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Northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) abundance has declined range‐wide over the long term due to factors such as habitat loss and deterioration. Private land management is critical to bobwhite conservation because most bobwhites occur on private lands, but little research has been conducted regarding how private land managers and landowners make decisions about whether and how to restore northern bobwhite habitat. To begin addressing this deficit, we used a choice‐based conjoint approach to determine how Texas, USA, landowners and land managers (surveyed in November 2017) weigh the importance of northern bobwhite hunting opportunities, costs, and labor when making habitat restoration decisions. We also used a latent class analysis to break respondents into segments based on their valuations of these attributes. The results of our latent class analysis indicate that managers and landowners can be grouped into several segments, and most segments do not place a high value on bobwhite hunting opportunities, but instead are more interested in minimizing out‐of‐pocket costs and labor input. Bobwhite habitat restoration programs yielding cost shares ≥50%, labor inputs at ≤30 days/year, and likely coveys flushed per hunting day >4 broadly appealed to landowners; however, ensuring low labor costs was most important, particularly for pragmatic landowners. This indicates that policies minimizing labor inputs and maximizing cost shares may be preferred over increasing hunting opportunities. Finally, we discuss the management preferences and practices of the segment most interested in maximizing bobwhite hunting opportunities and potential outreach strategies for segments of opportunistic and pragmatic landowners who may be persuaded to manage for bobwhite habitat if they perceived this management as economically viable. © 2019 The Authors. Wildlife Society BulletinPublished by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Reversing the range‐wide decline in northern bobwhite abundance requires conservation actions on private land, but little is known about how private land managers make decisions regarding developing bobwhite habitat. Using a choice‐based conjoint approach we demonstrate that land managers can be grouped into several segments based on their management goals, and most segments do not place a high value on bobwhite hunting opportunities, but instead are most interested in minimizing labor input (i.e., ≤30 days/year) followed by limiting out‐of‐pocket costs (i.e., cost shares ≥ 50%).

Sustainability science is a solution-oriented discipline. Yet, there are few theory-rich discussions about how this orientation structures the efforts of sustainability science. We argue that Niklas Luhmann’s social system theory, which explains how societies communicate problems, conceptualize solutions, and identify pathways towards implementation of solutions, is valuable in explaining the general structure of sustainability science. From Luhmann, we focus on two key concepts. First, his notion of resonance offers us a way to account for how sustainability science has attended and responded to environmental risks. As a product of resonance, we reveal solution-oriented research as the strategic coordination of capacities, resources, and information. Second, Luhmann’s interests in self-organizing processes explain how sustainability science can simultaneously advance multiple innovations. The value logic that supports this multiplicity of self-organizing activities as a recognition that human and natural systems are complex coupled and mutually influencing. To give form to this theoretical framework, we offer case evidence of renewable energy policy formation in Texas. Although the state’s wealth is rooted in a fossil-fuel heritage, Texas generates more electricity from wind than any US state. It is politically antagonistic towards climate-change policy, yet the state’s reception of wind energy technology illustrates how social and environmental systems can be strategically aligned to generate solutions that address diverse needs simultaneously. This case demonstrates that isolating climate change—as politicians do as a separate and discrete problem—is incapable of achieving sustainable solutions, and resonance offers researchers a framework for conceptualizing, designing, and communicating meaningfully integrated actions.

Wildlife conservation policy discussions in the United States and Canada often revolve around historical accounts of the success of wildlife management grounded in the public trust doctrine. We suggest that the usefulness of these discussions is partially limited by failure to consider the importance of wildlife “identity” rooted in freedom (i.e., how humans socially construct the “wildness” dimension of wild animals). To demonstrate the interrelations between identity and freedom, we explain that the class of subjects people care most about—partners, children, and people in general—typically should not be privately owned (i.e., chattel) because freedom (as opposed to slavery) is generally accepted as central to human identity, and its abrogation therefore degrades human identity. The degree to which this ethical argument applies to privatization of wildlife depends upon the relationship between freedom and the identity of wildlife as perceived by society. Thus, we suggest policy decisions regarding privatization of wildlife will be more accurately deliberated if society and wildlife professionals more completely considered the degree to which freedom is essential to a wild species’ identity and the degree to which that identity is inviolable. © 2016 The Wildlife Society.

We review energy communication, an emerging subfield of communication studies that examines the role of energy in society, and argue that it is dominated by a crisis frame. Whereas this frame can be productive, it can also be limiting. In response, we propose three areas for future energy communication research—internal rhetoric of science, comparative studies, and energy in everyday life—as starting points for rethinking and expanding energy communication. This expanded focus will continue to contribute to communication theory, add to interdisciplinary energy studies, and supply practical resources for the creation and deployment of just and sustainable energy futures.

The whooping crane (Grus americana) is an endangered North American species facing multiple environmental and anthropogenic threats. Even if the species thrives, it must continue to be managed after recovery because the threats will not abate. We examined how social capital serves as a resource for potential community involvement in whooping crane management by conducting semi‐structured interviews (Jul–Sep 2010) of 35 individuals, 25 of whom are concerned community members who work and/or live in the wintering grounds of the lone wild population of whooping cranes in the Texas Coastal Bend, USA. We used an iterative process of inductive analysis to examine structural and cognitive dimensions of social capital within the community. We observed networks with bonding ties within the community that are strengthened by active engagement in crane‐related activities, shared values and community identity, and institutions that have fostered leadership and service. Bridging ties between community and state, federal, academic, and nonprofit organizations offer opportunities for knowledge sharing and legitimacy. Reciprocity and trust were evident from descriptions of the community working together effectively to address environmental and crane‐related concerns. Challenges to successful community involvement include finding ways for meaningful community contributions to foster greater trust between the community and federal natural resource managers. We suggest social capital in this community provides a resource that has the potential to save time and money in addressing ongoing efforts to protect this charismatic endangered species. © 2015 The Wildlife Society.

Engaging a variety of wildlife stakeholders in the implementation of conservation plans is an increasingly frequent activity of wildlife managers. In some cases, stakeholders develop interdependent relationships with a species being managed by the wildlife agency, usually when the species is economically important. We studied the potential for engaging stakeholders in the implementation of community‐based conservation in the winter habitat of the federally endangered whooping crane (Grus americana) to better understand the relationships between stakeholders (including landowners and nongovernmental organizations) and wildlife managers when working with charismatic species that provide local economic value. In May–September 2010, we interviewed 35 Texas individuals interested in crane conservation, and then analyzed transcripts using both a prioriand emergent coding techniques. We found that active stakeholders were eager to work with wildlife managers because of the charismatic and economic values they attributed to the whooping crane. We also found that these stakeholders responded positively to agency intervention for the purpose of sharing expert knowledge and providing stakeholders with standing in the dynamically complex management practices surrounding the species and ecosystem. By recognizing the interests of active stakeholders, wildlife managers can expand opportunities for positive public participation in efforts to conserve and restore endangered species populations. They can improve community relations by building on already existing positive perceptions of relationships between humans and wildlife. © 2015 The Authors. Wildlife Society Bulletinpublished by The Wildlife Society.

Conserving biodiversity requires productive management of conflict. Currently, wildlife are often portrayed as conscious human antagonists, which must be fought. We suggest using the ‘comic corrective’ to experiment with ways to reframe human–human conflicts over wildlife management and wildlife damage. This requires a deep commitment to change, often made more palatable through humour. This effort to fight the use of the term human–wildlife conflict should not be interpreted as a call to reject human–human conflict as a useful conservation tool. Conservationists, who value wildlife, often misleadingly suggest that conservation can sidestep irreducible value differences and political processes that see proponents of different views as antagonists. Because democracies cannot function without dissent, we suggest that conservation biologists should embrace stakeholder conflicts over wildlife conservation as a way to improve decision making. In particular, we should challenge the view that wildlife are willfully antagonistic to people while recognizing conflict among humans over how biodiversity conservation should occur.

Abstract: Community-engaged decision-making and management mark a change in philosophy and practice of shared-resource governance. Moving from national to local scales of agency coordination and public engagement requires equivalent change in the scale of useful social science data. Upon recognizing landowners and resource users as allies in policy implementation, success relies on how well diverse groups can understand one another and work together. Unfortunately, managers often have a fragmented understanding of the interests, voices, and lives of the public they serve. We outline an early scoping means for engaging and organizing local voices to prepare decision-making teams. To provide a foundation for decentralized water resource planning, we used a cultural studies lens to conduct and analyze 313 in-depth stakeholder interviews on the Yellowstone River. This essay chronicles this approach and reflects benefits and challenges, and why it may appeal to other decentralized planning efforts.

Abstract:Many researchers have implicated human population density in species endangerment, but these correlative studies do not demonstrate causality. We propose that hypotheses implicating human population density in wildlife endangerment at global and national scales owe their public and academic currency as thoroughly to inductive reasoning and repetition as to scientific experimentation. It follows that alternative research hypotheses generated from the same facts should provide equally tenable results. Household density provides such an alternative hypothesis and is growing faster than human population density. We used linear multiple regression models to demonstrate that household density provides a viable alternative statistical hypothesis to human population density for explaining species endangerment (household model, r2= 0.85; population model, r2= 0.84). We then suggest adopting a household perspective for biodiversity conservation because 1) social norms and practices render a household approach to conservation more pragmatic than a human population perspective and 2) shifting the focus toward households could facilitate movement from a human‐versus‐nature ethic to a humans‐situated‐within‐nature ethic (e.g., a land ethic). Wildlife managers and researchers concerned about the negative influence humans have on biodiversity should consider grounding research, theory, and policy decisions in the dynamics of human households as an alternative to human population.

Abstract: Worldwide human population expansion and rising standards of living place increasing pressure on wildlife populations and their habitats. Conflict regarding conservation and preservation of endangered species is among the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Endangered species management on private lands magnifies the problems encountered by natural resource policy-makers and managers. Given that conservation of endangered species increasingly depends on securing cooperation of private property owners in local communities, understanding how to secure that cooperation is important. We used an ethnographic approach to critically review the Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) processes used in attempts to develop regional HCPs to benefit the Houston toad (Bufo houstonensis) and the Florida Key deer (Odocoileus virginianus clavium; hereafter, Key deer). In both cases, the process was framed as a search for the optimum solution through collaboration and consensus building, and in neither case was the solution achieved. The paradoxical nature of liberal democracy precluded the possibility of a single, ideal solution. Failing to find the optimal solution led to disillusionment and pessimism with the process among HCP participants. We suggest that within democratic political contexts, approaches to conservation planning that center around bounded conflict, which is rooted in acknowledgment of the paradox inherent to the ideals of liberty and equality, are more likely to produce satisfactory results than are consensus-based approaches.

The first European Congress on Agriculturaland Food Ethics was held at Wageningen University andResearch Center (WUR), Wageningen, The Netherlands, March 4–6, 1999. This was the inaugural conference forthe newly forming European Society for Agricultural andFood Ethics – EUR-SAFE – and around two hundredpeople from across Europe (and a handful of NorthAmericans) participated. Following theCongress/conference, a small (16 people), two-dayworkshop funded in part by the US National ScienceFoundation focused on similarities and differencesbetween the US and the EU regarding publicdiscourse/debate on food biotechnology. A briefoverview of the Congress and the follow-up workshopsuggests what lessons AFHVS and ASFS might learn fromEuropean experience of agricultural and food ethics.

The 1930s Dust Bowl has been accepted as the worst environmental disaster in United States history. Analysis of the rhetoric of agricultural conservationists which focuses on this issue reveals that its potential for promoting environmentally sound land-use practices was limited. This essay relies on Kenneth Burke's theory of identification and pentadic ratios to identify the hierarchy of motives associated with land use. I argue that the vulnerability of conservation efforts to competing forces was largely a function of that hierarchy and suggests that an action-oriented perspective would be more conducive to responsible land use.

Though agriculture is the most dangerous occupation in the United States, two key issues impede the effectiveness of farm safety interventions. First, little is known about what farmers think about farm equipment accidents and safety procedures. Second, current safety interventions are typically atheoretical and focus on information exchange, instead of persuasion. Formative evaluation is desperately needed, but rarely used in farm safety campaigns. The study reported here represents a formative evaluation based on a theoretically-grounded persuasive health message framework. The goal of this formative evaluation was to discover farmers' safety practices, as well as their beliefs about farm equipment accidents and safety. Methodological triangulation was achieved by assessing farmers' beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors via face-to-face interviews (N= 46), telephone interviews (N= 48), and mailed surveys (N= 177). The formative evaluation revealed that farmers believe farm equipment accidents to be severe and dangerous, yet believe themselves to be invulnerable to these accidents.East Texas Farmer, Fall 1992[My neighbor's wife] was running the big old tractor to shredding. And she hit a stump and it throwed her off and it run over her. Them big old tires run right over her and that shredder still running just chopped her all to pieces. Killed her just real quick.

This essay explores rhetorical strategies that construct institutional authority by analyzing discourse from a Senate subcommittee hearing. The analysis reveals three major strategies hearing participants used to reproduce authority relationships: position markers, pseudo-requests, and images of order. Participants enacted these strategies through several tactics that enabled them constantly to restructure the institution and adapt it to their individual agendas. The essay argues that, although domination is basic to human organization, all structures are vulnerable to strategic alteration through effective participation.

This analysis considers the rhetoric of the Texas-based American Ethnic Coalition, and details the AEC's Attempt to achieve legal protection of English as the official language of the U.S. AEC rhetoric aligns itself with key metaphors, and uses the metaphors to exclude its opponents. Further, the AEC seeks legitimacy by posing as spokesman for the English language movement at a time when such languarge issues find currency. The constructs of freedom and unity are used to ethnocentrically justify support for Official English.

American agrarianism, as informed by the frontier myth, has provided fundamental inventional resources for agricultural rhetoric. These myths have deflected farmers from positive adaptation, reinforcing instead the self-image of a hero victimized by circumstances. Critical examination of these independent myths reveals their literalized status as well as inconsistencies with fundamental agricultural goals.

ABSTRACTTransitioning to low-carbon energy systems depends on fundamental changes in technologies, policies, and institutions. In Western democracies, public perceptions and engagement with energy have encouraged innovation while also slowing deployment of low-carbon energy technologies (LCETs).Transitioning to low-carbon energy systems requires re-engineering technologies and changing the ways people interact with energy. This shift involves both technological and social changes including modifications in policies and institutional configurations. In Western democracies, public perceptions and engagement with energy have encouraged innovation while also slowing deployment of low-carbon energy technologies (LCETs). To aid understanding of how energy systems are evolving toward lower-carbon technologies in Western democracies, this study reviews the literature on public perception of and engagement with emerging LCETs. Focusing primarily on electricity generating technologies, we explore how multiple factors related to place and process shape public perceptions of and engagement with LCETs, thereby influencing their development and deployment. This study first reviews literature related to how place and process influence emerging LCETs and then provides a comparative example of differential development of wind energy in Texas and Massachusetts (USA) to demonstrate how place and process may interact to influence the patterns of LCET deployment.