Dissertation Research: Household Ecology of Family Ranchers in the Eastern Sierras

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The deterioration of the range, including desertification, non-source water pollution, and loss of biodiversity, is one of the most urgent environmental issues in the western United States. While significant numbers of ranches contribute to environmental degradation, many ranchers work to ensure conservation. Under the right conditions, family ranchers can serve as effective range managers, preserving open space and the working agricultural landscape. Currently, the conditions that lead to conservation rather than mismanagement are not well understood and little is known about how policy is implemented through the actions of households on family ranches. This dissertation project, conducted by a graduate student of cultural anthropology, will seek to understand current processes of land management in which multiple economic variables and ranchers' traditional knowledge of the land are transformed into household actions. The project will provide a model of household decision-making processes that produce the observed range management strategies that impact environmental sustainability in the Eastern Sierra corridor of California. Each year, family ranchers in the Eastern Sierra must use their knowledge of the land, economy, politics, and livestock to devise range management strategies that will provide for the household economically and yet also ensure stability and continuity of the ranch. Using a combination of participant observation in ranching communities, structured in-depth and family history interviews, environmental status surveys, decision-making process modeling and the development of simple models of alternative range management strategies, the student will determine how multiple economic and ecological constraints are understood by family ranchers and negotiated through range management practices, contributing a multifaceted understanding of range management and its environmental and social effects. Broader Impact: Aside from contributing to the education of a doctoral student, this research will provide a model of the necessary factors promoting family ranch economic stability and environmental sustainability, as well as a model of how family ranches implement government policy on-the-ground through resource management practices. This new knowledge will be important to planners seeking more effective policies concerning range land management and conservation.