Scholarship & Research
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Item Roadkill and wildflowers: land-based approaches to settler naturalization(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2022) Zimmerer, Jacob Thomas; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Kristin T. RuppelSettler-colonialism is the process of severing relationships between people and the land. This ongoing process displaces well-established kinship networks between Indigenous communities and their other-than-human relatives, replacing them with systems of exploitation, settlers, and foreign ecologies. Decolonization, the philosophical counterpart to settler-colonialism, relies on the mending of relationships. This project explores the larger project of decolonization from a settler point-of-view and examines the complexities of navigating a colonial context not entirely of our own making. Settler cultures fail to adequately situate people within the ecosystems of the places they now live, and the ecological and social consequences of this failure have been catastrophic. This piece explores the philosophical underpinnings of settler cultures, provides settler-colonial context, and examines the intersections of colonialism, culture, land, food, and conservation. I propose settler-naturalization as a framework for revitalizing cultures that integrate human communities within ecological systems, and posit that the practices of hunting, scavenging, and foraging are potential pathways towards settler-naturalization. I conclude that there is a need for new stories that embody the concept of naturalization and guide settlers away from narratives of displacement.Item Building an inclusive land management and conservation decision-making system with local stakeholders of Ulaan Taiga Special Protected Area in Mongolia(Montana State University - Bozeman, The Graduate School, 2022) Dovchin, Badamgarav; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Christine Rogers Stanton; Christine Stanton, Suzanne Held, Kristin Ruppel, Paul Lachapelle, Tumursukh Jal, herders user groups and the Community Advisory Board were co-authors of the article, 'Twin ride: integrating WSEK and TEK in Mongolia (literature review)' submitted to the journal 'The other ways of knowing' which is contained within this dissertation.; Christine Stanton, Suzanne Held, Kristin Ruppel, Paul Lachapelle, Tumursukh Jal, herders user groups and the Community Advisory Board were co-authors of the article, 'Community-based participatory research in action: lessons from communities in the Ulaan Taiga Special Protected Area bufferzone communities' submitted to the journal 'Journal of land management and appraisal' which is contained within this dissertation.; Christine Stanton, Suzanne Held, Kristin Ruppel, Paul Lachapelle, Tumursukh Jal, herders user groups and the Community Advisory Board were co-authors of the article, 'Building an inclusive decision-making system for buffer zone land management and conservation of Ulaan Taiga Special Protected Area' submitted to the journal 'The other ways of knowing' which is contained within this dissertation.Environmental degradation and its management are pressing issues worldwide, especially in developing countries. Mongolia is a nomadic culture country with publicly owned land grazed by privately owned herds of domestic animals experiencing intense land degradation (Ministry of Environment and Tourism of Mongolia, 2018). The Eurocentric system (Koobak et al., 2021) Western Science-Based Ecological Knowledge (WSEK) (Studley, 1998) was introduced first by communism, then global North aid programs. Mongolian government fully adopted WSEK methods despite the reality that people of Mongolia still utilize Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) (Berkes, 2012; Jamsranjav et al., 2019). Gradually the disconnect between the stakeholders increased over the last 100 years. Climate change, socioeconomic pressures on publicly owned land, and multiple stakeholders who practice different decision-making systems call for collaborative facilitation and interventions. The purpose of this study is to examine the following two major points: 1. The possibility of addressing the land degradation issues by integrating TEK and WSEK through Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) facilitations in the Darhad Valley, Mongolia (2014-2020). 2. The perceptions of buffer zone communities of Ulaan Taiga Special Protected Area (UTSPA) regarding their ability to manage their land and the ecosystem services it provides. Guidance and participation of locals and advisory board across all steps in the research process (Hallett et al., 2017; Stanton, 2014), and application of a CBPR framework help rebalance the power dynamics among the stakeholders (Coombe et al., 2020a) and bring shared ownership (D'Alonzo, 2010) and trust (P. R. Lachapelle & McCool, 2012) to decision-making. Our team concluded that integrated epistemologies offer added strength and innovation in addressing some of the complex challenges. We found that the 'twin ride' (integration) of WSEK and TEK complement each other (Maweu, 2011). CBPR provides a framework to facilitate collaboration, apply theory to practice in culturally and epistemologically appropriate ways specific to the host community (Stanton et al., 2020), and help overcome various barriers such as loss of trust, institutional differences, and give time to collectively develop shared goals (P. R. Lachapelle et al., 2003). CBPR is a complicated but rewarding, potentially healing process (Stanton, 2014a; Waddell et al., 2020).Item The impact of integrating Next Generation Science Standards and environmental literacy curriculum(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2021) Hill, Joyce Margaret; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Greg FrancisNext Generation Science Standards provide a framework to develop students' understandings of science ideas, using scientific practices to make sense of natural phenomena. The environment offers a meaningful context to develop these important ideas. However, there are few resources that effectively integrate both the science and environmental standards. This study was part of an ongoing initiative to develop lesson sequences that could be used K-12, created by teacher leaders and informal science educators. The research question focused on the impact of integrating curriculum on students' science understandings and attitudes about nature and environmental stewardship. During Spring 2021 the lessons were taught as part of a pilot. For this study, students participated in a pre and post survey. A sample of student work as well as student interviews were part of the data collected. Results indicated that the lessons supported students' science understandings and affected their attitude towards caring for the environment. Local environments can provide meaningful contexts for important science ideas and bring science alive for students. Increasingly, the environment and human activity will be an important issue to understand better.Item Nature unbound: what gray wolves, monarch butterflies, and giant sequoias tell us about large landscape conservation(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2021) Wright, Will Michael; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mark FiegeThis dissertation examines how and why people of different nationalities across North America cooperate, or not, in conserving transborder ecologies. This project is important because many species of wildlife have been moving across administrative and national borders to cope with a warming world. Out of four thousand species recently tracked, scientists documented that almost three-quarters of them had shifted their ranges, mostly to cooler lands and waters. Terrestrial species, on average, were moving 12 miles (20 kilometers) toward the poles every decade. As the world heats up, threatened biota need more freedom of movement, greater flexibility with borders, to adapt and adjust. My research objective became to recover a useable past about three focal species--gray wolves, monarch butterflies, and giant sequoias--reflecting how these lifeforms were pivotal to the making, unmaking, and remaking of borders for a layering process, a thick cartography, in written word. Conserving large landscapes for each species takes us outside the international lines of modern maps, from the U.S.-Canada border, to the U.S.- Mexico border, to the treaty borders of Indigenous nations subsumed within the United States. My argument is that state-centered conservation followed the possessive logic of nation-building, creating borders and bounding space to protect habitats. New scientific practices such as radio-collaring wolves, tagging monarchs, and tree-ring dating sequoias rendered visible non-human geographies that did not fit the shape or size of traditional protected areas. Civil society in Canada, Mexico, and United States then rallied behind alternative ways of organizing space, building transnational connections for biological well-being. In short, I investigate how non-state actors on the community level reconciled legal, administrative, and national borders with biocentric borders over the long twentieth century (1850s to present). Civic groups like the binational Yellowstone-to-Yukon Initiative, trinational Insect Migration Association, and multinational Indigenous Fire Collective arrived at a political imaginary in-the-making that I call 'ecological internationalism.' Once recognized, its strategy becomes obvious: forge solidarity across borders or face extinction of shared species. Ecological internationalism offers us both a version of the past and a vision of the future.Item High net worth ownership regimes in critical conservation areas: implications for resource governance(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Epstein, Kathleen Elizabeth; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Julia Hobson Haggerty; Julia H. Haggerty and Hannah Gosnell were co-authors of the article, 'Super-rich landowners in social-ecological systems: opportunities in affective political ecology and life course perspectives' in the journal 'Geoforum' which is contained within this dissertation.; Julia Hobson Haggerty and Hannah Gosnell were co-authors of the article, 'With, not for, money: ranch management trajectories of the super-rich in greater Yellowstone' submitted to the journal 'Annals of the American Association of Geographers' which is contained within this dissertation.; Dissertation contains a article of which Kathleen Elizabeth Epstein is not the main author.Despite the expanding financial power of the global super-rich and their expansive control over natural resources as proprietors of an increasing number of large agricultural properties, geographers have only just begun to assess the influences of wealthy landowners on systems of environmental management. In this dissertation, I examine a set of ownership dynamics related to the acquisition of ranchland properties by high net worth (HNW) individuals in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a charismatic conservation area in the Northern Rockies, USA. The dissertation deploys a mixed methods approach informed by social-ecological systems theory and insights from the literature on political ecology of the American West to assess HNW ownership regimes at the landscape and property scales from the perspective of an iconic regional resource institution: state-led elk management. The work follows a central conceptual logic related to the evolution of HNW land management, namely that ranch owners and properties interact with local ecologies, social actors, and resource institutions in ways that influence land use strategies and practices over time and space. At the landscape scale, patterns of land-use intensification (e.g., increased use of irrigation) have converged with growing diversification (e.g., increased residential development), to make elk management more complex, as elk encounter a range of push and pull factors across a shifting and diverse landscape of land-use values and practices. A defining characteristic of the trajectory for ranches of the super-rich is that HNW landowners ranch with, as opposed to for, money, though multiple social-ecological factors (markets, property lines, legal institutions, and unpredictable rangeland socio-ecologies) also shape HNW landowners' abilities to realize management goals and visions. Where HNW ownership regimes intersect with shifts in the political and moral economy, conflicts related to public access to wildlife on private lands have emerged. In this context, the work of wildlife managers requires adaptive strategies as wildlife management has become more about managing people - and the psychosocial outcomes of conflict - than managing wildlife. Ultimately, this research argues that the challenges HNW ownership regimes pose for resource governance require strategic engagement with the broader structures of wealth concentration and resource control that have enabled them.Item Ocean conservation films: connecting the viewer(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2020) Lanier, Sarah Elizabeth; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Dennis AigDocumentaries about ocean conservation have relied on the model of conventional environmental science documentaries with their use of expository film techniques. Ocean conservation films of this kind follow traditions of objectivity, authority, pressure for change, and placing the audience in the uncomfortable role of acting as an antagonist to aquatic life. By examining a new model for ocean conservation films in which audiences feel connected to the ocean instead of alienated from it, we can create more profound stories as well as emotional connections with the viewer. My film, 'The Crab Man of Kodiak' (2020), utilizes a localized portrait film format to engage the viewer in a discourse about ocean conservation without vilifying them, creating a balance between advocacy, science, and emotion.Item Framing science and conservation films for wider acceptance: using social science to engage audience through their worldview and cultural cognition(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2019) Smithee, Tara Pearl; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Theo LipfertUsing the work of Yale professor Dan Kahan, this thesis explores how his 'cultural cognition' theory demonstrates the ineffectiveness of communicating controversial environmental topics using the deficit model. It applies Valerie Reyna's Fuzzy Trace Theory, which demonstrates how communicators can use 'gist' and 'verbatim' in their messaging to connect to an audience's worldview and reduce polarization. This thesis uses these theories to analyze three documentary case studies, including my MFA thesis film, Deep Discoveries. Deep Discoveries documents the underwater ocean exploration of Marine National Monuments in the Pacific Ocean from 2014 to 2016 and utilizes the above tools to promote conservation of the ocean.Item Field science experiences in paleontology: shaping science stewardship in high school learners(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2019) Lepore, Taormina Jean; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Greg FrancisHow do field science experiences shape a sense of conservation and stewardship in learners? This study analyzed separate groups of female-identifying and male-identifying 9th grade high school students (N=80) on their first field paleontology experience at Rainbow Basin Natural Area, California. Likert-style surveys and written self-reflections indicate relative consistency in pre- and post-treatment responses student-to-student, through when paired with qualitative responses, the power of science stewardship and a personal sense of connection to public lands becomes markedly apparent. Future studies in the realm of science stewardship in field paleontology will help illuminate the impact of field paleontology on science learners.Item The personal essay film and large carnivores: moving beyond science in search of empathy and action(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2017) White, Annie Beth; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Dennis AigDespite their common usage in natural history documentary films, appeals based solely upon scientific facts, expert testimony, and rational arguments are not particularly effective at convincing audiences to change their opinions on controversial subjects. Psychologists argue that this is because humans tend to base our decisions on emotion and social affiliations; and therefore, working to find common ground and motive between opposing sides in an argument may be one of the strongest stances from which to start a useful discussion. This is a particularly important consideration when addressing large carnivore conservation because their management is so deeply rooted in our cultural beliefs and identities. I propose that personal essay films, focused on immersing their audiences as much as possible in the authentic experiences of a compelling protagonist, may be an effective way to begin opening up a viewer's opinions on a highly charged subject without directly attacking all of their most strongly held beliefs. Through analyzing representative personal documentary films, I highlight the importance of certain structural elements when trying to connect with an audience on an emotional level; such as letting the passionate protagonist tell their own story, including surprising and mysterious instances in the film, and not oversimplifying moments of indecision or confusion. Part of the Pack (2017), my autobiographical thesis film, attempts to put these insights into practice by inviting the audience to join in my experiences of living closely with captive wolves. My hope is that personal essay films like this can foster the type of emotional connection and common-ground thinking necessary for viewers to start empathizing with and promoting the conservation of large predators.Item Factors affecting the size and distribution of large herbivores in Kafue National Park, Zambia(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2016) Matandiko, Wigganson; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Scott CreelThe distribution and abundance of African ungulates are limited by abiotic factors (soil nutrients and water), bottom-up processes (forage availability and density-dependent competition for food), top-down processes (direct predation and the costs of avoiding predation) and anthropogenic effects. The relative importance of biotic factors such as food limitation and predation have been well-studied for some species (e.g. wildebeest, Connochaetes taurinus), particularly in flagship ecosystems such as Serengeti and Kruger National Parks. Research on complete ungulate communities is needed to describe differences between ungulate species in the relative importance of these limiting factors, and how their importance varies across ecosystems. Moreover, ungulate populations are in decline across much of Africa, and research is needed to examine the importance of anthropogenic effects and the manner in which anthropogenic effects alter the strength of other limiting factors. Here, we used line transect data collected over three years to estimate population densities and determine what factors limit the distribution of large herbivores in Kafue National Park - North (KNP - N) of Zambia, in Southern Africa. With temporal replication within and among years, we sampled a set of systematically distributed transects, and used distance sampling models to correct for non-detection and test the effects on ungulate distributions of vegetation type, grass height and color, recent burning, distance to rivers and lagoons, soil type, pH and nutrients, lion use, and the distance to roads, tourist camps, and park boundaries. Our results show that the most abundant large herbivores in KNP are impala (Aepyceros melampus), puku (Kobus vardonii) and warthog (Phacochoerus africanus). Using AIC scores to test a set of distance sampling models, we found substantial variation among species in the relative importance of abiotic, bottom-up, top-down and anthropogenic effects. These results suggest that a range of species-specific strategies may be needed to conserve African large herbivores and ameliorate recent declines.