Western Ranchers’ Perspectives on Enablers and Constraints to Flood Irrigation

Mary Sketch; Ashley A. Dayer; Alexander L. Metcalf

doi:10.1016/j.rama.2019.12.003

Western Ranchers’ Perspectives on Enablers and Constraints to Flood Irrigation

Mary Sketch
, Ashley A. Dayer
, Alexander L. Metcalf

W. A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

18 Scopus citations

Abstract

Flood irrigation on western rangelands is important for diverse social and ecological reasons, providing forage for many agricultural operations and maintaining many critical wetlands across the region. However, recent debate over the efficiency of flood irrigation and resulting transition to other “more efficient” types of irrigation has put many of the working wet meadows sustained by flood irrigation at risk. As the sustainability of these landscapes is primarily dependent on ranchers’ management decisions, we sought to gain a deeper understanding of factors influencing ranchers who flood irrigate and how these factors interrelate. We applied the Community Capitals Framework to explore what considerations act as enablers and constraints to maintaining flood irrigation and to evaluate the role of each type of capital in enabling and constraining the coproduction of working wet meadows for ranchers and the environment. Our qualitative analysis of facilitated workshop transcripts and observation notes from two study areas within the Intermountain West showed that ranchers perceived constraining and enabling factors of flood irrigation related to all seven types of community capitals: natural, financial, built, cultural, human, social, and political. The irrigation methods used by ranchers were heavily influenced by environmental components of the landscape rather than reflecting a choice among alternative methods. Other prominent enablers included a commitment toward maintaining the natural history of the landscape and the ranching lifestyle. Primary constraints included the impact of public misperception and the ability to pass their operation on to the next generation. Ranchers weighed multiple considerations simultaneously in a holistic, community-scale approach to management decisions and described how diverse enablers and constraints interacted to determine the viability of flood irrigation and ranching. These results indicate rancher decisions are driven by complex social-ecological considerations and demonstrate the importance of each capital type to rangeland conservation.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	285-296
Number of pages	12
Journal	Rangeland Ecology and Management
Volume	73
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2019.12.003
State	Published - Mar 2020

Funding

This work was funded by the US Dept of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resource Conservation Service (Oregon State Office) and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (Mountain-Prairie Region) through the US Geological Survey Cooperative Research Unit RWO 174 to Virginia Tech with a subcontract to University of Montana. In addition, the PI of the project and second author (Dr. Ashley Dayer) has another research project studying agricultural producers outside of the study area funded by the USDA Farm Service Agency.We would like to thank the landowners and conservation professionals who attended and participated in our workshops. The Intermountain West Joint Venture staff collaborated on funding proposals for the project, as well as coordinating workshop logistics and informing the project design, methods, and recommendations. We would also like to thank Dr. Michael Sorice and Dr. Dean Stauffer for their review of a previous version of the manuscript. We also appreciate their reviews of this manuscript. Further, we thank three anonymous reviewers and Corinne Noel Knapp, Associate Editor at Rangeland Ecology & Management, for their constructive feedback that greatly improved this manuscript. In addition, we appreciate the local and regional partners who helped plan and implement the workshops: Community Agriculture Alliance; Ducks Unlimited; the High Desert Partnership; Ladder Livestock Company, LLC; Lake County (OR) Soil and Water Conservation District; Little Snake River Conservation District; Oregon State University Extension; Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board; Partners for Conservation; Sublette County (WY) Conservation District; USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service; US Fish and Wildlife Service; and Wyoming Game and Fish Department. The raw data for this project is transcripts of two workshops with ranchers. We are not sharing it to protect the anonymity and confidentiality of our human subjects, according to our Institutional Review Board approval. Although de-identified, it may still be possible to identify who was speaking based on the thoughts and experiences they describe.

Funders	Funder number
Crook County Soil and Water Conservation District
Wyoming Fish and Game Department
1633831
Natural Resources Conservation Service
Oregon State University

Keywords

Community Capitals
conservation
decision making
flood irrigation
rancher
social-ecological systems

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10.1016/j.rama.2019.12.003

Cite this

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abstract = "Flood irrigation on western rangelands is important for diverse social and ecological reasons, providing forage for many agricultural operations and maintaining many critical wetlands across the region. However, recent debate over the efficiency of flood irrigation and resulting transition to other “more efficient” types of irrigation has put many of the working wet meadows sustained by flood irrigation at risk. As the sustainability of these landscapes is primarily dependent on ranchers{\textquoteright} management decisions, we sought to gain a deeper understanding of factors influencing ranchers who flood irrigate and how these factors interrelate. We applied the Community Capitals Framework to explore what considerations act as enablers and constraints to maintaining flood irrigation and to evaluate the role of each type of capital in enabling and constraining the coproduction of working wet meadows for ranchers and the environment. Our qualitative analysis of facilitated workshop transcripts and observation notes from two study areas within the Intermountain West showed that ranchers perceived constraining and enabling factors of flood irrigation related to all seven types of community capitals: natural, financial, built, cultural, human, social, and political. The irrigation methods used by ranchers were heavily influenced by environmental components of the landscape rather than reflecting a choice among alternative methods. Other prominent enablers included a commitment toward maintaining the natural history of the landscape and the ranching lifestyle. Primary constraints included the impact of public misperception and the ability to pass their operation on to the next generation. Ranchers weighed multiple considerations simultaneously in a holistic, community-scale approach to management decisions and described how diverse enablers and constraints interacted to determine the viability of flood irrigation and ranching. These results indicate rancher decisions are driven by complex social-ecological considerations and demonstrate the importance of each capital type to rangeland conservation.",

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Western Ranchers’ Perspectives on Enablers and Constraints to Flood Irrigation

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