Research, part of a special feature on The Coproduction of Conflicts in Environmental Sustainability: Concepts, Methods, and Ethics

INTRODUCTION

Globally, working lands support important social and ecological processes such as biodiversity, cultural heritage, food systems, and rural economies. In response to complex and urgent challenges associated with biodiversity loss on working lands, scientists are increasingly partnering with rural and agricultural communities to co-develop solution-oriented knowledge (Djenontin and Meadow 2018, Naugle et al. 2020, Ferguson et al. 2022, Ganguli and O’Rourke 2022). Working lands are characterized as multifunctional natural resource systems that support food, fuel, and fiber production activities within intact ecosystems where biodiversity conservation is also an important or mandated objective (Diaz et al. 2011, Plieninger et al. 2018). For example, rangelands in the western USA are managed across complex ownership boundaries for numerous goals, including ranching^[1] and agricultural economic activity, biodiversity conservation, energy development, recreation, and other ecosystem services. In such systems, participatory working lands research (PWR) holds promise to extend the impact of applied research beyond the laboratory or experimental farm into real-world contexts and scales (Cornwall and Jewkes 1995, Knapp et al. 2019, Reid et al. 2021).^[2]

Participatory working lands research seeks to bridge gaps among diverse perspectives to overcome working land conservation challenges. But this approach also brings scientists into complex living laboratories shaped by interdisciplinary dynamics and a gamut of multiscalar social and ecological processes that may go without explicit recognition (Sayre 2017, Hall et al. 2018). These dynamics can include long-standing historical conflicts over land use, identity, and wildlife management. Where PWR seeks to co-develop knowledge through collaboration among scientists and seemingly incongruent stakeholder goals for land and wildlife management, PWR approaches may carry increased risks and costs relative to conventional research approaches. To borrow the phrasing used by a rancher, collaboration can appear to go “against the common sense” of diverse societal actors who have long been at odds with one another. In these cases, methodological development is a priority for transdisciplinary scholars and communities (Naugle et al. 2020, Porensky 2021).

Participatory working lands research practitioners in diverse natural resource systems, from forests and marine systems to rangeland and farming agroecosystems globally, face a heightened level of complexity in their work relative to laboratory-based researchers (Reid et al. 2021). In this paper, we use a case study from a PWR project in Wyoming, USA, to develop a framework that conservation, agricultural, and research communities can use to develop the contextual awareness PWR projects need to effectively navigate social-ecological dynamics, including conflicting or misaligned goals for ecosystem management. Our framework includes four dimensions of PWR: (1) the history of conflict and collaboration, (2) social-ecological mental models, (3) biological and ecological dynamics, and (4) ownership in the research process (Fig. 1). These were explicitly chosen to provide historical, social, ecological, and methodological concepts scholars and communities in any system could use to expand their understanding of one another and PWR.

The framework follows lessons from previous generations of participatory practice, including the rapid rural appraisal or participatory appraisal approaches used in international development (Townsley 1996) and more recent typologies of community actors developed for use in cross-boundary natural resource management contexts (Cravens et al. 2021). The participatory tradition highlights how researchers have little opportunity to control the PWR environment and so need explicit methodological tools to scope the context of that area of interest and explore how that context interacts with individual and team goals and backgrounds. In this space, the relevance of the assumptions and social positions of researchers and societal partners, what we call their “common sense,” becomes more visible than in conventional disciplinary or non-participatory projects (Stokols et al. 2008, Boyce et al. 2022) and may be more consequential for research and real-world outcomes on working landscapes (Hudson 2009, West-McGruer 2020, Brittain et al. 2020). Therefore, our goal is to provide a framework to foster individual and team awareness of the social and ecological context in PWR efforts and enable teams to move beyond disciplinary “common sense” toward a transdisciplinary and situationally responsive “good sense”^[3] that supports effective engagement and knowledge co-development.

Participatory working lands challenges

The working lands concept serves to identify and explore the social-ecological dynamics on multifunctional landscapes that are not easily classified in terms of intensive agricultural production, such as in crop agriculture, urban or ex-urban uses, or protected areas. When research involves complex or conflict-laden issues on working lands, normative values and paradigms in academic research may be misaligned with those of communities and managers (Scasta 2019, Boyce et al. 2022). In some cases, for instance in the conservation of grassland birds in the U.S. central plains and the conservation of oak savannah habitat in California, wildlife species of concern have co-beneficial relationships with agricultural activities (Derner et al. 2014, Huntsinger and Oviedo 2014). But in other working lands, conservation issues are more competitive and contentious (Barroso and Gortázar 2024, Frey et al. 2024). Wildlife may be viewed by agricultural advocates as a threat to livestock and livelihoods via depredation (e.g., by predators like wolves and bears), disease (e.g., pneumonia or brucellosis from wild herbivores), competition for forage (e.g., from prairie dogs or feral horses), or regulation (including species protections that limit agricultural activities). Conversely, conservation advocacy platforms may consider livestock production or other human activities a threat to wildlife due to lethal control, disease, or habitat destruction (Beever et al. 2018, Mogomotsi et al. 2020, Epstein and Haggerty 2022). The history and context of these examples are too extensive to review here but involve various forms of structural, cultural, or behavioral conflict across scales from interpersonal to social (Webel and Galtung 2007, Gulliford 2018). Disagreement over goals for land use and biodiversity management can ripple through emotional, political, and ecological dimensions of the landscape, as wildlife and livestock conflicts become discursive surrogates for mounting social conflict across public and private lands (Eichler and Baumeister 2018, Scasta 2019, Epstein and Haggerty 2022). The methodological literature offers few resources for conservation scientists seeking to partner with agricultural or pastoral communities. Resources are especially needed for research sites in which there is a relevant history of conflict between competing values for wildlife and land use and where complex social and logistical issues perpetuate trust issues among communities and researchers (Mathiesen et al. 2022).

Prairie dog management in working lands of the U.S. Great Plains

As an example, the conservation of the black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus), a keystone species in the U.S. Northern Great Plains ecosystem (Davidson et al. 2012), has remained a persistent source of disagreement between agricultural producers and several actors in the animal rights and conservation advocacy communities (Bergstrom et al. 2014), especially on publicly managed lands that have a multiple-use mandate. The black-tailed prairie dog is a burrowing small mammal native to North America that relies on large tracts of intact grassland for survival. The prairie dog lives in colonies, which serve as habitat for a suite of other grassland species, including burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia), mountain plover (Anarhynchus montanus), swift foxes (Vulpes velox), and others. The prairie dog is also the only prey for one of the continent’s most endangered mammals, the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes), which at one point was reduced to just 18 individual animals as a result of habitat fragmentation and lethal control of prairie dogs (Miller and Cully 2001, Davidson et al. 2012, Santymire et al. 2014). Despite calls for federal protections for prairie dog populations (Miller et al. 2007), the species is subject to lethal control (via shooting and poisoning) and is classified as an agricultural pest in Wyoming, USA, due to its disturbance and consumption of forage within landscapes used for livestock grazing, an important economic and social activity on rangelands across the U.S. west (Bergstrom et al. 2014, Connell et al. 2019, Crow et al. 2022). In this context, wildlife and land managers working for federal or state governments and rancher groups must grapple with the question of the appropriate locations and extent of prairie dog populations. They face pressure from both agricultural and conservation advocates seeking to advance their goals through public planning and private management actions. These actions occur at multiple scales, ranging from pasture-scale management actions to national-scale conservation fundraising campaigns.

The question of prairie dog management is made more complex by variable weather patterns—including periods of drought and associated forage scarcity—and by an epizootic non-native flea-borne bacterial disease (sylvatic plague [Yersinia pestis]), which drives boom–bust cycles in prairie dog populations (Davidson et al. 2022, Duchardt et al. 2023). In these cycles, prairie dogs can expand rapidly across thousands of hectares. They can also suffer rapid die-offs during plague outbreaks.

This ecological and pathogenic cycle coincides with contentious social conditions. Specifically, public land management agencies face heated concern from graziers and agricultural advocates when colonies expand from “horizon to horizon” and exceed socially acceptable population levels codified in formal federal land management plans. Conversely, population collapses during plague epizootics raise urgent concerns from wildlife advocacy groups about the conservation of prairie dogs and associated species, particularly where particular stakeholders or public agencies have long-range goals that include black-footed ferret reintroduction. With livestock owners often advocating for prairie dog control, and conservation groups advocating for species preservation and expansion, the social-ecological context can result in a lack of trust among agricultural communities, biodiversity-focused interest groups, land management agencies, and scientists from multiple disciplines. The prairie dog management issue is a good example of a contentious working lands conservation issue that creates conditions where proactive teams interested in transcending conservation–agricultural conflicts see an opportunity for high-reward scientific approaches to leverage social friction for productive collaboration (Cockburn et al. 2019, Hillis et al. 2020).

ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

Below, we describe an analytical framework PWR scientists and societal partners can use to successfully move from “common sense” to “good sense” to discover credible, rigorous research findings about critical working lands issues in other real-world research contexts (Fig. 1). This framework includes interconnected dimensions, including the history of collaboration and conflict, social-ecological mental models, ecological dynamics, and ownership in the research process. It was developed from both a constructivist and literature-derived standpoint as we looked for emergent themes from participant observation, interviews, lived experiences, and relationships developed during our collaborative PWR work. We also drew upon relevant social-ecological literature themes in published frameworks dealing with complex systems. Here, we apply this framework to the case of a research project co-developed by local community groups and state and federal researchers called the Prairie Dog Cattle Weight Gain (PDCWG) project. This U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded participatory project was aimed at quantifying the effect of prairie dog populations on cattle weight gains on working ranches. The project took place during a period of exceptional prairie dog expansion, and the work was initiated during a significant sylvatic plague epizootic and population decline (Davidson et al. 2022).

Context of conflict, collaboration, level of engagement

New research, even when designed with the local community to address pressing problems, enters into a complex social-ecological world shaped by history, power, economics, and social discourse. Conflict involves a contradiction of attitudes and action or behavior (Webel and Galtung 2007) and often emerges when the positions of actors are threatened by those of competing groups. Conflict can become exacerbated when actors differ in their understanding of social-ecological relations, are excluded from decision making, or when historical factors make outside land uses appear threatening (Redpath and Sutherland 2015, Guštin and Potočnik Slavič 2020). For example, broader historical human–wildlife conflicts in the western USA related to livestock–wildlife interactions like depredation, disease transmission, or competition for forage can become a foil for social conflict among various advocacy groups or industries, as well as a motivator for applied research to address these challenges (Scasta 2017, Scasta et al. 2020, Wilson 2024). It is, therefore, important to map the relevant context of broader historical, sociological, economic, political, and ecological dimensions of a system. This involves identifying key actors, events, policies, and narratives that shaped both the socio-political and ecological landscape. Collaborations, or problem-solving methods wherein diverse groups or actors address common issues and resolve disputes through deliberation and consensus building (Ansell and Gash 2008), are increasingly used to approach conflicts in social-ecological systems (Leach et al. 2014). Importantly, actors may choose not to engage in ongoing collaborative processes due to the perceived ineffectiveness or illegitimacy of the collaborative group (Bennett and Satterfield 2018) or may alter their engagement with collective processes as their goals, resources, and capacity change over time.

Social-ecological mental models

Actors from various disciplinary backgrounds may have distinct and incongruent socially constructed interpretations of how social-ecological systems work (Jones et al. 2014). These “mental models” are incomplete, dynamic, and complex hypotheses for cultural, ecological, and social-ecological relationships, and feedback loops are organized at different scales (Jones et al. 2014, Moon and Blackman 2014, Steger et al. 2021). For example, although grassland ecologists have emphasized the importance of heterogeneity in vegetation structure for ecosystem resilience (Fuhlendorf and Engle 2001), interviews with Great Plains ranchers suggest they emphasize grazing that creates a more homogenous structure to reduce the risk of over- or under-utilizing the resource (Wilmer et al. 2020). Scholarship on local knowledge and knowledge integration from the transdisciplinary literature suggests that natural resource mental models are subject to change, vary from individual to individual within a community or group of actors over time, and can reveal critical mismatches or misconceptions in natural resource systems (Cote and Nightingale 2012, Wilmer et al. 2019). Various mental models of social-ecological systems may emphasize different actors in the system or subscribe to different methods to initiate or respond to change while dismissing or seeking to invalidate other perspectives or theories of change.

Biological and ecological dynamics

Emergent dynamics shape the social-ecological context of PWR efforts. All conservation and ecological research deals with dynamic biological, climatic, or ecological conditions in some form, and so scientists find quantitative ways to account for the influence of drought, disease, or shifting weather patterns on their experimental ecological research findings. In PWR, the challenge is even greater, however, because emergent ecological dynamics can have an additional influence on the social-ecological system and influence attitudes and behaviors within the research project and broader context (see Brunson 2012 for a framework of social-ecological dynamics in rangelands). The historic range of variation in key ecological dynamics can inform project design and contingency plans for when conditions change (Weible et al. 2010, Hanberry and Dey 2019).

Ownership in the research process

Ownership in the research process is indicated by actors’ motivations and perceptions of risks and benefits to research engagement. The simplified hypothesis behind participatory research methods is that involving practitioners, community members, or other knowledge users and producers directly in the research process will (1) lead to findings that are more inclusive, relevant, usable, and credible to managers’ real-life decision-making processes, (2) build capacity for change making through empowerment of participants, and (3) improve empirical outcomes for various societal goals (Cornwall and Jewkes 1995, Martin and Sherington 1997, Meadow et al. 2015, Ferguson et al. 2022). However, the PWR approach also has potential consequences and risks for ecosystems and social systems, as agricultural and other rural communities are often well aware (Jordan 2003, David-Chavez and Gavin 2018, Oliver et al. 2019). The degree of ownership, including motivation and participation, by PWR actors influences the research agenda, implementation, evaluation, and sharing of research outcomes (Martin and Sutherland 2013, Allegretti et al. 2016, Gustavsson 2020). Additionally, the burden of time to participate and differing expectations of individual groups can contribute to tension or conflict in collaborative research and should be explicitly considered. The degree of ownership may also influence the level of participation and engagement, and vice versa, which varies from collegial to contributory to co-created (Meadow et al. 2015) and which is in turn influenced by governance and privacy structures (Lin Hunter et al. 2024).

The overall goal of this framework is to provide a broad, interdisciplinary set of concepts PWR practitioners can use to understand the social and ecological contexts and conditions of their study sites and partner communities. We chose these specific concepts because together, the four elements of the framework provide PWR projects with guidance to explore the historical, social, ecological, and methodological dimensions of their research context. The four dimensions thus relate well to the complexities of social-ecological working land systems, which involve inextricable linkages between social and biological processes at multiple scales. The framework assumes that broader contextual and self awareness by PWR practitioners is a first step to being able to identify tactics and strategies to effectively develop participatory research and, therefore, serve the needs of local communities and ecosystems through integrated, community-based approaches.

METHODS

Case study description

This study is focused on the Thunder Basin Ecoregion (TBER), a 7,000 km² ecoregion located in northeastern Wyoming, USA (Fig. 2). The climate is typical of a semi-arid, high plains steppe with large seasonal and daily variations in temperature. Droughts are common. Mean annual precipitation ranges from 250 to 350 mm per year, and most precipitation falls during the spring and summer. The mean annual temperature is 6°C, with mean monthly temperatures ranging from -5°C in December to 22°C in July (Porensky et al. 2018). The TBER is located in an ecotone or transition zone between the Great Plains to the east and the sagebrush steppe to the west (Fig. 2), creating an ecological landscape with tremendous diversity and complexity. The vegetation includes a mixed grass prairie understory coupled with a sparse sagebrush overstory (Porensky et al. 2018). The system supports numerous grassland and sagebrush species of concern (e.g., Duchardt et al. 2018, 2023), including both black-tailed prairie dogs and the iconic greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), a bird species dependent on sagebrush ecosystems, which are a focus of conservation efforts across the western USA. Over the past two decades in TBER, black-tailed prairie dog conservation efforts have also become a key priority for numerous conservation advocacy groups. Targeted conservation efforts led to prairie dog colony expansion and highlighted the need for ecological information to guide land management.

Agricultural, energy development, recreation and hunting, and conservation activities take place across TBER’s highly interspersed mixture of public and private lands (Fig. 2). Federal and state lands are managed by government agencies that permit grazing activities and collaborate with local grazing associations to manage rangeland resources. Ranching is central to both the economy and the culture of Wyoming. The five counties in the Thunder Basin ecoregion (Campbell, Converse, Crook, Niobrara, and Weston) represent 17% of Wyoming’s land area and produce disproportionately more livestock from rangeland grazing than other Wyoming counties (24% of cattle and 29% of sheep; Brandt and Hussey 2015). Energy development includes coal, oil and gas, and renewable energy permits (Fig. 2). Other important community activities include collaborative management efforts led by a landowner non-profit organization and ongoing collaborative research, explained more in the findings section.

The Prairie Dog Cattle Weight Gains (PDCWG) project

During the peak of prairie dog expansion in 2016–2017, a group of rangeland ecologists, conservation scientists, citizen science experts, extension agents, and landowners proposed to study livestock–prairie dog interactions in TBER. The project was intended to test innovative solutions for addressing conservation and management needs through collaborative science, with broad implications for ecosystem management and rural community sustainability across the western USA. The project sought to address several gaps in knowledge, including (1) the ecological relationships between prairie dogs and livestock across dynamic, heterogeneous biophysical and social conditions in TBER; (2) how these relationships translate into economic impacts for livestock producers; (3) how participation in research affects perceptions of (and trust in) science; and (4) how knowledge gained from citizen science and participatory research translates into conservation decision-making processes.

The PDCWG project’s approach was intended to go beyond traditional stakeholder engagement models. Researchers saw the involvement of ranchers as necessary at all stages of the research and hoped the model would help make results more immediately relevant to the needs and concerns of both ranchers and policy makers and increase trust in the data. Research participants were included as human subjects in a social science aspect of the project (this study), documenting the participatory process. Concurrent with debates about prairie dog management and land use across the TBER, the project was nested within the broader collaborative and research efforts of actors in the region.

Case study data collection and analysis

The objective of the present study is to use the TBER case study to develop a framework researchers and their partners can use to improve contextual awareness in PWR projects to effectively navigate social-ecological dynamics, including conflicting or misaligned goals for ecosystem management. Our team chose a constructivist grounded theory methodology that involved an iterative literature review and data analysis, with a focus on describing the constructed knowledge and reality of study participants and context (Charmaz 2014, Charmaz and Thornberg 2021). The author team included rangeland ecologists, natural resource social scientists, and participatory methodologists, as well as a local community leader from a range of backgrounds and institutions. After receiving approval for human subjects research under Protocol #20180523JS01994 from the University of Wyoming - Institutional Review Board (qualified as “exempt” due to minimal risk), we conducted and examined data from 23 interviews with key informants in ranching, conservation, public agency, researcher, and community-based non-profit organization groups. We conducted 18 interviews in 2018–2019 and five in 2022. We compiled field notes from participant observation with Thunder Basin ranching families and PDCWG project documents collected through 2024 (Fig. 3). Interview questions are included as supplemental material.

Our framework and findings were developed iteratively as the research project unfolded on the ground. Using an iterative process and criteria for trustworthiness that included prolonged engagement with the data, triangulation, and member checking, our author team developed and applied our analytical framework to the PDCWG case study, presenting results alongside demonstrative quotes, a project timeline, and summary tables. For this analysis, we relied on constructivist grounded theory methods that include ongoing cross-referencing between data collection, analysis, literature review, and group discussion (Charmaz and Thornberg 2021) and theory around mental models (Jones et al. 2014, Stevens and Satterfield 2024). We then developed a list of suggested best practices and methods during a collaborative analysis meeting attended by co-authors. Finally, we sought and incorporated critical comments from a community-based leader and community members during multiple online feedback sessions, including a community-wide research forum.

FINDINGS

Thunder Basin context of conflict and collaboration

Focusing on recent decades, we identified several elements of the history of conflict and collaboration that were central to shaping the context of the PDCWG project. First, there are collaborative traditions within the ranching community of TBER. For rural families across the federal land management unit, church, school, and ranching activities are central to their sense of community, and family operations depend on the cooperation, knowledge resource sharing, and labor of family, neighbors, and friends. Low population density, the remote location, and the harsh climate of the area also push residents toward an emphasis on community identity and cooperation, even when individuals or families may experience specific forms of conflict or limited relationships. Federal grazing management on the U.S. Department of Agriculture-managed National Grasslands is organized through three formal grazing associations in cooperation with the federal agency (U.S. Forest Service, or USFS) that administers grazing permits.

Second, the community has organized collaborative efforts to address specific wildlife or land management issues. In 1999, a group of ranchers in northeastern Wyoming gathered to discuss ongoing wildlife and conservation concerns, including prairie dogs. This meeting led to the creation of the Thunder Basin Grasslands Prairie Ecosystem Association, or TBGPEA, a non-profit organization seeking to provide private landowner leadership in developing a responsible, science-based approach to long-term management of their lands (www.tbgpea.org). The TBGPEA attempts to encourage consistent and compatible land management across all federal, private, and state-managed lands in TBER. The organization has led community-scale efforts to conserve biodiversity and promote ranching economies through collaborations with a diverse group of landowners and energy companies, regulating agencies, as well as ecological, agricultural, and conservation researchers from multiple universities and agencies. In mid-2013, the TBGPEA submitted an integrated conservation strategy to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employing voluntary conservation measures to benefit eight species of concern, including black-tailed prairie dogs. The final Conservation Strategy documents were signed on 18 March 2017, after almost 18 yrs of work and over 840 official meetings.

Third, there was a complex history around how agricultural, recreational, conservation, and other interest groups have come into a dialog during administrative processes associated with federal land management, particularly related to prairie dog conservation. The PDCWG project was initiated while agricultural and conservation advocates engaged in other collaborative activities, including a local public working group and in a federal land management plan amendment process (Fig. 3).

Interviewees described how conflict over wildlife management issues reflected broader socio-political issues such as private property rights, government control, and power inequalities across the region. For example, one rancher expressed, “I have to deal with people who don’t live on the land and work the land and appreciate the land wanting to raise prairie dogs because they think they’re such cute little animals. They have such a cute little life cycle, but they’re very destructive.” Furthermore, a group of ranchers interviewed described an ongoing, often decades-long process of public meetings about federal land management. While many were collaborative towards the agencies, some described a contentious relationship with federal agencies in terms of grazing use and wildlife management. One indicated concern that federal land management infringed on their property rights: “...they [the federal agency] have been doing that for six decades now. And every year gets worse as far as property, private property rights and so forth [...] They don’t respect our private property rights and our pre-existing rights[...] We’ve been going to meetings forever and ever and ever on everything...” Other ranchers indicated that collaborative processes were important to them, but that these often detracted from ranch-based priorities.

The community has also organized research activities to help address economic and working land conservation challenges. The USFS and the University of Wyoming (UW) began collaborative research in TBER as early as the 1930s. For several decades, the local community was less involved in research than the university and the USFS. However, for the past 20 yr, local stakeholders have had an increasing interest in generating problem-driven scientific information relevant to the region. In 2014, UW jointly hosted meetings with USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and TBGPEA to formalize a collaborative effort called the Thunder Basin Research Initiative, or TBRI. Over time, the initiative expanded to include more internal and external partners, slowly enlarging the network of scientists working in the region (Fig. 3).

The PDCWG project formed from TBRI’s momentum at a time when social tensions around wildlife management were relatively high, although many of the researchers on the project had been involved in prairie dog or rangeland research for the length of their careers and had experience with public lands management planning processes. For some, their experiences in collaborative prairie dog management meetings had been uncomfortable, as they described feeling mistreated or dismissed when they spoke on behalf of conservation science. In contrast, one university researcher interviewed had expertise in navigating agricultural–wildlife issues and indicated some level of comfort with the conflict, noting with a laugh, “On a single day, I’ve had ranchers mad at me, then I’ve had some advocates for particular species of concern mad at me. So that’s probably the signal that we’re doing something where we’re making everybody mad.”

This look at the context of conflict and collaboration among various actors in the region provides an overview of the social world across TBER that shaped the foundation for the PDCWG project.

Diverse social-ecological mental models

Interviews and participant observation allowed us to map, generally, the various social-ecological mental models of the TBER system in use across participant and researcher groups in the PDCWG project after data were collected. We observed that these occurred along a spectrum from most productivist (focused on agricultural production goals) to conservationist (focused on biodiversity conservation goals) (Wilson 2001). A group of ranchers who consented to interviews but did not participate in biophysical data collection activities had particularly productivist views of the social-ecological system in that they prioritized agricultural production and private economic activities. They were concerned that additional regulation or shared management of public lands would limit their economic opportunities and autonomy. They participated in several political groups or contracted their own data collection to support their own goals in federal land planning and management. A second group of producers, who participated in interviews and biophysical data collection in the PDCWG project, valued community service and emphasized that they had spent years developing locally adapted livestock production systems that faced challenges from extensive prairie dog populations and heavy defoliation of rangeland vegetation. The ranching community is interdependent with rangeland ecosystems managed on both public and private lands and faces immediate economic and social risks if natural resources are reduced.

Notable here is the contrast between researchers and local residents in terms of these mental models. For researchers in the project, TBER is not home but a field site that is hours from their home university or research office. Some rangeland scientists on the project emphasized the multiple use or working lands aspects of their research programs when describing their relationship to the landscape and project. For conservation scientists, who had more preservationist perspectives, the TBER is an important conservation area within the broader Great Plains region because it is relatively intact and includes large areas of federally managed lands. One project scientist noted about ranchers with federal grazing permits: “They [ranchers] obviously, as you surely know, they would feel very differently [than I do]. I know they [ranchers] feel like that public land is really theirs, like, they have an ownership over the land that they lease (sic). Be it as it may, we all have our different perspectives on it. That’s fine.” The PDCWG project included biophysical scientists with backgrounds in quantitative rangeland and wildlife ecology positioned as system experts with an interest in supporting rangeland management and wildlife conservation outcomes. Conservation scientists’ positions along these dimensions stand out in stark contrast to both groups of ranchers, particularly in their conceptualization of the role of the prairie dog in the ecosystem (Fig. 4).

Biological and ecological dynamics of the Thunder Basin Ecotone

Several ecological and biological dynamics became relevant during the PDCWG project. As indicated in Fig. 2, the ecological context is shaped by climate, topography, and ecoregional ecology at large scales, and at finer scales by land ownership and management patterns, hydrology, and wildlife management priority areas. Additionally, the temporally variable climate and forage dynamics in the TBER shaped the context of the project. These are ever-present consideration for researchers and ranching communities there. Extreme weather temperatures and storms, variable rainfall and drought, and relatively short growing seasons constrain the production calendar and research methodologies. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic limited the team’s capacity for in-person fieldwork and diminished outreach opportunities.

The most locally impactful biological dynamic, however, was the boom–bust cycle of the black-tailed prairie dog, which had occurred three times in the past 30 yr in the area (Davidson et al. 2022). Colony mapping efforts documented a 324% increase in the area’s colony acreage between 2008 and 2012, followed by another 234% increase between 2012 and 2016 (Davidson et al. 2022). By 2017, the prairie dog complex in Thunder Basin exceeded 75,000 acres in size, and was perceived as a major threat to the sustainability of ranching in the TBER (Fig. 4). The dynamics that occurred during the PDCWG project were remarkable, with the 75,000-acre colony area reduced by 99% between 2017 and 2018 during a confirmed plague outbreak (Davidson et al. 2022, Duchardt et al. 2023). Then, 2018 and 2019 were two of the wettest years on record in the region. The removal of prairie dogs, combined with ample rainfall, led to rapid vegetation colonization of former colony areas (Duchardt et al. 2023). As research and broader community efforts continued, prairie dog abundance began slowly climbing in 2020–2023 but remained much lower than pre-plague levels. This dynamic had broad implications for biodiversity in grassland systems in that it exacerbated variability in the system and reduced the stability of food chains, within which the prairie dog is a keystone species (Davidson et al. 2022, Duchardt et al. 2023).

While these dynamics could not have been predicted exactly, the “boom–bust” cycle created a complex and dynamic context for researchers navigating the PWR environment and reshaped community views of prairie dog management issues throughout the project duration. Land managers’ attention turned from the issue of dealing with too many prairie dogs to other topics, and concerns about prairie dog conservation re-emerged.

Varying levels of ownership in the research process

During interviews and participant observation, the PDCWG project research team and participants described varying levels of ownership in the research process, as indicated by their motivations and perceptions of risks and benefits to research engagement (Table 1), all of which provide some indication of trust levels. Interviews indicate that participating ranchers were motivated by a sense of service to the community and a general curiosity about research collaborations and products. For example, although one ranch family participated in multiple research projects and valued collaboration, they didn’t always see the value in certain questions being asked by the researchers: “Well, you know, and data is nice, but sometimes data is not prudent to what we do...they are going to try to predict drought early in the year so you have more options...Because they will know if you don’t get moisture by, you know, the first of April that we are in trouble. Um, but I pretty well know that already.” Another ranch family emphasized data relevancy: “If you don’t use your data, it’s just data. If you don’t, it’s just information on a page. It might be worth it to someone, you know. And the people that are wanting to get the data, it may help them. But is it helping us, too? And maybe they’re still in the process of saying, how are we going to use all this data?” However, the majority of landowners in the TBER directly affected by prairie dog colonies in 2013–2017 chose not to participate in the full scope of the PDCWG project. Producers who were willing to participate only in an interview but not in cattle measurements cited a lack of trust between collaborators, an unwillingness, or lack of time, capacity, and a lack of direct compensation for adjusting livestock operating procedures for research, a lack of interest in the proposed research projects, a lack of prairie dogs on the ranch after the plague epizootic, and/or expressed little need for scientific collaborations.

In the PDCWG project, realized benefits and costs for various participants centered on the time and resources the project required, as well as some scrutiny from the public about their participation. For some researchers, the project risked their reputation within the agricultural community. Some ranchers told researchers that science on wildlife–livestock interactions was a “waste of time” because the negative effect of prairie dogs on cattle forage resources was already known, or because the plague epizootic eventually removed the urgency of the prairie dog problem. Some ranchers also noted additional time constraints due to other operational priorities when collaborating: “You got this project [PDCWG] and you got, OK fencing to do, and you have this, you know. So right now, it’s our challenge. It’s just not enough time to get all of our work done.” Additionally, the whole research team had publication, funding, and professional requirements on the line when a lack of participation shifted data collection efforts and involvement. Conservation-focused researchers with less experience in PWR contexts were reliant on members of the team with more trusted relationships with ranchers and communities to foster research activities, which exposed these relationships to stress as the plague epizootic unfolded.

Community-based organization leaders described their view that participatory research can not only produce cutting-edge science but can also bring conflicting viewpoints together to co-develop actionable “win–win” solutions for rural livelihoods and conservation outcomes. They saw research as a part of a broader community-building effort focused on long-term social-ecological sustainability. Building a better, science-based understanding of these dynamics had the promise of helping the community make more informed decisions about conservation and ranching, and could provide data directly to federal land planning processes. However, these community leaders recognized several risks to involvement, including that researchers potentially would not deliver on promised products or that data would be used against the community’s interests.

DISCUSSION

In working lands contexts, conservation research cannot depend on an immediate common vision among partners, and so must adapt methodologically to improve the effectiveness of research and outreach efforts (Leach et al. 2014, Cvitanovic et al. 2015, Knapp et al. 2019, Posner and Cvitanovic 2019). If the urgency around both rural community well-being and conservation challenges in working lands continues to increase, and if traditionally conflicting groups are still willing to step into a middle path toward new, generative collaborations, then a new good sense is needed to foster novel, pluralistic, systems-based approaches to collaboration and knowledge creation. Lessons from the PDCWG project can inform conservation science efforts on working land contexts globally to the extent that many rangeland, forest, and marine systems face similar social and ecological challenges to both natural resource-based livelihoods and biodiversity conservation. Community-led conservation efforts across working landscapes with this vision have great potential to cut a middle path through agriculture–conservation conflicts and move communities toward acceptable modes of collaboration and problem solving (Naugle et al. 2020). A key challenge then, for participatory team leaders, is to develop, deploy, and adapt methods that enable diverse actors to account for the complexity of PWR contexts and of team members so that they can effectively collaborate.

Our analytic framework (Fig. 1) serves to point PWR teams toward key dimensions of PWR contexts they need to navigate: (a) collaboration and conflict, (b) mental models, (c) ecological dynamics, and (d) ownership in the research project. The PDCWG project team learned that these dimensions are interconnected. For example, the local history of conflict and collaboration corresponded to various ecological dynamics continually during the project (Weible et al. 2010, Hanberry and Dey 2019). Recognizing this allowed the team to better understand why broader social-ecological dynamics drove some project outcomes and why quantitative biological and ecological data alone did not sufficiently lead to solutions (Ångman et al. 2016).

Additionally, the framework contributes to a body of literature suggesting that participatory and conservation researchers might benefit from a deeper, reflective curiosity about themselves and their research partners (Moon and Blackman 2014, Beck et al. 2021). Explicit consideration of our conceptualizations of the social-ecological system and the spatiotemporal scales of analysis can help us communicate with others about our assumptions and goals. Team cohesion and productivity stand to benefit from open discussion of differences in professional or organizational roles, individual life experience, and geographic, cultural, and scientific contexts, potentially leading to longer-term relationships and research success (Poole 1972, Ferguson et al. 2022). Here, we find useful Beck and colleagues’ concept of reflexivity, “not simply a retrospective assessment of past choices and circumstances, but also an opportunity to think critically about how current choices and circumstances bring about future ones” (Beck et al. 2021:6). Reflexively considering these dimensions of the PWR context may lead some partners to develop an increased capacity to collaborate, whereas in other cases, individuals may learn that their training or core values do not align with the methods necessary for PWR. In those cases, recognizing this and seeking out other research spaces may be more appropriate.

The PDCWG team learned to recognize the desire among our partners to be heard and respected. This may be a key motivation to participate in research or other collaborative efforts, and a prerequisite for the development of long-term relationships needed to foster research innovation. Ownership in the research processes and data can also vary in context and level of formalization, as seen in community-owned and managed research initiatives in environmental justice contexts (Heaney et al. 2007) and data sovereignty and legal designation of data ownership in tribal contexts (Lovett et al. 2019, Carroll et al. 2021).

Activities to build good sense in PWR

Our broad framework provides a starting point for PWR practitioners to more effectively explore historical, sociological, ecological, and methodological aspects of working lands and is thus potentially informative for a wide range of contexts. Our framework enables us to list specific actions researchers can take to better account for the context in PWR (Table 2). We draw from qualitative findings and our own professional observations, as well as from feedback from interview participants and community leaders.

First, although participatory research is often framed as a method to include community members in scientific activities, the experience of the PDCWG project suggests that effective PWR also relies on the ability of researchers to participate in the working lands community. For example, TBGPEA, the community-based non-profit in TBER, actively seeks out partnerships with researchers who are willing and able to respectfully commit time for co-learning and two-way dialog about research and resource needs. Second, the process of learning about context requires constant attention to oneself, one’s team, the community, and the social-ecological context of the PWR project, and a willingness to explicitly discuss these topics and take action to account for this awareness (Eigenbrode et al. 2007, Stokols et al. 2008).^[4]

We acknowledge that explicit discussions of conflict, mental models, and research ownership suggested in Table 2 may be uncomfortable within the cultures of working lands communities and conservation research. However, the PDCWG project experience suggests that these contextual factors do influence PWR efforts and should be explicitly accounted for to ensure effective, rigorous, and meaningful research practice. If these factors are ignored, a lack of trust in both the process and the outcomes may result. If these elements of context are explicitly considered, however, research teams will have heightened awareness of context that can lead directly to tactics for improved engagement with communities to improve trust and reduce costs to participation. For example, teams might reflect on this framework and better understand how research tasks could be folded into existing community calendars or agricultural activities, or how research might provide tangible benefits in terms of employment, access to new resources, or data to help advance their goals.

Our framework can help prevent situations where the approach adopted by a particular project becomes mismatched with the social-ecological context of the community. For example, the citizen science-based model of participatory research strives to empower communities by involving them directly with data collection and by providing them explicit ownership in research results that can support decision making and planning (Newman et al. 2017). This form of participatory science aims to help communities “get the numbers” to support a particular decision or community need. However, in context with high levels of conflict over land use and theories of ecological dynamics, an emphasis on truth finding for “win–win” solutions can downplay the costs (real or perceived) to certain public stakeholder groups—and create winners and losers—and so may not be appropriate when trust and collaborative capacity are still nascent (Hovardas and Marsden 2022). To overcome this barrier, researchers might opt to design demonstration projects that model a novel management strategy but also quantify trade-offs, to emphasize solutions (Wilmer et al. 2022).

Furthermore, researchers can continue to work with and leverage the support of boundary-spanning organizations that have gained trust locally. However, challenges arise when resources for public agricultural research and outreach (via the extension, experiment stations, and land grant universities in the USA) face stagnant budgets, as all three did across the USA between 2008–2018 (Perry 2023), or when funding awards fail to reach minority-serving institutions (Wilson et al. 2024). Participatory working lands research is greatly enhanced when these key state and other boundary-spanning organizations can hire, train, and retain long-term employees who foster trust and communication for participatory projects in a wide range of social contexts. These locally embedded partners often have a nuanced understanding and enhanced sense of obligation to the diverse views of residents, wildlife, and natural resources of the study area.

CONCLUSION

We hope to empower PWR teams to develop a shared, “good sense” of PWR contexts that fosters effective research partnerships and products. Although our case study is specific to U.S. rangelands, other systems where researchers seek participatory approaches to bridge biodiversity conservation, agriculture, and other diverse societal goals will likely benefit from enhanced consideration of context. If PWR projects fall apart due to a lack of respect or contextual awareness, complex and urgent social-ecological challenges will remain, but local communities will no longer have an important toolset (PWR) to address them. In a worst-case scenario, an inability to successfully engage may increase conflict and lead to cascading social and ecological consequences. In PWR, researchers and participants develop new working relationships within real-world contexts and ongoing change. To these collaborations, individuals and groups bring their own assumptions and expectations, but this “common sense” may go unexamined. Such neglect can constrain positive trajectories.

Building a “good sense” that transcends the common sense (Gramsci 1992) and disciplinary assumptions team members bring to a project require continual learning about the PWR context and partners. “Good sense” is critical to navigating system dynamics successfully and fostering meaningful knowledge co-development with working lands communities. As conservation, livelihood, and climate change challenges intersect, PWR will increasingly rely on input and collaboration with land users, community organizers, and rural leaders with whom conservation interests have various levels of trust and collaborative capacity (Ganguli and O’Rourke 2022). To operate in these conditions, PWR efforts will need to develop a deeper tradition of self-reflection, adopt methods to bolster social-ecological contextual awareness, and turn openly toward compromise, despite personal and professional risks, when appropriate, to better contribute to the co-creation of a shared knowledge and landscape inclusive of multiple goals and ways of being.

__________

^[1] Here ranching is a form of agricultural system centered primarily on extensive cattle and/or sheep systems that produce calves, lambs, and yearlings for finishing or direct consumption. Ranching relies in part on the management of native grassland and shrubland systems, which may be publicly managed or privately owned.

^[2] We use the term participatory working lands research (PWR) to refer to a range of publicly-engaged research approaches addressing complex social-ecological systems challenges on working lands (Martin and Sherington 1997). This includes methods influenced by participatory work in agricultural, development, and ecological research fields (Reid et al. 2021b).

^[3] Gramsci (1992) contrasts common sense with good sense, a more practical, empirical framework enhanced by critical awareness. This would include, for example, self-awareness of how one’s views and position relate to others, as well as the capacity to conceptualize and account for complex historical, sociopolitical, and ecological relationships and events internal and external to the research project (Boyce et al. 2022).

^[4] While the PDCWG project included qualitative social scientists and participatory methods experts, it did not involve public historians or conflict resolution experts, though these disciplines have contributed to multiple other projects and cases that can inform future PWR projects.

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