Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
contributing insights. These include private conservation trusts, common property in-
stitutions, and comanagement arrangements (between individual private landholders
and/or public land management agencies), and more complex, nested institutional
design and resource management across multiple tenures and resources.
A biosphere reserve model established in the salt-ravaged, endangered Mallee eco-
systems of south Australia grew to a regional landscape scale to include an area of
some 3,500 square miles (9,000 square kilometers), across more than thirty properties
representing nine different tenure types of public and private land (Brunckhorst et al.
1997; Diamond 2005; Pfueller 2008).
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Another landscape-scale model is the Til-
buster Commons, which involved rotational grazing of a single herd of cattle across
several adjacent ranches, each having and retaining individual private land title
(Brunckhorst 2003; Williamson, Brunckhorst, and Kelly 2003). The cattle were col-
lectively owned by the landholders who set up a company to manage the resource en-
terprise across their properties with profits distributed through share holdings propor-
tional to their landholding and contributions. Rotational grazing of cattle provided
the tool for native grassland, pasture, and ground cover restoration. Multiple benefits
of the cross-property collaboration included the ability to set aside conservation areas;
stream restoration and improved water quality; risk management; improved biodiver-
sity, land, and pasture, including native grassland restoration; drought resilience; and
good financial returns. A highly valued benefit was the freeing up of time for farm
families.
An ambitious extension of these lessons is being tried in some quite different
social-ecological contexts across public and private landholdings managed by the U.S.
Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and several ranchers in Idaho and
Montana. One group of collaborators, the Lava Lake Land and Livestock group in
southern Idaho, manage almost 760,000 acres (307,561 ha) of public and private land
for sheep and cattle ranching, conservation, and river and wetland restoration.
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The
main enterprise is production of boutique, organic-certified lamb. A component of
the conservation and the riverine wetland restoration has included reintroduction of
wolves along with experimenting with new ways to manage sheep grazing to improve
and sustain native rangeland pasture (fig. 11.2). The wolves keep the large, native her-
bivores, such as elk, from “camping” on and degrading wetland and stream vegeta-
tion, which allows for natural rehabilitation. The location of wolves can be tracked,
and contact with domestic livestock can be avoided to a large extent. Using a variety of
different grazing management techniques, including grazing rotations and temporary
electric fencing of stock at night on summer mountain ranges, livestock losses have
generally been no more than average yearly losses. Some of the keys to success in-
clude good communication across ranches and agencies, short-term to long-term
planning, and clear rules of engagement designed and upheld by all the collaborating
parties. There are also incentives for land management, conservation, longer-term
permits, and access to public lands by ranchers. Ranchers and other land managers
are also able to plan and negotiate more flexible conditions, collectively building
greater social-ecological resilience for multiple resource use, profitability, and conser-
vation and restoration goals and objectives.
