{"title":"Holistic Management Shifts Ranchers’ Mental Models for Successful Adaptive Grazing","authors":"Paige Stanley , Nathan Sayre , Lynn Huntsinger","doi":"10.1016/j.rama.2023.11.004","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Unprecedented climatic and economic uncertainty, in particular severe drought, calls for management that can preclude some of the costs of reactionary measures for California ranchers. Increasing adaptive capacity has been widely recommended to address such uncertainty. Within this context, holistic management (HM), a decision-making framework marketed for ranchers, is of interest because it emphasizes systems-based thinking, maximizing flexibility and adaptability, ecological monitoring, soil health, and goal setting. Many HM ranchers use adaptive multipaddock (AMP) grazing management, characterized by the combination of moderate to high animal stock densities, fast rotations, pasture rest, iterative monitoring, and adaptive management. We interviewed a small group of AMP-HM ranchers in northern California to 1) examine how their on-the-ground implementation of AMP grazing relates to mental models for rangeland grazing as shaped by HM, including embedded decision-making processes, motivations, barriers, and catalysts; and 2) understand how AMP-HM ranchers believe the strategy helps them respond to increasing challenges. Our findings suggest that first, AMP-HM shifted ranchers’ mental models through its emphasis on monitoring combined with increased interaction with land and animals, changing the ways interviewees saw and understood their management. Second, through its decision-making framework and trainings, AMP-HM increased ranchers’ agency to operationalize new mental models. Together, these two facets culminated in a common suite of strategies that interviewees viewed as key to ranching profitably and sustainably. These include building flexibility into herd sizes and structures to increase temporal and spatial mobility, diversifying ranch enterprises to increase financial flexibility, building soil health, and reducing input costs—all of which have been recommended in rangeland management practices for decades. These findings suggest that AMP-HM, as an integrated package of rangeland management and decision-making practices, accompanied by education and training, may hold promise in helping ranchers strengthen their adaptive capacity and cope with uncertainty.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49634,"journal":{"name":"Rangeland Ecology & Management","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550742423001264/pdfft?md5=45cc39895bb460cabd50c507c25da592&pid=1-s2.0-S1550742423001264-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Rangeland Ecology & Management","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550742423001264","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Unprecedented climatic and economic uncertainty, in particular severe drought, calls for management that can preclude some of the costs of reactionary measures for California ranchers. Increasing adaptive capacity has been widely recommended to address such uncertainty. Within this context, holistic management (HM), a decision-making framework marketed for ranchers, is of interest because it emphasizes systems-based thinking, maximizing flexibility and adaptability, ecological monitoring, soil health, and goal setting. Many HM ranchers use adaptive multipaddock (AMP) grazing management, characterized by the combination of moderate to high animal stock densities, fast rotations, pasture rest, iterative monitoring, and adaptive management. We interviewed a small group of AMP-HM ranchers in northern California to 1) examine how their on-the-ground implementation of AMP grazing relates to mental models for rangeland grazing as shaped by HM, including embedded decision-making processes, motivations, barriers, and catalysts; and 2) understand how AMP-HM ranchers believe the strategy helps them respond to increasing challenges. Our findings suggest that first, AMP-HM shifted ranchers’ mental models through its emphasis on monitoring combined with increased interaction with land and animals, changing the ways interviewees saw and understood their management. Second, through its decision-making framework and trainings, AMP-HM increased ranchers’ agency to operationalize new mental models. Together, these two facets culminated in a common suite of strategies that interviewees viewed as key to ranching profitably and sustainably. These include building flexibility into herd sizes and structures to increase temporal and spatial mobility, diversifying ranch enterprises to increase financial flexibility, building soil health, and reducing input costs—all of which have been recommended in rangeland management practices for decades. These findings suggest that AMP-HM, as an integrated package of rangeland management and decision-making practices, accompanied by education and training, may hold promise in helping ranchers strengthen their adaptive capacity and cope with uncertainty.
期刊介绍:
Rangeland Ecology & Management publishes all topics-including ecology, management, socioeconomic and policy-pertaining to global rangelands. The journal''s mission is to inform academics, ecosystem managers and policy makers of science-based information to promote sound rangeland stewardship. Author submissions are published in five manuscript categories: original research papers, high-profile forum topics, concept syntheses, as well as research and technical notes.
Rangelands represent approximately 50% of the Earth''s land area and provision multiple ecosystem services for large human populations. This expansive and diverse land area functions as coupled human-ecological systems. Knowledge of both social and biophysical system components and their interactions represent the foundation for informed rangeland stewardship. Rangeland Ecology & Management uniquely integrates information from multiple system components to address current and pending challenges confronting global rangelands.