Grants and Contracts Details
Description
The proposed study examines the social and ecological ramifications of the Vallecitos Federal
Sustained Yield Unit in northern New Mexico. Sustained yield units are intended to produce local
economic benefits by offering non-competitive timber sales to operators who agree to hire only local
labor. In the case of northern New Mexico, forest rangers established the Unit in 1948 arguing that
sustained yield forestry would improve local livelihoods and restore overgrazed ranges. Preliminary
research indicates that neither outcome has occurred. The study investigates the intractable
environmental conflict that has emerged as a result ofthe Unit. The unfulfilled promise of sustainedyield
has pit environmental groups against the forest service based on ecological grounds, and local
Hispano organizations against the forest service based on economic grounds. Without a resolution to
this lengthy conflict, it appears likely the entrenched positions and legal battles of various
stakeholders will continue to impact ecosystem structure and function in a way that remains highly
threatening to biodiversity and local economic livelihoods.
The proposed study draws on diverse ecological and political ecological research on forests and
forest ecosystems which recognize that efforts to restore and protect critical habitats and produce
local economic benefits require understanding not only institutional and political structures and
processes, but also complex ecological processes. The study is situated within two broad bodies of
research: 1) Ecological research on forest and montane rangeland environments, and 2) political
ecology research on forest resource use, control and conflicts. Recent research in ecology, range
science, and conservation geography posit that specific types of human interventions in ecosystem
processes serve to benefit ecological and economic outcomes.
The proposed research is an extended, multi-method study accomplished in three stages. In stage
1, archival research methods will be deployed to reconstruct the historical ecology prior to federal
lands management, as well as to understand the economic and political dimensions of the changes
wrought by sustained yield forestry. In stage 2, ethnographic and ecological research of current
agricultural practices during the 2005 growing season will provide data to evaluate the spatial and
ecological practices of agropastoralism and the conservation possibilities of agropastoralism in
support of biodiversity. In stage 3, semi-structured interviews with land grant heirs and activists,
federal lands managers, environmental activists, and former and current loggers in the area will
provide data to answer research questions related to current conflict over resource management.
The proposed study makes two specific impacts with broad social significance. First, research on
socio-spatial processes producing ecological change could serve as a framework for alternative
development strategies based on local agrodiversity production that may offer significant positive
outcomes both for local economic futures and the ecological health of the rangelands and ponderosa
pine forests of the region. Second, ethnographic research and ecological monitoring that identifies
effective management alternatives could overcome a recent history of intractable environmental
conflict in the region. These alternatives could accomplish what, under current management and
production arrangements, appear to be the contradictory goals of local economic benefits and
ecological sustainability. Such a transformation could serve as a new environmental consensus on
federal lands management based both on principles of social justice and environmental ethics.
The intellectual merit ofthe proposed research is two-fold. First, the project engages ecological
theories of ecosystem functioning and social theories of human-environment interaction. By speaking
across disciplinary boundaries, the project will contribute to recent theoretical extensions in ecology
that recognize the benefits to biodiversity of socially-produced agricultural landscapes. Second, the
project will add to empirical research in land grant studies, as well as in human-environment studies
in geography that explore the social and ecological services provided by agrodiversity.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 3/15/05 → 10/31/06 |
Funding
- National Science Foundation: $9,500.00
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