Society and Range Management: A Commentary

The 3 papers which follow this prologue were originally presented at the Fifth International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, held 7-10 June 1994 at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. The symposium focused on creating partnerships among natural resource professionals in research, education, and management. Nearly 500 papers were presented by attendees representing a dozen countries. Most of them were social scientists and economists; relatively few range scientists or range managers were present. It is somewhat paradoxical that an international conference dealing with human dimensions issues of natural resource management should attract so little attention from those of us who have specialized in the stewardship of rangelands. While we all acknowledge the importance of how social issues are impacting rangeland management-particularly those on federal and state lands in the United States-many of us, like other natural resource professionals, tend to feel uncomfortable addressing societal concerns. Our lack of training in social sciences certainly inhibits us. Also, social problems are often perceived as being insolvable because of non-compromising interest groups. Whatever the reasons, me lag far behind several other natural resource professions in exploring interrelationships between the human and bio-physical dimensions of our discipline. The dilemma at the Fifth International Symposium was not one of a dearth of appropriate subjects being covered. Although the word “rangelands” did not appear in many papers, topics germane to rangelands were presented; e.g., papers on risk assessment, ecosystem management, and the changing resource management work force. Regardless, the human dimensions of rangelands will remain relatively unexplored without personal interactions between the kinds of people who tend to belong to the Society for Range Management, and the kinds of people-social scientists and economists--who attended the Fifth International Symposium. Partnerships cannot form without a mechanism for interaction. If the emerging concept of ecosystem management is to succeed as a national policy, opportunities for synthesizing the crucial components of social values and ecosystem health, as they relate to long-term sustainability and other ingrained goals, must be increased. The utilitarian conservation movement of the early 1900’s. based soley on rigorous science and professionalism, has been modified by the environmental