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Private Work with Wildlife and People in the United States

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https://hdl.handle.net/10217/100292
This digital collection includes presentations given at the 8th International Wildlife Ranching Symposium held in 2014 for the symposium theme: Private Work with Wildlife and People in the United States.

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Browsing Private Work with Wildlife and People in the United States by Author "Allison, Lesli, moderator"

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    No good deed goes unpunished: removing barriers to wildlife conservation on private lands
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014-09) Danvir, Rick, speaker; Allison, Lesli, moderator; Taggart, Craig, moderator; Danvir, Rick, moderator; International Wildlife Ranching Symposium, producer
    Contrary to common perception, many private landowners across the West have a strong conservation ethic and an interest in helping to advance species recovery, including threatened and endangered species. Conservation efforts by private landowners are essential to the management, restoration and preservation of key wildlife movement corridors and habitats across the West. Unfortunately, many landowners fail to realize their desired conservation and economic goals. On occasion, their efforts can best be summed up as "No good deed goes unpunished." State and local agricultural tax policies, inflexible public-lands grazing policies on comingled private-public grazing allotments, inflexible and incompatible forest management practices on public-private land interfaces, lawsuits and appeals from environmental groups, and liability concerns from neighboring landowners are a few of the challenges impeding landowner participation and success in wildlife management and species recovery efforts. Case studies from private ranches in the western U.S. provide examples where county, state and federal policies and perceptions (water, tax, planning and endangered species policies) at times stifle creativity and hinder landowner-initiated efforts to improve management of livestock, rangelands, forests, wildlife and habitat. By reviewing these case studies, we hope to highlight how some policies (such as water laws, grazing and logging-tax requirements) act as barriers or disincentives to voluntary landowner conservation. Our goal is develop policies that facilitate, incentivize and reward voluntary conservation by landowners.
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    Private, wild working lands: important settings for conserving imperiled species
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014-09) Phillips, Mike, speaker; Allison, Lesli, moderator; Taggart, Craig, moderator; Danvir, Rick, moderator; International Wildlife Ranching Symposium, producer
    Over 60% of the United States is held in private ownership. These holdings include some of the country's most productive lands and are often managed as working landscapes. Notably, the security of over 80% of the nation's imperiled species depends wholly or in part on private land. Private landowners have, however, been somewhat reluctant to support efforts on behalf of imperiled species based on myriad concerns, especially perceived regulatory restrictions related to the Endangered Species Act. In 1997 the Turner Endangered Species Fund and Turner Biodiversity Divisions were launched to conserve nature by ensuring the persistence of imperiled species and their habitats with an emphasis on private working lands owned by R. E. Turner. Since inception the Fund and the Divisions have been involved in a number of successful conservation efforts, including controversial reintroduction projects that aimed to restore viable populations of imperiled plants, birds, fishes, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. We are currently developing a conservation effort on behalf of a critically imperiled invertebrate. The organizations now stand as the most important private efforts in the world to arrest the extinction crisis. Our work has generated easily understood outcomes that stand as irrefutable evidence that private working landscapes can be used to advance the prospects of rare and vanishing species.
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    The Great Movement
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014-09) Allison, Lesli, speaker; Allison, Lesli, moderator; Taggart, Craig, moderator; Danvir, Rick, moderator; International Wildlife Ranching Symposium, producer
    Major transformations in land ownership and management have been underway in the Western United States for several decades with enormous implications for wildlife, conservation and working lands. The Western Landowners Alliance, representing the experience and voice of conservation-oriented landowners and managers, has emerged to address both the resulting opportunities and challenges at a west-wide scale. Deeply embedded in their communities, landowners constitute a major social, economic and political influence. They also manage the West's most biologically diverse lands. Working together through organizations like the Western Landowners Alliance, the Chama Peak Land Alliance, the Malpai Borderlands, the Quivira Coalition and the Blackfoot Challenge, among others, landowners are collectively generating a 'culture of conservation'. The era of entrenched warfare between environmental and agricultural organizations is winding to a close, replaced by the rise of what Arizona rancher and Malpai Borderlands founder, Bill McDonald, coined the 'radical center'. This shift represents a significant advance and new opportunities for wildlife conservation but requires new awareness, thinking and communication strategies on the part of environmental organizations, the scientific community, policy makers and funders.