Ecological health assessment in southern Nevada

Lancaster, Judith; Moutat, David; Buck, Paul

The purpose of this project was to ascertain scientific opinion concerning research priorities for southern Nevada. The project consisted of two workshops and two periods of “homework”, and in both instances federal land management agency representatives and scientists found a lot of common ground, found it easy to talk to one another and each showed genuine respect for the other. In both workshops there was an atmosphere of willingness by the scientists to understand the agencies problems, constraints and needs, in order to offer useful suggestions about future research priorities. Four of the southern Nevada federal land-management agencies - the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the National Park Service (NPS) the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) – worked with the Desert Research Institute (DRI) to organize the workshops. Questions, issues and concerns raised by these four agencies (the partner agencies) were the focus of the first workshop, held in May, 2006. The questions were provided to participating scientists as homework prior to the workshop; were the topics for discussion at the workshop between agency representatives and the scientists’ panel; and provided the context for the scientists’ first report concerning research needs for southern Nevada. This report was pre-circulated to most participants for the August workshop (all those who pre-registered, approximately 90%) and provided them with background and information on what was considered important by agencies, rather than what issues scientists would like to address (which therefore would become “important”). Thus informed, the participants in August were able to accomplish a large amount of work in a relatively short time (two days), and to stay focused, so that the end result met agency and managers’ needs. The second workshop in the series, “Research Needs for the 21st Century” was held at the DRI in Las Vegas on August 15-16, 2006 and was attended by almost 90 scientists, and state, federal and local agency employees. Participants were generally satisfied with the workshop, which was divided between Breakout Group sessions and a group interactive polling exercise. Environmental and societal context was provided by introductory presentations from the Southern Nevada Agency Partnership (SNAP) Board, and the partner agencies which had been actively involved in working with DRI to design and implement the workshop process. Results of the first workshop “Research Needs for Southern Nevada” were presented by two of the scientists who had been involved, and provided a summary of the agency questions, issues and concerns that were the driving forces for discussion of research priorities in Breakout Groups.

Ecological health assessment in southern Nevada

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