Wilderness shared stewardship: Exploring partnerships through empathy

Abstract

Shared stewardship for the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS), or the creation of partnerships, is integral to the completion of basic and fundamental stewardship tasks within wilderness (e.g., trail work, Leave No Trace education, monitoring). However, successful wilderness shared stewardship is impeded by a variety of barriers, which are institutional (e.g., employee turnover), practical (e.g., lack of staff, limited informational resources about how to set up partnerships), and conceptual (e.g., ambiguity surrounding what wilderness shared stewardship is). There has been some effort to formally document and understand the challenges, components of success, and solutions within the context of wilderness shared stewardship. However, much of that effort was completed over ten years ago, which highlights a question as to whether previously documented barriers have been addressed.

Citation

Armatas, Christopher A.; Gaudry, Jimmy; Hodge, Bill; MacSlarrow, Heather; Mitchell, Michelle; Taylor, Nancy. 2021. Wilderness shared stewardship: Exploring partnerships through empathy. International Journal of Wilderness. 27(2): 58-71.