Browsing by Author "Gavin, Michael, committee member"

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Open Access
An evidence-based approach to evaluating the outcomes of conservation education
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Thomas, Rebecca E. W., author; Teel, Tara, advisor; Bruyere, Brett, advisor; Gavin, Michael, committee member; Pejchar, Liba, committee member
This dissertation responds to a need for theoretically-driven and applied approaches to conservation education that address modern-day conservation challenges. The two primary objectives of this dissertation are addressed in the form of two individual articles. First, Article 1 utilizes a systematic review approach to investigate evaluation of conservation education on a global scale in order to better understand 1) the temporal and spatial trends in conservation education program evaluations over the last 25 years (e.g., whether the frequency of program evaluations has changed both within and outside of the United States); 2) patterns that are evident in the types of conservation and/or social issues addressed through these programs; 3) metrics considered to indicate effectiveness of conservation education programs; and 4) which outcomes of these programs are evaluated (e.g., to what extent do evaluations focus on cognitive targets as well as behavioral, social or ecological outcomes) as well as the methods that have been used to draw conclusions about these outcomes. Findings indicated that evaluation of conservation education programs has increased over the last 25 years in countries around the world. Increasingly, conservation education programs are being developed in response to ecological and social issues, yet metrics to indicate effectiveness are rooted in cognition and behavior change. Three primary needs in the field of conservation education program evaluation emerged from this study and can inform the future direction of the field. First, there is a need to think more holistically about the outcomes of conservation education programs. Secondly, there is a need to consider the ways in which these outcomes are evaluated and reported. Finally, there is a need for longitudinal evaluation, particularly when attempting to capture ecological outcomes that may not be immediately apparent. Article 2 utilizes an applied, person-centered interview approach to address a need for more rigorous and culturally relevant evaluation of conservation education program outcomes that is focused on benefits beyond rote knowledge gain and considers community perspectives on metrics or indicators of program success in a rural community in Hawai'i. The study upon which this article is based sought to compare past and present learning about nature in terms of knowledge acquisition and the knowledge itself. Secondly, the study aimed to set the stage for the development of a culturally relevant and comprehensive quantitative evaluation instrument that could be used to document long-term outcomes of conservation education programs that seek to facilitate sharing of local environmental knowledge in Hawai'i.
Open Access
Conceptualizing values as part of a dynamic multilevel world
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Dietsch, Alia M., author; Teel, Tara, advisor; Manfredo, Michael, advisor; Gavin, Michael, committee member; Henry, Kimberly, committee member
Humans are engaged in complex relationships of adaptation and change with the environment, each affecting one another. These relationships (i.e., feedback loops) necessitate an increased understanding of the different components of social-ecological systems. However, these systems appear to operate differently depending on the levels and scales under investigation, making it difficult to fully conceptualize these interconnected phenomena as well as raising important questions. We narrow our focus on two specific areas of inquiry in the interest of explicating factors that influence social values, which in turn lead to the attitudes and behaviors that can either drive or alleviate the many environmental challenges we face. First, how might macro processes of social change at different levels affect individual-level thought, and what might this mean for biodiversity conservation and environmental protection? Second, can internal human cognitions transform into widespread societal beliefs about how the environment, including wildlife, should be treated? This dissertation presents two manuscripts designed to contribute to these areas of inquiry by considering how values are influenced by processes at different levels on a geopolitical scale, and how those values shape levels of cognition within individuals (an internal cognitive scale). The first chapter specifically focuses on understanding how socioeconomic advances at the county-level within the state of Washington are influencing new value priorities, and how these values lead to support for biodiversity conservation of species irrespective of human needs. For example, higher levels of income, education, and urbanization at both individual and county levels were associated with higher degrees of mutualism, a value orientation that prioritizes the needs of wildlife as similar to the needs of humans. Indeed, we found mutualism to be positively associated with support for wolves (Canis lupis) recolonizing the state despite the potential for livestock predation and concern for human safety. Results also indicate that these new value priorities can lead to social conflict among different segments of the public based on beliefs about how wildlife should be managed. This work demonstrates several key findings. First, broad changes in social systems lead to a fundamental shift in social values in such a way that clearly indicates social-ecological context matters. Second, these values lead to predictable patterns of response to actions that promote biodiversity conservation. However, those patterns of response vary across the landscape, providing further evidence of cross-level and cross-scale dynamics within systems. The second article casts social values as actors in a different, but equally important systems view complete with feedback loops. Specifically, social values are depicted as subject to the upward processes of emergence (micro-to-macro level) and the downward processes of immergence (macro-to-micro level). Our conceptualization acknowledges values as phenomena that emerge from individuals who are in turn shaped by pervasive social-ecological conditions (e.g., warfare, mass migrations, disease spread). Although processes of emergence are not directly studied in this manuscript, immergence is explored in two ways: (1) the effect of socioeconomic advances at a state level on individual expressions of postmaterialist values (values that tend to focus on the needs of others outside of self), and (2) the existence of widespread environmental attitudes associated with a prevalence of postmaterialist values. Only support for the second pathway of immergence was found, suggesting that individuals with postmaterialist values do indeed support protection of the environment, including wildlife, even at the expense of human interests such as economic development and recreation behaviors. In total, this dissertation is intended to provide a deeper look at the feedback loops between different levels of cognition and the world in which we live in the hopes of informing solutions to the grave environmental challenges we face.
Open Access
Governing complexity: polycentricity and customary property rights in the commons
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Carlisle, Keith M., author; Gruby, Rebecca L., advisor; Basurto, Xavier, committee member; Fernandez-Gimenez, Maria, committee member; Gavin, Michael, committee member
Broadly, this dissertation research examines natural resources governance approaches that may facilitate the achievement of desirable social and ecological outcomes. It takes, as its point of departure, a nearly half-century-old concept that is experiencing a renaissance among natural resources governance scholars: polycentricity, a complex and multilevel form of governance comprised of a plurality of semi-autonomous decision makers. Despite its age and apparent popularity, the concept of polycentricity remains conceptually fuzzy and empirically underdeveloped in the commons. This dissertation addresses these deficiencies through conceptual and empirical contributions to the growing scholarship on polycentricity. In its conceptual contribution, this dissertation develops a theoretical model of a functional polycentric governance system for natural resources governance. For this purpose, "functional" refers to the capacity of the governance system to exhibit particular advantages that are commonly attributed to polycentric governance systems by scholars. In doing so, it builds greater clarity around the concept and the conditions under which it may lead to predicted or desired outcomes. This dissertation then examines the functioning of a polycentric governance system through a qualitative case study of small-scale fishery governance in the Northern Reef region of the Republic of Palau, a small island nation in the western Pacific. Deficiencies in institutional features are identified that partly explain why the governance system does not fully achieve the advantages commonly attributed to polycentric governance systems. In addition, analysis of the historical transition of the governance system from community based to polycentric reveals that the path to polycentricity, the particular form of polycentricity, and contextual conditions constitute additional distal explanations of deficiencies in functionality. The case underscores the need for more refined theory concerning the emergence and functionality of different forms of polycentricity in various contexts. In its empirical contributions, this dissertation also speaks to small-scale fishery policy through a finer-scale examination of the social function of customary marine tenure institutions in the Northern Reef state of Ngarchelong. These informal institutions define, among other things, eligibility criteria for those having a recognized right to fish in the state. Flexible administration of customary marine tenure institutions enables Ngarchelong residents to secure material support from nonresident community members and also strengthens social bonds and networks as the community becomes more dispersed in Palau. This research calls attention to the possible social impacts of fishery policies that redefine or formalize fishery access and use rights, and it describes a general approach for better harmonizing fishery policy with local social context and customary institutions.
Open Access
Landscape conservation design from the perspective of the obligate species: example for the sagebrush steppe biome
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) O'Brien, Lee E., author; Hufbauer, Ruth, advisor; Steel, Zachary, advisor; Gavin, Michael, committee member; Morisette, Jeffrey, committee member
Conservation strategies in use today are not keeping up with the speed and scale of threats to the natural world. They are not effectively curbing the current wave of species extinctions. There is a critical need to conserve and manage whole landscapes, preserving their ecological integrity, to head off species imperilment. Habitat loss and fragmentation are significant causes of species imperilment, and both habitat amount and contiguity (inverse of fragmentation) must be addressed for effective conservation planning. This study is focused on identifying the location, configuration, and contiguity of environmental and abiotic factors required to sustain the populations of species that are reliant on a particular landscape for some portion of their life histories. I used the sagebrush steppe biome in the western United States to demonstrate how this can be done. Several major issues have heretofore inhibited identifying habitats able to sustain the populations of a wide array of taxa: 1) insufficient data for many species; 2) bias issues with using publicly collected "big data"; 3) inadequate computing capacity for large-extent high-resolution habitat models, and; 4) no explicit way for habitat models to include species-specific habitat connectivity, important for population viability. Some of these issues can be addressed now because of the increasing availability of species location data, increased computational capacities, and better optimization algorithms, and some I propose ways to address. Surmounting these impediments allowed me to identify the fundamental habitats most likely to sustain populations of native species, and use these models as inputs in a systematic conservation planning procedure to identify areas of the sagebrush steppe biome most likely to support the persistence of the obligate taxa using the least amount of land. I compared this approach to using an umbrella species to protect habitats of sympatric species, assessing whether protecting habitats for sage-grouse species, greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) and Gunnison sage-grouse (C. minimus), would protect the other taxa reliant upon the sagebrush steppe landscape. I found that using sage-grouse habitat as an umbrella left many sympatric species with inadequate habitat protection. Determining whether sufficient habitat of sympatric species is protected requires knowing the habitat requirements of these taxa. If the habitat requirements of these taxa are determined, as done in this study, each species' required habitat can be included in a conservation plan, instead of relying on the assumption that conserving an umbrella species' habitat will provide sympatric species protection adequate to secure their persistence. The approach developed here has additional advantages. Namely, as new information becomes available, the fundamental habitat models for species can be updated and included in the conservation plans. Also, the amount of species fundamental habitat required or supplemental goals (e.g., including core sagebrush, threats, or sage-grouse protection areas) can be easily added to the optimization routine to produce new optimal multi-species habitat configurations. This gives conservation planners the means to explore explicit effects and tradeoffs of pursuing different conservation objectives, while assuring the resulting plans can support the persistence of the obligate taxa of a biome.
Open Access
Using systems approaches to understand women's conservation leadership and urban residents' wildscape behavior
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Jones, Megan Siobhán, author; Solomon, Jennifer, advisor; Teel, Tara L., advisor; Gavin, Michael, committee member; Martinez, Doreen E., committee member
This dissertation seeks to investigate a fundamental question in the field of conservation science: How do we build and sustain capacity for conservation leadership and action to protect biodiversity in a changing world? Worldwide, conservation practitioners seek to make conservation accessible to more people embedded in highly variable social-ecological contexts, but their efforts are often hindered by the characteristics of the systems (e.g. communities, institutions) they are embedded within. Fulfilling the aspirations of conservation will require broader participation from a greater diversity and number of conservation actors. Achieving this expansion of the conservation community will depend on our ability to understand how individuals' actions and leadership are nested within the broader systems that these individuals respond to and seek to reshape. In the three studies of this dissertation I therefore seek to understand the behavior and motivations of conservation leaders and actors through a systems approach, by investigating the experiences of different groups of practitioners who challenge and reconfigure the inherited model of how conservation occurs. In my first two research studies I explore the experiences of women, one of many groups that have historically been excluded from and marginalized in leadership positions. Specifically, I investigate women conservation leaders' perceptions of professional gender-related and motherhood-related challenges and supports. In Chapter 2 I find that women in conservation leadership in the United States experience at least six categories of gender-related challenges over their careers, which fall more heavily on different women based on race, ethnicity, age, and seniority. I find further that women navigate those challenges with the help of structural and relational supports. In Chapter 3 I examine how the intersection of motherhood and conservation leadership creates a series of choices for individual women, and that these choices are constrained or enabled by the families, organizations, and profession within which they work and live. In my final research study, reported in Chapter 4, I investigate the factors motivating urban residents who are expanding the scope of conservation leadership through voluntary engagement in and advocacy for wildscape gardening on their properties and in their communities. I determine that residents participating in an urban conservation program engage in many different, interconnected wildscaping behaviors, and are motivated to do so by a variety of individual and collective factors. My findings further suggest that these factors change over time in response to feedbacks from the impacts that wildscape gardeners' actions have on a complex multilevel social-ecological system. The findings from these studies shed light on how conservation can benefit from systems approaches to become a more sustainable and inclusive movement in different contexts, so as to better fulfill its vision of protecting equitable, biodiverse social-ecological systems.
Open Access
"We flow like water": contemporary livelihoods and the partitioning of the self among the Chamorro of Guam
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Fanning, Jonathan, author; Snodgrass, Jeffrey, advisor; Magennis, Ann, committee member; Gavin, Michael, committee member
The Chamorros of Guam have experienced colonially-influenced change on spatial and temporal scales for nearly four-hundred and fifty years. They are continuously redefining their identity with respect to these changes, and within the power related discourses of colonialism. The adoption of a colonial understanding of "tradition" has alienated Chamorro from their perception of indigenous identity. A difference between a contemporary "livelihood" and a more traditional "way of life" is apparent, also considered to be a conflict between how a Chamorro "must" behave versus how a Chamorro "ought" to behave to maintain an indigenous identity. Lack of agency, the rise of individualism, and the institutionalization of Chamorro culture have compartmentalized Chamorro identity, and forced contemporary Chamorro to abandon that which is "traditional" in order to engage with a modern world. This thesis explores these phenomena through a mixed-methods lens, employing participant observation, semi-structured, qualitative interviews, and surveys to explore the domains in which Chamorro draw meaning and personal and cultural identity. The village of Umatac, on the southern-end of Guam, is used as a study population, as the issue of identity formation and remaking is explored through the theoretical perspectives of cognitive anthropology, discursive formation, and place attachment.