Top 40 Priorities for Science to Inform US Conservation and Management Policy

To maximize the utility of research to decisionmaking, especially given limited financial resources, scientists must set priorities for their efforts. We present a list of the top 40 high-priority, multidisciplinary research questions directed toward informing some of the most important current and future decisions about management of species, communities, and ecological processes in the United States. The questions were generated by an open, inclusive process that included personal interviews with decisionmakers, broad solicitation of research needs from scientists and policymakers, and an intensive workshop that included scientifically oriented individuals responsible for managing and developing policy related to natural resources. The process differed from previous efforts to set priorities for conservation research in its focus on the engagement of decisionmakers in addition to researchers. The research priorities emphasized the importance of addressing societal context and exploration of trade-offs among alternative policies and actions, as well as more traditional questions related to ecological processes and functions.Keywords: Priority setting, Natural resource management, Ecosystems, Conservation, Decisionmaker

Navajo Social Interactions in an Urban Environment: An Investigation of Cognition and Behavior

This paper explores the relationship between the way people think and what they do, among a recently migrated urban ethnic group. The hypothesis is that people will seek assistance (housing, employment, friends) from other people whom they perceive as most similar to themselves. The paper compares two sets of data in an attempt to examine this relationship. Both cognitive and behavioral data on social interactions were collected from Navajo women in Los Angeles, California. The data indicate that urban Navajo women tend to establish their social assistance networks based on some of the underlying dimensions of their cognitive classifications of the urban social world, but that in other respects their behavior diverges from the expected