Researcher(s):
Shiloh Psujek
ENVS course(s): 330 Initiated: January 2017 Completed: May 2017 Go to project site
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My minor capstone aimed to address the different perspectives of stakeholders when interpreting and portraying the grey wolf in the Western part of the United States. I have studied wolves almost my entire life and wanted to expand on an area I had not previously considered in my work. My initial framing question was looking at how cultural norms influence media representations of wolves, and possibly exacerbate the conflict over wolf management, which evolved into my focus question of how the expression of ideas and opinions by different stakeholders influences the conflict over wolf management. My methodology involved sourcing various articles from scientific backgrounds and local news articles in my situated states, then identifying themes and stakeholders and mapping the distribution of the former onto the latter. I found that stakeholders with a local perspective often did not come up in articles with an ecological theme, and that stakeholders with a scientific perspective that were not based in the situated states often did not come up in articles with economic or social themes. The local scientific perspective, which was the middle ground between the three themes, was present almost evenly across all articles, showing that they had the best understanding of the situation and what all was involved. From these findings, I would hope that future wolf management begins to rely more on this middle ground perspective as it takes into account all involved stakeholders and their concerns while still maintaining a balance between them. Compromise is a key piece in management, and if we are able to address and incorporate this important middle ground perspective, we might start to see some real progress in wolf management.