Collaborative management in wolf licensed hunting: the dilemmas of public managers in moving collaboration forward

Abstract

Although wolf recolonization can be considered a success in terms of population increase and geographical dispersal, the return of grey wolves Canis lupus to rural central Sweden has caused frustration and discontent among local stakeholders. Farmers and hunters living in -or adjacent to -wolf territories perceive the political decision to support wolf recovery as intruding on local lives and restricting opportunities for small-scale farming and hunting. h ey feel that decision-makers have left the consequences of wolf recovery policies unaddressed. To overcome the failure of previous policies and increase local consensus, in October 2009 the Swedish parliament passed a resolution concerning the introduction of licensed hunting on wolves as a measure expected to promote local acceptance and facilitate dialogue among diff erent parties. In doing so, the Parliament delegated to the regional authorities the responsibility to organize, coordinate and implement licensed hunting in the administrative counties concerned.According to Swedish wolf hunting regulations, the regional authorities are to be involved not only in the achievement of primary policy goals, but are also expected to overcome antagonism and confl ict through collaboration. Questioning the normative idea which suggests that public managers are expected simply to implement national legislation at the local level, this paper argues that managers create practices and establish routines that enable them to cope with problems related to the realization of collaborative management. h rough a combination of participant observations and semi-structured interviews conducted with authorities and fi eld-staff in four administrative counties during the implementation of licensed hunting, this paper concludes that in order to understand how collaborative management of natural resources works, greater attention has to be directed to the way public managers organize their activities, how they cope with their mandate and how they themselves relate to networks of actors.

Knowledge Claims and Struggles in Decentralized Large Carnivore Governance: Insights From Norway and Sweden

“…Falleth and Hovik, 2009) and distrust of lower level actors' abilities (or willingness) to comply with policy (cf. Cinque, 2008Cinque, , 2015. If the governance models are not designed appropriately, the concerned actors are left with restricted options to influence and push their objectives (e.g., .…”

Individual and collective responses to large carnivore management: the roles of trust, representation, knowledge spheres, communication and leadership

“…Woodroffe et al 2005) to understanding that the presence of wolves interferes with rural livelihoods and survival (Knight 2000, Skogen and Krange 2003, Sjölander-Lindqvist 2008, Cinque 2015). Ingold's 'dwelling' perspective is useful for understanding how participation in environmental management by non-elected citizens is socially and culturally framed.…”

Rurality and Collective Attitude Effects on Wolf Policy

“…[28,30]. One proposed way of achieving this would be a reform of the Swedish wolf management system, as various forms of collaborative or interactive governance based management have the potential to increase procedural as well as output legitimacy [39]. However, assessing the plausibility or potential of such a reform is well beyond the scope of this paper.…”