ALDO LEOPOLD AWARD SPEECH 2013

The Inevitable Fusion

Integrating ecology and human dimensions in wildlife management
Daniel J. Decker,
Ph.D., CWB, is
Professor and
Department Chair of
Cornell Universitys
Department of
Natural Resources
and Associate Director
of the Universitys
Human Dimensions
Research Unit.
Credit: Meghan Baumer

This is a story about integrating social sciencesthe human dimensionsin wildlife

management in the United States. Its a story with a beginning and a middle, but no
end yet.
Lets startas do many stories about wildlife managementwith Aldo Leopold.
Exceptional at expressing a vision for wildlife management, Leopold gives us much to
think about, consider, and reconsider. He also left us a huge agenda of expectations to
try to meet. For example, 40 years before the term human dimensions was coined,
Leopold acknowledged the value of social-science inquiry and set an expectation: the
need to integrate social and natural sciences in wildlife management.

One of the anomalies of modern ecology is the creation of two groups, each of
which seems barely aware of the existence of the other. The one studies the
human community, almost as if it were a separate entity, and calls its findings
sociology, economics, and history. The other studies the plant and animal
community and comfortably relegates the hodge-podge of politics to the liberal
arts. The inevitable fusion of these two lines of thought will, perhaps, constitute
the outstanding advance of this century.
Aldo Leopold 1935
(from Meine 2010: 359-360)

In this 80-year-old passage, Leopold portrayed studying the human community and the
plant and animal community as two components of one modern ecology, a concept
we refer to today as coupled human and natural systems. He suggested that these two
broad spheres of inquirysocial science and natural sciencewere unproductively
isolated from one another and called for their fusion.

My purpose is to briefly review progress toward integration of human and ecological

considerations into wildlife management practice. By integration, I mean:

Considering wildlife problems comprehensively with respect to their

interconnected ecological and human dimensions.
Applying complementary insight from both natural sciences and social sciences to
understand the drivers and possible solutions to wildlife problems.
 Supplementing social science with the engagement of diverse stakeholderslike
landowners, ranchers, farmers, hunters, wildlife watchers, and citizens affected by
wildlife who may not engage in wildlife-dependent recreationto inform decision
making.

The Role of Stakeholders

Before integrating scientific understanding of the human community with the plant
and animal community as Leopold envisioned, we would have to study the human
community with respect to interest in wildlife. By and large we have made progress on
that front, though with a delayed start. In fact, the first serious treatment of research
in human dimensions in wildlife was at the North American Wildlife and Natural
Resources Conference in 1973well after Leopolds 1935 reference to fusion of
social and natural sciences. Over the last four decades, human dimensions effort has
focused on understanding interests, needs, and motivations of stakeholders such as
landowners, hunters, anglers, and other wildlife enthusiasts and applying that
understanding to decision making. Generally, agencies gain stakeholder input through
social science research and stakeholder engagement. While studies documenting
expenditures of wildlife-associated recreationists were among the earliest applications
of social science to wildlife management, since the mid-1970s researchers have
focused on peoples beliefs, attitudes and norms, behavioral intentions, and behaviors.
For example, research now attempts to understand how and why people value and
respond to wildlife, and to understand their views on wildlife management practices.

More recently, studies have examined a broader suite of stakeholderssuch as people

concerned with nuisance wildlife in urban and suburban environments, wildlife-
associated disease, and car collisionsin an effort to design more effective
management strategies. Theres also growing interest in research that helps explain
how wildlife management is affected by social structure, cultural systems, and
institutional arrangements. As part of my research in human dimensions, I have tested
conventional assumptions used in wildlife-resource decision making, such as access-
related challenges that hunters might face, farmers tolerance of crop damage, and
urban residents acceptance of lethal management methods. Such studies have
occasionally led managers to paradigm-changing revelations.

The hodge-podge of politics that Leopold refers to has been addressed with
stakeholder involvement in governance processes. For 20 years human dimensions
research and agency practice have focused on improving processes and outcomes of
stakeholder engagement to understand peoples experiences with wildlife, such as
human-wildlife interactions in urban environments. Wildlife agencies continue to rely
on human dimensions insight to expand programs.

Integration: Progress and Prognosis

Although the wildlife profession has developed social and biological insight thats
applicable to wildlife management, weve made less progress integrating these two
lines of thought in ways that yield higher understanding of social-ecological systems
and therefore support better-informed policy and management decision making.
Leopold optimistically indicated that this would come by the close of the last century,
but it did not. We are behind schedule.

At least four impediments to integration persist: science-based rhetoric versus

values-based reality of wildlife management; lack of comprehensive, coupled-
systems thinking and articulation; interdisciplinary dysfunction, particularly skepticism
about methods and validity of insights; distrust of stakeholder capacity to understand
and support the right decision. The first three impediments can be overcome by
education and training of wildlife professionals. The fourth impediment is largely a
result of professional acculturation. This can be overcome with wildlife professionals
and stakeholders better communicating to improve mutual understanding of wildlife
management contexts.

Integration may not yet have achieved Leopolds expectations, but the good news is
that more people see the contexts for wildlife management as being coupled human-
natural systemsa prerequisite for integration. Increasingly, leading wildlife
management practitioners recognize the need for systematic, integrative thinking.
Some agency leaders are seeking professional training opportunities for themselves
and their staff to help them recalibrate their thinking to be more coupled-systems
oriented and open to all relevant sciences. These folks get it, because management in
practice is not divided into neat compartments corresponding to academic
disciplinesits messy and requires comprehensive thinking about social-ecological
systems. Adding to my optimism for the future, universities are offering curricula that
emphasize linking social and ecological aspects of systems of concern in wildlife
management.

Changes to Achieve Fusion

At least two changes are necessary to enable the inevitable fusion.

Recognize that wildlife management is fundamentally an intellectual endeavor.

Wildlife management primarily involves problem solving and decision making that then
requires taking actions directed at human behavior and habitat. Often wildlife
professionals in public service lament that they simply do not have time to think, that
critical reflection about their practice is a luxury, not supported by their employers or
the professional culture in which they are embedded. They are expected instead to
do something, to apply some conventional technique, often to an oversimplified
problem, rather than thinking about the problem deeply and comprehensively, and
reflecting on whats the right thing to do. Wildlife professionals should be encouraged
to exercise comprehensive, analytic, critical, and integrative thinking.

Integration will require more than survey data about stakeholders.

We also need improved stakeholder processes that are more sophisticated, produce
more intelligent discourse, and play a more effective role in achieving sustainable
management outcomes. We often are leery of stakeholder processes for the same
reason we eschew ballot initiativesbecause we do not feel citizens know enough
about the technical aspects of wildlife management or are willing to think beyond their
own self-interest to be given much say in decisions. If participatory governance in
wildlife management is going to work, it is essential to have well-informed
participants. The concern about informed stakeholder participation in governance has
been with us for some time, as can be seen in this quote attributed to Thomas
Jefferson:

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people
themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control
with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to
inform their discretion by education.

I subscribe to Jeffersons remedy for lack of confidence in stakeholder processes

inform the discretion of participants through education. And who better to do that
than wildlife professionals? Collectively, wildlife professionals can be a potent force to
raise stakeholders knowledge about the social-ecological systems in which wildlife are
embedded. They also can improve awareness of the trade-offs between potential
management alternatives in terms of anticipated consequences.

Educating the Public

This brings us to the role of the wildlife professional as issue educatora person who
can provide context about an issueand here is the tie back to the inevitable fusion.
To be effective in issue education, one must be able to integrate ecological and human
dimensions insight into a comprehensive perspective about the social-ecological
system that citizens and wildlife share, largely by better educating the public about
wildlife. This is a daunting challenge in a society physically and culturally removed from
wild nature yet inundated with mediated versions of it.

Nevertheless, collectively the legion of over 10,000 wildlife management professionals

who are members of The Wildlife Society, for example, could have a huge impact.
Wildlife professionals can and do make many contributions to more intelligent
stakeholder discourse by playing roles as experts working with mass media, nature
interpreters, advisors, informal educators, and discussion facilitators. Through such
roles, wildlife professionals can inform the discretion of ordinary citizens and
decision makers chosen to represent them.

Despite missing Leopolds deadline, were making progress toward the inevitable
fusion of social and natural sciences working together in support of wildlife
management. Perhaps our situation is best expressed in the words of Martin Luther
King, Jr.: We arent where we want to be. And were not where were going to be.