PS 19-26
Sustaining working rangelands: Social, economic, and ecological insights into rancher decision-making and drought adaptation
Rangeland ecosystems encompass diverse land resources across the globe, representing complex coupled human and natural systems in which conservation goals must be balanced with the economic realities of agricultural production. In California, rangelands cover approximately 60% of the state, and are often at the nexus of wildland, agricultural, and urban landscapes. These expansive working landscapes support a broad range of ecosystem services—including food and forage production, water resource protection, biodiversity, and wildlife habitat. The long-term sustainability of these lands, and the services they provide, is of major importance to an increasingly diverse stakeholder base on working rangeland landscapes.
Balancing multiple conservation and agricultural production goals on rangelands is a key challenge in an already variable and changing environment. Our project team has developed a broad, multipronged approach to directly integrate management and science in addressing the challenge of providing for multiple and diverse outcomes on working rangelands, and to gain insights into rancher decision-making and drought adaptation. We developed a mail survey of California Ranchers—which included sections on operation and operator characteristics, individual goals, management practices, information sources, and social values and perspectives. We also conducted follow-up, semi-structured interviews of ranchers across the state, which will be coupled with site-specific rangeland health and agricultural production monitoring.
Results/Conclusions
We received 509 eligible mail surveys (33% response rate) for analysis, and conducted 80 in-person, semi-structured interviews. In response to California’s recent state-wide drought, 75% (n = 80) of ranchers interviewed expected to see impacts to their operations—and 35% of expected devastating impacts to the viability of their operations. Analysis revealed rancher experience and knowledge (i.e., number of generations ranching, number and quality of information sources, and education level) positively influenced ranch goal prioritization and the management toolbox (i.e., number of actively used conservation programs, number of key practices used, and diversity of forage resources). Goal setting and the management toolbox had direct positive effects on adaptive strategies for drought impact management—including the number of proactive and reactive drought management practices used. These types of interdisciplinary efforts and active stakeholder collaborations provide critical insights for policy and outreach strategies to conserve multifunctional landscapes.