What do wildfire, residential development, non-native plants, motorized recreational off-highway vehicles and climate change all have in common? They are Idahoan’s five biggest perceived threats to sagebrush steppe, one of the most imperiled landscapes in the American West.
In a newly published study conducted by a collaborative team of Boise State University and Idaho State University researchers, these perceived threats came directly from the mouths of residents in all but three of Idaho’s 44 counties. The telephone survey and web-based questionnaire occurred from October through November, 2021.
In addition to these five major threats, the survey respondents ranked other sources of stress on the landscape, and critically, shared who they feel should be responsible for managing these landscapes, and how.
Due to Idaho’s unique geographical composition and the wide cast of actors who play important roles in sagebrush steppe preservation (such as federal, state, tribal, community and private business entities), the ‘correct’ way to manage the land looks very different depending on whom is asked.
While most people agreed that some action should be taken to manage the threats to sagebrush steppe, preferences for general management strategies, as well as to cope with recreation and residential development pressures specifically, varied depending on political affiliations, proximity to sagebrush, and demographic variables. These actions included:
- establishing new protected areas (expand),
- restricting the things people and businesses can do that might harm sagebrush ecosystems (restrict),
- provide financial incentives to encourage people to take actions that benefit sagebrush ecosystems (finance),
- bring people together to provide input on sagebrush ecosystem management (collaborate).
“What we saw is this pretty strong desire to protect sagebrush steppe,” said research lead Haley Netherton-Morrison, an alum of the ecology, evolution and behavior doctoral program. “We’re seeing a lot of support for expanding protected areas within sagebrush steppe, and to collaborate. This desire for collaboration also could be a really positive thing, that people really want to have more voices as part of the conversation around it.”
The five main takeaways from the research are:
- There is a shared desire to protect sagebrush steppe and to take management action.
- Proximity to sagebrush and socio-political context influence public opinion.
- Traditional approaches to land management may be in tension with public opinion.
- Political polarization and perceptions of different management entities may hinder effective management.
- Collaboration is supported and needed to overcome these challenges.
The goal of the statewide survey was to “essentially be a temperature-check on how the public views the sagebrush steppe,” said Netherton-Morrison.
“We also purposely oversampled in two more rural counties that are within the sagebrush steppe,” said Netherton-Morrison. “It’s really important to make sure when you’re doing this kind of work that you’re not, biasing towards other places that have population, but maybe aren’t actually impacted day-to-day by some of the decisions that would be happening on the ground.”
The published article, titled “Proximity, politics, and preferences: Spatial and contextual patterns in management opinions for an imperiled multifunctional landscape” was conducted by Netherton-Morrison, Boise State University Human-Environment Systems associate professors Matt Williamson and Kelly Hopping and director and professor Rebecca Som Castellano, and Idaho State University sociology associate professor Morey Burnham.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Idaho Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Program and by the National Science Foundation under award number OIA-1757324. The statewide survey was also supported through a partnership with the Idaho Rangeland Resources Commission. Survey data collection was conducted by Responsive Management.