Moving the paradigm from stakeholders to beneficiaries in wildlife management

Abstract

Wildlife management is evolving in many ways including adaptation of philosophy and practices to contemporary ideas about governance of wildlife as public trust resources. Inherent to good governance is citizen engagement, especially regarding who is engaged and to what ends management efforts are directed. Two decades ago, the profession was encouraged to shift from a client orientation (i.e., a narrow focus on people who pay for services and products) to a stakeholder orientation (i.e., any people affected by or affecting wildlife or its management). We believe that it is time again to broaden thinking about the related questions: wildlife management for whom and for what? We argue that management needs to shift slightly from a stakeholder orientation to a beneficiary orientation. This shift may be less challenging than the earlier call for change but nevertheless has implications for practices of public engagement and for objectives and outcomes of wildlife management that bring the enterprise into better alignment with the expectations of public trust resource management. © 2019 The Wildlife Society.

The future of wildlife conservation funding: What options do U.S. college students support?

“…Expanding antiquated approaches to conservation funding and decision‐making requires engagement with younger audiences (Anderson & Loomis, 2006; Martin et al, 2016). Documenting and responding to the perspectives and preferences of diverse college students, all of whom represent beneficiaries in wildlife management (Decker et al, 2019), is a key step in that process.…”

Systems thinking to operationalize knowledge‐to‐action in fish and wildlife agencies

“…F&W agencies as knowledge brokers can help coordinate a lot of information from myriad groups, transform it to knowledge, and facilitate its application for problem solving (Healy et al, 2015; Michaels, 2009; Moore & Westley, 2011; Said et al, 2019). As boundary spanning organizations, F&W agencies facilitate collaboration and information flow among diverse research disciplines, organizations, beneficiaries, managers, and complementary boundary spanners (Decker et al, 2019; Fudge & Hiruy, 2019). Such a knowledge network serves as the bridging mechanism that creates and manages the interdependencies (Contandriopoulos et al, 2010; Cornell et al, 2013; Roux et al, 2006; Spilsbury & Nasi, 2006) and enables more effective and innovative conservation actions than more formal structures (Masuda et al, 2018; Scholz & Wang, 2006).…”

Successful Wildlife Conservation Requires Good Governance

“…The historical focus on people who purchase hunting, fishing, or trapping licenses and those who control private land providing habitat for game species (farmers, forest landowners, etc.) expanded to stakeholders (Decker et al, 1996) during the latter years of the 20th century and more recently to beneficiaries (Decker et al, 2019). Stakeholders are a subset of beneficiaries who significantly affect or are significantly affected by wildlife or wildlife management (Decker et al, 2012b).…”