Toward an urgent yet deliberate conservation strategy: sustaining social-ecological systems in rangelands of the Northern Great Plains, Montana

Abstract

Urgency and deliberateness are often at odds when executing conservation projects, especially as the scale and complexity of objectives increases. The pace of environmental degradation supports immediate and measurable action. However, best practices for adaptive governance and building resilient social-ecological systems call for more deliberate efforts and participatory processes, which can be slow. We explore conflicts between urgency and deliberateness and the potential for their reconciliation through a case study of the challenges of conserving native rangelands in North America's Northern Great Plains, an ecoregion targeted for global conservation initiatives. This region is undergoing a significant social-ecological transition, which underscores a need to rethink conservation strategies in light of the social-ecological system dynamics and potential future trajectories. Based on a structured narrative literature review process and iterative engagement with key regional stakeholders, we identify three interrelated factors critical to the system's future outcomes that illustrate system complexity as well as trade-offs between urgent and deliberate action and unilateral and multilateral approaches to conservation: (1) influences of land management on biodiversity, (2) economic restructuring and shifting land use priorities, and (3) changing climate and disturbance regimes. We identify key gaps in the literature for each factor and across the factors-an effort that informs our call for research and practice agendas that address uncertainty and complexity at regional scales through more inclusive and future-oriented approaches.

Large contribution of woody plant expansion to recent vegetative greening of the Northern Great Plains

“…We have shown that the greening of the NGP is driven by interactions between large‐scale vegetative shifts and cooccurring photosynthetic enhancement from established herbaceous vegetation. While recent WPE has contributed to enhanced C sequestration, WPE is also associated with a host of ecosystem and socio‐economic tradeoffs, including loss of grassland biodiversity, transformation of biogeochemical cycles, and changes to wildlife habitat (Barger et al, 2011; Epstein et al, 2021; Symstad & Leis, 2017; Wilcox et al, 2018). Furthermore, the combination of higher conifer densities and a warmer climate dramatically increases the probability of large wildfires (McWethy et al, 2019; Moritz et al, 2012).…”

Is the grass always greener? Land surface phenology reveals differences in peak and season‐long vegetation productivity responses to climate and management

“…These shifts, trade‐offs, and asynchronies in vegetation phenology have feedbacks and consequences to ecological communities, including consumer–resource dynamics, species' behaviors, and other ecosystem processes (Beard et al., 2019 ; Morisette et al., 2009 ). Understanding the implications of future climate change is important for predicting potential ecological and social‐ecological impacts (e.g., Allstadt et al., 2015 ; Beard et al., 2019 ; Beever et al., 2019 ; Epstein et al., 2021 ; Hufkens et al., 2016 ). A collective understanding and consideration of multiple phenological measures and their drivers is important for effective management actions and continued development of a multiscale ecological perspective for management (Bezerra et al., 2019 ; Morisette et al., 2009 ).…”

Practical considerations for adaptive strategies by US grazing land managers with a changing climate

“…Marking grazing lands as social‐ecological systems provides an opportunity to see interconnections among sub‐systems in agroecosystems that shape and constrain climate adaptation. For example, a growing body of research is looking at what makes these collaborative approaches successful, with a recognition that social, ecological, conservation, and climate adaptation goals on grazing lands are interconnected and interdependent (Brunson & Huntsinger, 2008; Epstein et al., 2021). Along with this, there is growing recognition of managers’ local ecological knowledge and long‐term management time frames, as well as increased engagement with Native Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (Elk, 2016) to understand rangeland management.…”