ATLAS OF CONFLICT REDUCTION

Chapter one outlines the social and environmental history of western Montana and introduces the ranching family who helped Future West Project Director Hannah Jaicks launch her project. Western Montana’s landscape and its inhabitants reflect a long and varied history of social meaning and environmental decision-making regarding the flora, fauna, and people who call it home. This history explains how western Montana came to be in its current physical and social landscape, allowing Dr. Jaicks to explain the resultant conflicts and provide an overview of the conflict-reduction tools.

Chapter Two illustrates how the economy and way of life for ranchers in western Montana is embedded in a much larger story about the places people hold dear. This chapter focuses on concepts of place identity and place attachment by traveling along with the Martinell family, Mike Raffety, and other local ranchers on their daily acts of living, working, and playing in the Centennial Valley. It is easy and common to put people in boxes and avoid getting to know them. By illustrating the place identity and attachments to the landscape among ranchers, readers will begin to identify commonalities with themselves and see the irony of ranchers’ and their environmental critics’ shared desire to protect valued “places” like the Centennial Valley. Introducing these concepts also informs ranchers’ experiences, behaviors, and attitudes about others, which is necessary for understanding the psychology of environmental decision-making contemplated at length in chapter three.

As readers learn about in Chapter One, a suite of conflict-prevention tools exist to manage the physical, ecological, and economic threats livestock-wildlife conflicts can present. However, what is often missing from accounts about these tools are the contextual factors shaping people’s willingness to use them. Chapter three integrates research on the psychology of decision-making with success stories from the Big Hole Watershed Committee (BHWC) and local ranching community of the Big Hole Valley to help readers understand the critical components essential for implementing any type of effective conservation strategy. Dean Peterson, the Kalsta family, and Jim Hagenbarth all add to these ideas by describing their personal stories as ranchers and their reasons for participating in local collaborative conservation efforts with groups like BHWC, People and Carnivores, and Wildlife Services. These essays capture the types of considerations typically ignored when attempting to undertake environmental initiatives but are absolutely essential if we want to accomplish any type of collective victory for the land and living beings.

To further unravel pre-existing ideas about environmentalism and conservation, Dr. Jaicks takes readers to the Ruby Valley in chapter four and uncovers the “culture of nature” surrounding humankind’s relationship to the environment. The idea we need to “get back to nature” has long been echoed in various media outlets and conservation publications. What is absent from these accounts is a harsh reality: there is no such thing as a “pristine” nature we can get back to at this point. By interacting with the natural world, we inherently alter it. Environmental ideals purporting an untampered nature put humans in an oppositional relationship with the natural world and prevent any kind of practical problem-solving opportunity to arise where the needs of humans and nature can be mediated. Through discussions with family members from the Helle sheep ranch and its affiliated clothing brand, Duckworth, we learn about efforts to keep the ranch in the family through the creation of value-added enterprises, and we hear from others like Heather Puckett at MT Cross Farms and Dave Delisi at the Ruby Habitat Foundation who have sought out ways to do the same, while also stewarding the land and wildlife. These stories upend the fatalistic narratives of anti-ranching advocates and challenge readers to rethink their conservation ideals about nature so we stop treating it as something separate from ourselves and start viewing it as something we need to explore in relation to our daily lives, business practices, recreation habits, and consumer choices.

Chapter five builds upon Dr. Jaicks’ effort to make visible our unconscious, preconceived notions about the natural world by exploring the myths and mythologies surrounding wildlife and livestock. Through an introduction to the ways in which animals are ‘beasts of burden,’ she helps readers comprehend the underlying reasons for divisive reactions to wildlife and livestock. Becky Weed, a Predator Friendly® Certified Rancher in Gallatin Valley, Montana, describes her decision to be a part of this certification label and why the idea of being predator-friendly is so controversial for most producers. Framing her stories is a discussion about the rich and varied histories, sociocultural dynamics, and decision-making processes underpinning our relationships to wild and domestic animals.

In chapter six, we head into the Tom Miner Basin of Paradise Valley, where Dr. Jaicks shares the thoughtful stories and efforts the Anderson family is undertaking to uphold a more holistic, regenerative approach to ranching and managing their landscape. Regenerative agriculture has long been seen as a contradiction. However, as Malou Anderson and her family make evident, there is a growing community of ranchers who see managing the land through ranching as an opportunity to not only restore it but enhance it for the betterment of everyone else. This chapter introduces readers to groundbreaking research on the science of soil health and regenerative agriculture. From this discussion, readers will learn how regenerative ranching has the potential to restore the landscape in a way that helps address humanity’s greatest threats: climate change, biodiversity loss, community dissolution, human malnutrition, and desertification. Reiterating the idea that we cannot afford to lose the family ranch, the story of the Anderson family helps readers see the unparalleled opportunities existing when we support them.

Chapter seven ties these ideas all together by capturing the stories of the ranchers, community members, agency scientists, and NGO staff who are a part of the Blackfoot Challenge. For anyone attempting to study how to achieve a successful conservation effort, it will not take them very long before they come upon the Challenge in their research. It is not coincidence or luck contributing to this decades-old community organization’s success. As Jim, Denny, David, Ben, and other ranchers will tell you, it is the Challenge’s approach to the process of building trust and relationships at the heart of this organization’s endurance and accomplishments. This approach is emblematic of the Challenge’s commitment to bringing people together to realize common goals, shared values, and a collective vision for how they want their special place to endure into the future. Although this arrangement of individual chapters is intended to speak to each of the aforementioned themes in order, the collection of stories adds up to something larger: the assertion of a different paradigm to the science and politics of managing shared landscapes among humans and wildlife.