Striking a Balance: Rangeland Evaluation and Monitoring in the 4-Corners Region

Striking a Balance: Rangeland Evaluation and Monitoring in the 4-Corners Region

Summary

Conversations and hands-on field observations were held in diverse regions of the Navajo Nation in preparation for hosting eight range and woodland walkabouts on Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni. We discovered that a great deal of preparation is needed via hands-on field education and staff cross-training so that local residents and agency-level staff can lay aside pre-conceived notions about what monitoring is and truly participate in activities. This year we focused on conversations and field experiences rather than conducting walkabouts. The Monitoring Project conducted Orienteering and a Nature Scavenger Hunt at a Jamboree at the Lake Asaayi in July.

Objectives/Performance Targets

• A. Objective 1

  Learn how to evaluate, monitor, and record the health of rangelands and adjacent woodlands so that we can, in turn, teach others how to do the same.

  Secondary Objectives:

  Show the value of rangeland “walkabouts” as a primary monitoring and evaluation tool at sites selected by collaborators.
  Show the value of keeping a photographic record of our observations. This will become part of the handbook.

  B. Objective 2

  Create a network of individuals and organizations that transcends complicated political and philosophical boundaries.

  Secondary Objectives:

  Develop website (if time permits)
  Host a 2-3 day camping conference at one of the project sites (optional networking tool that collaborators may choose if time and money permit)

  C. Performance Targets:

  Quarterly report about success of collaborative partnership
  Written justifications of site selections
  Written action plans
  Meeting schedule
  Collection of educational materials and supplies
  Compilation of curriculum and activities
  Agendas
  Receipts and contracts
  Ad copies
  Evaluations of activities
  Written evaluation of facilitator’s activities
  Evaluations by participants of monitoring methods
  Networking list
  Reaction to food sharing portion of events
  Additional comments if camping conference is held
  Financial records
  Quarterly, monthly and annual reports
  Comments on photo methodology
  Publication of compile comments by category
  Evaluation of network usage
  Agreements by participants to use particular methods
  Successful reception to and use of handbook
  Successful distribution of handbook
  Budget successfully reconciled
  Monitoring methods put to use at other sites
  Requests for more walkabouts and/or facilitated sessions

Accomplishments/Milestones

1. No walkabouts were held this year for several reasons that are outlined in more detail in attachments. The most difficult problems were: partners dropped out of project due to six-month delay in negotiating grant agreement, key players were re-assigned to other tasks, and roles/responsibilities and commitments were not clarified adequately. As of March 1, 2003, soon after the grant agreement was signed, the grant writer (Norma Cady) was re-assigned to a position within the Navajo Nation Division of Natural Resources. While that re-assignment was a setback initially, the outcome is that monitoring is now being promoted throughout the Division as a whole, not just within the Navajo Nation Department of Agriculture.

   The major milestones that have been reached are both expected and a surprise. Throughout the course of our meetings we have found that people want to know more about our grassroots approach. Although specific work plan objectives have been met, the real accomplishment may be that we are changing perspectives through conversations. Milestones are as follows:

   1. Realization that hands-on use of equipment in the field is more valuable than educational handouts

   2. Outreach via newsletters, phone calls, and presentations has been made to key participants: USDA staff, Navajo Nation departments, BIA staff, multiple meetings held for 5 walkabout groups, Grazing Officials (chart attached).

   3. Nine planning meetings for Jamboree.

   4. Orienteering and Nature Scavenger Hunt held July 25-26, 2003 at Lake Asaayi Recreation Area (report attached)

   5. Participated in five Big Horn Sheep Project field meetings in 2003 (see report)

   6. Participated in five Big Horn Sheep Project field meetings in 2003 (see report)

   7. Clarification of roles and vision, and development of Critical Issue Analysis and detailed Action Plan.

   8. Integration of Monitoring Project goals and objectives into Division of Natural Resources work plan.

   9. Commitment by Division of Natural Resources and NNDA to utilize monitoring grant staff for cross-training and public education.

   10. Reporting protocols established. Written reports and presentations to Legislative Committees.

   11. Conversations about monitoring concepts integrated into agency-level meetings.

   12. Initial selection of seven walkabout locations and themes (one more location still to be selected):
   – Bighorn Sheep Project along San Juan
   River with grazing officials
   – Conversational approach to public
   relations in Western Navajo
   – Zuni Watershed Project
   – Cross-training of government employees
   in Fort Defiance Agency
   – Torreon Chapter Project for Eastern
   Navajo
   – Hopi Project
   – Hard Rock Grassroots Project

   An Action Plan has been developed for 2004. The Action Plan clarifies roles and responsibilities and established a Project Team that will have regular monthly meetings to move things along. We will publish the newsletter quarterly, and we will begin the year with a vigorous schedule of cross-training and public education so that we can have all eight walkabouts this year. Our intended goal is to fulfill all the Monitoring Project Objectives by December, 2004. The Action Plan needs to be revised slightly and will be sent to you by the first of the year.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

The impact of this project is being felt in the approach and in the doing of the project. In the past, “experts” and government officials dictated what people needed to know and prescribed the data that they needed to collect. Whenever the Monitoring Project participates in a meeting or an educational seminar, we conduct the meeting differently through a conversational approach that is inclusive of new ideas. At first, this approach may be difficult for people to understand, but once they become accustomed to it, they seem relieved. Our results are often subtle and that is why the evaluation process is so important. Our goal is to spread our vision throughout the agriculture community one person at a time. We realized early that we can’t just hold a walkabout. We have to do outreach to communities and government offices first so that individuals will become familiar with our approach.

Subtle proof of the impact of our approach is evident everywhere in our outreach effort. At regularly scheduled staff meetings, Monitoring Project participants are suggesting alternative methodologies. One at a time we are receiving phone calls from groups that want us to have conversations with them. Evidence of our conversations and presentations is showing up in interdisciplinary natural resource management groups who are utilizing tools that our citizen participants have suggested. Tools include: best management practices (BMPs), demonstrations rather than lectures, decision-making alternatives, data needs analysis, etc. The conversations have been a surprising and wonderful impact of this project, proving to us that there is the potential to work things out and to find solutions. We anticipate that these conversations will grow into the walkabouts and that more conversations will follow from the walkabouts.

The visible proof of the impact of this Monitoring Project will be in the creation of a network of individuals and groups in the 4-Corners region who are curious about and committed to the use of monitoring methodologies that they have had personal experience in using. Monitoring is being increasingly being utilized on non-Indian lands; however, Indian governments have not had much experience with concepts that were once naturally a part of their heritage prior to the imposition of federal bureaucracies. Once a core group of Native Americans can converse among themselves about alternative monitoring methodologies, a major step forward will have been made that will have positive benefits for all the communities in the region.

Other visible long-term impacts of the Monitoring Project (and other projects like it) will be the establishment of an on-going hands-on agri-environmental education effort, the integration of monitoring methodologies into our land management planning, the creation of a sovereign approach to agricultural land management, and improved communication with federal and state agencies such as the BIA, the USDA, and the U.S.EPA as we increasingly begin to speak the same language of cooperation and collaboration.

Collaborators: