical aggregation, and direct interpretation to identify overarching themes of acceptance, resilience, building on strengths, and the interwoven nature of policy. The findings indicate that economic and community development policies can lead to positive changes such as the rehabilitation of blighted areas, growth of new and existing businesses, and influence state policy, illustrating the attributes of complex adaptive systems. The positive social change implications of this study include recommendations to city administrators to develop economic and community development policy based on their unique circumstances, to build partnerships, promote community change, and build a positive mindset to benefit their city and citizens

Organic Wines and Little Debbies in the New Company Town: The Post-Industrial Politics of Rural Redevelopment

This qualitative case study examines Saxapahaw—a former textile mill village in central North Carolina that has recently been incorporated into a consumption-based regime of accumulation—as a contested site of rural gentrification, exploring the key insights that the unique social and material landscapes of Piedmont textile mill villages offer the rural gentrification literature, which has by-and-large overlooked the southern United States. I follow Phillips (2002) lead in applying a three-part Lefebvrian approach to unpacking the material, symbolic, and social production of gentrifying rural spaces. By exploring the "sedimentations" (Lefebvre, 1956) left by Saxapahaw's company town period, this project illuminates how the social relations of gentrifying communities have deep roots in previous stages of capitalist production. In Saxapahaw, these enduring legacies include a nostalgic rural lifestyle marketed to new residents and tourists, persistent forms of social inequality, and naturalized structures of power and governance that shape the gentrification process.Master of Art

The Future of Canada's Ski and Mountain Destinations in an Era of Climate Change

Climate change represents a grand challenge for society and the far-reaching risks for the global tourism sector is no exception. As one of the largest sectors globally, tourism is not only highly impacted by the biophysical impacts of climate change but is also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions contributing to anthropogenic climate change. Tourism’s entrenchment in global socio-ecological systems mean that how tourism identifies and responds to climate change risks will have extensive implications for sport, recreation, livelihoods, culture, real estate, infrastructure, and community resilience in tourism destinations worldwide. While the international tourism sector has highlighted climate change as the primary threat to tourism sustainability, lack of viable climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies raise fundamental questions about the place of tourism in a warmer and decarbonized future. Considering the urgency and salience of these questions for winter tourism specifically, research on highly climate sensitive ski tourism provides important learnings and potential leadership for other tourism sectors that will inevitably face transformative risks as climate change accelerates. This dissertation therefore investigates the complex physical climate and carbon risk within the Canadian ski and mountain tourism system to explore potential pathways towards sustainability and climate resiliency. Canada's diverse ski tourism industry provides an exemplary case study to identify the range of climate and carbon risks, investigate climate adaptations, and understand other socio-ecological factors contributing to or hindering climate impacts, responsiveness, and resilience. Through three interrelated studies, this dissertation combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies using a tourism geography lens to; (1) apply industry-specific climate risk modeling, (2) conduct empirical analysis on the sustainability of snowmaking as a climate adaptation, and (3) understand diverse and inter-connected stakeholder climate risk and response perspectives. Through this process, the research aims to understand the "wicked" challenge of climate change in complex tourism systems, provide information needed for relevant and dynamic climate response planning, decision-making and action, and enable discussions on sustainability transformations and climate resilient futures for diverse mountain tourism destinations. Findings suggest climate risk and resilience is relative across temporal and spatial scales, with potential cross-regional implications for competitiveness and demand patterns. Empirical assessments of snowmaking as a climate adaptation further demonstrate that the national scale is too coarse to evaluate (mal)adaptation or sustainability, instead showing how regional and destination-scale differences in climate impacts, tourism markets, ecosystems (e.g., water availability), energy sources result in differing assessments of adaptation sustainability. Multi-stakeholder narratives situate modelled and observed climate and carbon risks within complex socioeconomic systems and identify diverse actors, structures, and perspectives influencing destination-scale climate (in)action and potential levers to affect more transformative change towards climate resilient futures. More broadly, this dissertation broaches important sustainable tourism and climate change theories, concepts and paradoxes including: temporal and spatial scale, relative climate risk (impacts and adaptive capacity); private-public sector relations and responsibility; (mal)adaptation; scope 3 emissions and current-future tourism mobility; tourism growth and decarbonization; pluralistic value(s) of tourism and sustainability; top-down vs bottom up decision-making; and climate justice, with the aim of extending the important conversation on [sustainable] tourism’s place in a decarbonized economy and warmer world. In investigating the intersection of these research questions, this dissertation presents novel conceptual frameworks, empirical analysis and participatory methods which could be replicated in other tourism contexts and applied to support ski tourism operators and local mountain communities responding to climate change

Which farmers turn to tourism? A continental-scale analysis

Many urban tourists like to visit farms, but only some farm landholders offer tourism accommodation and activities. Their motivations have been explored previously in several countries, using stated-preference approaches. Here we report the first continental-scale revealed preference analysis, which yields significant additional information and insights. Using multiple data sources, we inventoried, mapped and characterised all known Australian farm tourism enterprises, and examined patterns using both size-based and multi-criterion classifications. There are clusters of farm tourism enterprises close to cities and gateways, and isolated operations in more remote areas. We identified four groups: full-time, part-time, retirement and lifestyle operators. Characteristics of the farm property and business, the farming family, and the farm tourism business differ significantly between groups. The groups appear to reflect the joint dynamics of farm succession and rural amenity migration. Keywords: motivations, family-business, rural, Australia, cockies, blockiesFull Tex