Big Sky Watershed Corps Evaluation Project. Natural Resource Planning and Protection Survey. Pre-Survey Results

Abstract

The Big Sky Watershed Corps (BSWC) is an AmeriCorps program implemented through a partnership between the Montana Conservation Corps, the Montana Watershed Coordination Council, and the Montana Association of Conservation Districts. Individual Corps members are paired with water resource-related organizations and agencies, called host-sites, to promote professional development and increase the operating capacity of host-sites to achieve their missions and/or purpose. The overarching purpose of the survey results presented here is to document how, if at all, Corps members influence their host-site’s capacity to implement hands on restoration work as well as create new or deepen existing relationships with host-site partners and collaborators. This project also seeks to understand the priorities and concerns of natural resource-related agencies and organizations throughout the state. We are interested in how water resource professionals perceive the importance of stakeholder group inclusion in decision-making, collaboration, and experimentation and monitoring. Finally, we are interested in what role, if any, Corps members play in assisting water resource organizations and agencies with these efforts. We seek to understand these topics by collecting data via two rounds of surveys and semi-structured interviews throughout the year 2021 to understand overall impact of Corps members on host-site capacity as compared with non-host sites. The pre-survey occurred during the first half of Corps members’ tenure at their host-site. The post-survey will be administered after Corp members’ term of service concludes. This report contains an overview of our data collection methods and the data collected from the pre-survey.