Activities

The project will be developed via two case studies, one in Cumbria (England) and one in the Cairngorms (Scotland), where we will work with stakeholders to identify management issues, drivers and pressures for change and the types of knowledge that could be used to inform these issues. Case study areas have been selected in consultation with the deer management sector to apply the method in areas where current environmental and societal shifts are bringing new challenges and uncertainties that require adaptive management. Collaborative methods will be developed using interviews with key stakeholders and iterative workshops to map objectives, resources and knowledge using participatory GIS (PGIS) to develop and refine a shared knowledge-base for considering potential management solutions.

In addition to local-level action learning through these case studies, workshops will be held to help build skills that will allow agency staff to facilitate future collaboration:

1. Training workshop: half-day workshops will provide training in methods and principles of best practice stakeholder participation, using co-construction maps to illustrate and develop these skills. This is aimed at agency staff, not only those involved in negotiating deer management, but also staff with wider landscape and natural resource management remits. Workshop outcomes will be collated in collaboration with agency staff. The first training workshop took place in November 2010.
2. Sharing best practice day seminar will draw on academic and practitioner lessons and guidance in achieving stakeholder collaboration to co-manage resources. This meeting will broaden the remit of the deer management case studies, to look at how these methods can be and are being applied to a range of ecosystem services which require adaptive management incorporating private and public interests.

We also aim to produce a synthesis of existing reviews to emphasise the pros and cons of participatory learning, and the role of organisations in governance of shared resources, citing examples of good practice and lessons learnt from a range of projects. The experience gained from the workshops and case studies and the previous RELU deer management project will be used to develop a more applied best practice guidance document for developing sustainable deer management plans, produced collaboratively between stakeholders, policymakers and researchers.