Who Will Own the Mazama? Tribal Power and Forest Ownership in the Klamath Basin

Through the case study of a 90,000-acre section of forest called the Mazama Tree Farm (Mazama), this manuscript explores several dynamics within the State of Jefferson, notably (1) the changing power of Native American tribes relative to other landowners and (2) the transition in rural land uses from productivism toward post-productivism. The Mazama was part of the Klamath Reservation until tribal termination in 1954, when it was purchased by an industrial landowner. The loss of the reservation coincided with the nadir of tribal power within the State of Jefferson, but more recent developments may return the Mazama to tribal ownership as a result of renewed tribal power and the diminishing role of industrial forestry in the region

Padlock Ranch: carbon sequestration case study

Padlock Ranch is a large, family owned ranch that has experimented with a carbon sequestration program and is waiting to see how it all turns out. The ranch is located in Ranchester, Wyoming in the northern part of the state in the ecotone between the Big Horn Mountains and the mixed prairies of eastern Montana and Wyoming.This location supports both forest and native grassland providing a mixture of habitat.Keywords: Carbon sequestration, Ecosystem services, Padlock Ranch, Wyoming, Big Horn Mountains, Wyomin

Arapaho Ranch carbon sequestration case study

The Arapaho Ranch is an interesting study regarding the relationship between good land stewardship and the implementation of the current CCX range protocol. The Arapaho Ranch appears to be a model of the ways in which sustainable rangeland management and economic diversification, including profitable niche marketing and payment for ecosystem services (PES), can go hand and hand.Keywords: Rangeland, Wyoming, Land and People, Soil Carbon Sequestration Project, Western Landscapes Explorer, Ecosystem service

Kolka Family Ranch carbon sequestration case study

Keywords: Carbon sequestration, Kolka Ranch, Ecosystem servicesKeywords: Carbon sequestration, Kolka Ranch, Ecosystem service

Revisiting and revitalizing political ecology in the American West

Political ecology, initially conceived to better understand the power relations implicit in management and distribution of natural resources in the developing world, came “home” to the American West in the 1990s and 2000s. This groundswell of research did much to problematize socio-environmental conflicts in the region, long typified by tensions over land and resources, identity and belonging, autonomy and authority. Since first touching down in the West, however, the “big tent” of political ecology has only grown bigger, incorporating new perspectives, epistemologies, and ontologies. At the same time, the nexus of environment and society is perhaps even more salient today, amid a regional conjuncture of populist revolt, climate change, and rapid political economic transformation. Here we reflect on three longstanding regional concerns – energy development, wolf reintroduction, and participatory governance – leveraging the pluralism of contemporary political ecology to better understand their contemporary incarnations. In so doing, we highlight the need to bring together insights from both “traditional” approaches and newer directions to better understand and engage contemporary challenges, with their heightened stakes and complexity. Such an approach demonstrates what we might learn about global processes in this place, as well as what insights regional praxis (often woefully provincial) might gain from elsewhere – new ways of seeing and doing political ecology. Our goal is to generate discussion among and between political ecologists and regional critical scholars, initiating new collaborative engagements that might serve the next wave of political ecology in the 21st century American West

Resilience, Adaptation, and Transformation in the Klamath River Basin Social-Ecological System

The Klamath River Basin straddles northern California and southern Oregon and has been the locus of a century-long struggle for multivalent resilience—resilience of resident Native American tribes in the face of settlement by Europeans and others, resilience of immigrant settlers pursuing agriculture in a water-limited environment, and resilience of native ecosystems and fish species in the face of significant hydrologic fragmentation via dams and irrigation infrastructure resulting in severely reduced access to and changes in habitat. Recently, however, the communities of the Klamath Basin have worked together in an effort to transform regional environmental governance to promote greater resilience across all these valences. This article uses the four-phase adaptive cycle model that Lance Gunderson and C.S. Holling described in 2002 to trace the history of the Klamath Basin social-ecological system (“SES”) through periods characterized by vulnerability, resilience, and transformation. We conclude that while Klamath Basin stakeholders have worked out a compromise settlement that may signify the emergence of a new, more resilient regime of environmental governance, the Basin’s future is uncertain. We identify important thresholds that, if triggered, could move the SES into alternate regimes, and we consider whether formalization of emergent institutions through legislation might influence this trajectory

Transforming (perceived) Rigidity in Environmental Law Through Adaptive Governance

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is often portrayed as a major source of instability and crisis in river basins of the U. S. West, where the needs of listed fish species frequently clash with agriculture dependent on federal irrigation projects subject to ESA Section 7 prohibitions on federal agency actions likely to jeopardize listed species or adversely modify critical habitat. Scholarship on Section 7 characterizes the process as unwaveringly rigid, the legal “hammer†forcing federal agencies to consider endangered species’ needs when proposing operations and management plans for federally funded irrigation. In this paper, we identify barriers to an integrated approach to Section 7 implementation and characterize a set of strategies for overcoming its rigidity that may have broader applicability. We draw on lessons derived from the Klamath Basin along the Oregon-California border, where cross-scale processes and venues involving interagency collaboration among leaders in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation supported efforts to replace an ecologically and socially fragmented Upper Basin/Lower Basin approach to ESA implementation fraught with conflict. The result was the nation’s first joint biological opinion (BiOp), which effectively institutionalized an adaptive, flexible, integrated approach to water sharing among competing interests. Keys to success included existing collaborative capacity related to shifting stakeholder networks, trust, and relationships and a shift in local agency culture facilitated by empathic leadership leading to a greater sense of shared responsibility for Section 7 compliance. A collaborative hydrologic modeling process enhanced participatory capacity, facilitated transformative social and technical learning, and cultivated greater understanding of the social-ecological system among key stakeholders. The 2013 joint BiOp exemplifies both governmental capacity for flexibility and evolution within the constraints of formal law and the potential for greater integration among federal agencies and between federal agencies and stakeholders involved in ESA implementation

Social-Ecological Change, Resilience, and Adaptive Capacity in the McKenzie River Valley, Oregon

This study explores perceptions of long-term residents regarding links between governance, landscape, and community change in the McKenzie River Valley (MRV) in western Oregon and provides a general assessment of factors affecting resilience and adaptive capacity. Residents interviewed indicated that dramatic changes driven by market competition, timber industry changes, increased regulation, and rural restructuring have occurred in both the landscape and community. The changes that have transpired have redefined the relationship between the community and the landscape, moving away from local dependence on timber harvests to an economy focused on tourism and other ecosystem services. In doing so the community has transitioned from one with a logging community identity to one that has begrudgingly become a retirement and vacation community. We found that the social-ecological system (SES) in the MRV is still in the midst of reorganization in the wake of the 1990s Timber Wars. As a result of low institutional capacity, the system is vulnerable to exogenous drivers of change. Using a modified version of Ostrom’s (2009) framework for SES analysis, this study recommends policymakers and policy entrepreneurs take three key steps to facilitate enhanced resilience and adaptive capacity: 1) support transboundary management strategies that transcend landownership classifications; 2) tighten system feedbacks to include more local influence; and 3) develop local multilayered institutions organized vertically and horizontally. Future research should explore the potential for collaborative forestry and stewardship contracting to enhance social-ecological resilience in this valley

Do Adaptive Comanagement Processes Lead to Adaptive Comanagement Outcomes? A Multicase Study of Long-term Outcomes Associated with the National Riparian Service Team’s Place-based Riparian Assistance

Adaptive comanagement (ACM) is a novel approach to environmental governance that combines the dynamic learning features of adaptive management with the linking and network features of collaborative management. There is growing interest in the potential for ACM to resolve conflicts around natural resource management and contribute to greater social and ecological resilience, but little is known about how to catalyze long lasting ACM arrangements. We contribute to knowledge on this topic by evaluating the National Riparian Service Team’s (NRST) efforts to catalyze ACM of public lands riparian areas in seven cases in the western U.S. We found that the NRST’s approach offers a relatively novel model for integrating joint fact-finding, multiple forms of knowledge, and collaborative problem solving to improve public lands riparian grazing management. With this approach, learning and dialogue often helped facilitate the development of shared understanding and trust, key features of ACM. Their activities also influenced changes in assessment, monitoring, and management approaches to public lands riparian area grazing, also indicative of a transition to ACM. Whereas these effects often aligned with the NRST's immediate objectives, i.e., to work through a specific issue or point of conflict, there was little evidence of long-term effects beyond the specific issue or intervention; that is, in most cases the initiative did not influence longer term changes in place-based governance and institutions. Our results suggest that the success of interventions aimed at catalyzing the transformation of governance arrangements toward ACM may hinge on factors external to the collaborative process such as the presence or absence of (1) dynamic local leadership and (2) high quality agreements regarding next steps for the group. Efforts to establish long lasting ACM institutions may also face significant constraints and barriers, including existing laws and regulations associated with public land management.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the author(s) and published by the Resilience Alliance. The published article can be found at: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/.Keywords: Adaptive comanagement, Collaborative processes, Evaluation, U.S. WestKeywords: Adaptive comanagement, Collaborative processes, Evaluation, U.S. Wes

The Politics of Marginality in Wallowa County, Oregon: Contesting the Production of Landscapes of Consumption

The state of Oregon’s (USA) land use planning framework has long been characterized by tensions between state and local authority, between traditionally-defined “urban” and “rural” concerns, and between the competing interests of various landowners. An examination of Wallowa County, Oregon’s implementation of House Bill 3326, a 2001 law giving counties the power to define certain agricultural lands as “marginal,” and therefore exempt from restrictions on subdivision and development, illustrates the ways in which these tensions become magnified as rural communities attempt to govern private land use in the context of rural restructuring. Implementation of HB3326 highlighted the tensions between landowners interested in capitalizing on development opportunities afforded by HB3326, neighboring producers concerned about interference from future amenity migrants, and existing amenity migrants with interests in protecting their rural idyll. Contestations over nonfarm development took place in the context of a strong agricultural community identity, concerns about the effects of economic restructuring on producers, and local resistance to the rural gentrification process. The process of defining marginality came to encompass not only technical issues of land productivity, but also broader community contestations over the continuation of traditional land uses and the legitimacy of various actors to govern private land.Keywords: rural gentrification, rural restructuring, governance, legitimacy, land use policyKeywords: rural gentrification, rural restructuring, governance, legitimacy, land use polic