Publications by Colleges and Departments (MSU - Bozeman)
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Item “In Montana, you're only a week away from a drought”: Ranchers’ perspectives on flood irrigation and beaver mimicry as drought mitigation strategies(Elsevier BV, 2022-08) Moore, Megan A.; McEvoy, JamieThe concept of natural water storage has gained traction as an alternative to traditional dams that can potentially mitigate the impacts of changing precipitation patterns by slowing runoff and increasing aquifer recharge. We investigated the barriers and opportunities for two natural water storage practices, flood irrigation and beaver mimicry. We interviewed 8 amenity and 14 traditional ranchers in the Red Rock Watershed in southwest Montana. We found ranchers predominately rely on reactive, rather than proactive drought strategies. Most amenity ranchers had formal drought plans in place, but none of the traditional ranchers had formal drought plans. Ranchers perceived the two natural water storage practices differently. While all agreed on the benefits of flood irrigation, they saw the barriers, such as labor issues and loss of efficiency to outweigh the benefits. Many ranchers were skeptical of the benefits beaver mimicry could provide and voiced concerns over the cost, permits, water rights, and operational impacts. While there are barriers to both strategies, local agencies and actors can work to build trust and practice flexibility when working with ranchers. Ranchers mentioned potential incentives for implementing these strategies, which local agencies can use when working with them.Item Murky waters: divergent ways scientists, practitioners, and landowners evaluate beaver mimicry(Resilience Alliance, Inc., 2022-01) Pfaeffle, Tori; Moore, Megan A.; Cravens, Amanda E.; McEvoy, Jamie; Bamzai-Dodson, AparnaBeaver mimicry is a fast-growing conservation technique to restore streams and manage water that is gaining popularity within the natural resource management community because of a wide variety of claimed socio-environmental benefits. Despite a growing number of projects, many questions and concerns about beaver mimicry remain. This study draws on qualitative data from 49 interviews with scientists, practitioners, and landowners, to explore the question of how beaver mimicry projects continue to be promoted and implemented, despite the lack of comprehensive scientific studies and unclear regulatory requirements. Specifically, we investigate how these three groups differentially assess the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of evidence for beaver mimicry and analyze how those assessments affect each group’s conclusions about the feasibility, desirability, and scalability of beaver mimicry. By highlighting the interaction between how someone assesses evidence and how they draw conclusions about an emerging natural resource management approach, we draw attention to the roles of experiential evidence and scientific data in debates over beaver mimicry. Our research emphasizes that understanding how different groups perceive salience, credibility, and legitimacy of scientific information is necessary for understanding how they make assessments about conservation and natural resource management strategies.