Successes and Failures in Rangeland Restoration: An Icelandic Case Study

Abstract

Rangeland restoration is a multilayered process aimed at improving land condition, often parallel to utilization. To ensure the long‐term progress that restoration programmes are expected to deliver, they must be designed, implemented and maintained in partnership with local stakeholders. Each programme should have clear goals, followed up by measurable ecological and/or socio‐economic objectives, to facilitate their evaluation in the long run. In this research, we examine if a large‐scale rangeland restoration programme in Iceland had contributed to the expected attitudinal and behavioural changes among the participating sheep farmers, as described in the initial objectives of the programme. A survey, based on a questionnaire on sheep farmers' attitude and behaviour related to rangeland restoration and land management practices, was used to gauge the perception of participating farmers, in comparison with non‐participating farmers. Our results show that participating farmers are more aware of the potential of rangeland restoration and are more motivated to engage in further collaboration, when compared with non‐participating farmers. Nevertheless, our results indicate that, despite extensive areas of degraded land already successfully treated within the restoration programme, the programme has not facilitated other anticipated attitudinal and behavioural changes among its participants as expected. Furthermore, it seems that the direct incentives provided by the programme are pushing participating farmers towards favouring agronomic instead of ecological approaches in their restoration activities, when compared with the non‐participating farmers. Our results also point to several organizational errors embedded in the programme management that might be halting its further progress. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Assessing the ecological impacts of extensive sheep grazing in Iceland

“…Today, most sheep are grazed without herding during summer in extensive rangeland commons, including the highlands, from late June to early September (Guðmundsson 2001). However, due to the limited knowlegde of the ecological consequences of grazing (Petursdottir et al 2017), areas in poor condition, with degraded and even collapsed ecosystems (due to extensive soil erosion), are still being grazed today (Arnalds 2015).…”

Functional silos and other governance challenges of rangeland management in Iceland

“…The public administrators, (officials), the environmental and the educational sectors have, for instance, 15 recognized the importance of sustainable rangeland management strategies to a greater extent 16 more than does the agricultural sector and local authorities. The latter two sectors, along with the 17 sheep farmers, favored the traditional rangeland utilization practices as described earlier in this 18 paper, while the replies from the environmental and the educational sectors were more in line 19 with contemporary understandings for of what practices should be considered as sustainable 20 rangeland management in Iceland, as described in Petursdottir et al (2017). 21 These results are in line with several other recent Icelandic research findings indicating that also 22 indicating that the QMS scheme and above mentioned interventions might not be 23 facilitating long-term system transition towards sustainable rangeland management as intended.…”

“…FHL is a governmental costshared 38 voluntary program that is operated nationwide by the SCSI, in close collaboration with its 39 participants (mostly sheep farmers). The program mainly supports restoration activities 40 performed on privately owned lowland rangelands (Petursdottir et al, 2017). Currently, roughly 41 550 farmers around the country participate in the FHL program (Einarsson, 2018 Table 1) (Arnalds & Barkarson, 2003).…”

Adjustive ecological restoration through stakeholder involvement: a case of riparian landscape restoration on privately owned land with public access

“…This may in turn cause disagreements between contending parties (Reed et al ). Such uncertainty or disagreement, with its normative aspects, has received less attention (Reed et al ; Palmer et al ; Petursdottir et al ). Its management requires knowledge of stakeholders' attitudes to ecological restoration, and more generally, an understanding of what stakeholders see as the “right” kind of restoration.…”