Social Ecology and the Science of Community: Methods to Link Fisheries Conservation Programs to Community Interests

A descriptive approach to community, The Discovery Process,™  reveals how a community functions, the informal networks, how they communicate, who is well-regarded, and how the community comes together to solve its problems. By “entering the routines” of a community, an insider’s perspective is learned. Such direct contact avoids the limitations of formal meetings or one-way media approaches. Community descriptions allow the incorporation of a broad range of seemingly-unrelated local interests into the learning framework of the conservation organization. For example, in working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, residents were not highly interested in the fate of the red-cockaded woodpecker but were highly interested in family camping opportunities and jobs for youth, both interests which could be met with habitat restoration efforts. Crucial to success of these enterprises are three concepts of Social Ecology: informal networks and their routines, citizen issues and not community themes as the basis for action, and working with the right geography, the human geographic units that residents relate to, as the means to improve a local population's knowledge and caring for a fishery ecology.