A Recipe for Restoring Nature: Relationships, Trust, Showing Up and Celebrating Success
I grew up in Bozeman, MT, and in the summer of 1992, the whole town was on the lookout for Robert Redford. He was in the area filming A River Runs Through It, with Brad Pitt (who wasn’t that big a star yet). The movie premiered at an old historic theater on Bozeman’s Main Street, and I remember driving into town to catch a glimpse of the celebrities (we had to run around to the alley behind the theater to spot Robert Redford, who seemed to be trying to avoid the spotlight).
What I didn’t know at the time was that the Blackfoot River, where the story’s famous fly fishing scenes are set, was impaired and not suitable for fishing. Therefore, the fishing sequences in the film were shot on the Gallatin River instead, closer to Bozeman. It makes me sad to think that our summer of exciting celebrity sightings was made possible by the degradation of a precious natural resource a few hours’ drive away.
But since then, a huge transformation has taken place, thanks to the initiative and cooperation of traditional ranchers and tribes, federal agencies, restoration nonprofits and newer landowners. The Blackfoot Challenge officially launched the year after the film came out, as fly fishing tourists flocked to the region expecting to find abundant trout and wide open landscapes. The Blackfoot Challenge united the watershed’s working landowners who were concerned about the threat of dwindling natural resources and new development in the valley, threats made more acute by the heightened focus on the region’s streams and landscapes. Their approach since the beginning has been to find common ground on the 80% of things they can agree on, and leave the other 20% for another day. Since then, they have collaborated on everything from stream and trout restoration to addressing the growing threat of grizzly bear-human encounters, and protecting migrating ungulates through changes in fencing. And they have achieved enormous success, with trout populations recovering due to stream and riparian restorations on dozens of the river’s tributaries and water-saving changes in ranching practices.
I was fortunate enough to visit the Blackfoot watershed for a tour of four ranches hosted by Partnerscapes, a landowner-led organization focused on conservation and working lands that was born out of the Blackfoot Challenge initiative. During our tour we heard from multiple generations of ranching families, nonprofit restoration groups, tribes and agency partners. Their stories are inspiring not only because the efforts to restore fish habitat and address grizzly bear encounters have been successful, but because their successes came with something very rare: people changed their minds.
That’s right, people who had avoided working together, and thought they couldn’t agree on how to work together, found common ground. About long-held beliefs, about ranching, about federal agencies, about environmental groups and about new landowners. Speakers told us that they were initially highly skeptical of working together - ranchers especially didn’t have a positive attitude about federal agencies, and newer landowners in the area often weren’t open to local collaborations. But the urgency of the issues brought people together to find common ground and solve collective problems. It’s rare to hear people speak so openly about changing their minds - it doesn’t come naturally to most of us, and it’s really hard. And the fact that so many people were willing to admit they’d done so was even more inspiring to me than the story of how the cutthroat trout came back.
Here are a few of my takeaways about what makes for successful landowner-partner collaborations:
Focusing on the 80% you agree on is way more effective than trying to address the 20% of things you really disagree on. This is like a mantra of the Blackfoot Challenge and other landowner-partner initiatives highlighted during the Partnerscapes gathering. Rather than trying to get everyone on the same page about everything, identifying what philosophies or behaviors get people nodding their heads is a really effective way of building lasting relationships and commitment to work together.
Mutual respect is built by bringing resources to the table. Landowners, tribal representatives, and agency and nonprofit partners who spoke to us on the ranch tour talked about how each party was able to bring something that could help others in their efforts to restore and protect habitat and clean water. Among other things, landowners brought access to the land and a willingness to try new grazing and ranching practices; agencies brought funding and scientific expertise; tribes brought traditional ecological knowledge, including for things like identifying areas where trout species had historically been abundant; and restoration groups brought the labor and equipment to restore streams and grasslands; and nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy brought negotiating power and funding to purchase timber lands and protect working ranches with conservation easements.
Continuing to show up counts for a lot. Many of the same individuals have been involved in these partnerships for years, and in the case of working landowners, they’re bringing along the next generation. The long-term commitment of agency staff and landowners in particular, has been the glue that held together collaborative efforts not only in Montana, but in other examples from Alaska to Wisconsin. Just doing the work together builds relationships, even among people who disagree on plenty of things. The shared experiences of people who participate in long-term partnerships forms a foundation on which to build new initiatives and tackle new problems. The programs we learned about evolved over time - they didn’t stick to just one issue, but rather stayed strong enough to tackle new issues together.
Building leadership and telling stories paves the way for more successes. Through the Blackfoot Challenge and Partnerscapes, many landowners and agency staff became spokespeople for their projects, touring the country to share their lessons learned with others in similar situations. They have taken on leadership roles and acted as board members who recruit new participants. And they have identified the importance of celebrating their successes, both to reinforce their own sense of pride of participation and to bring new attention from important supporters who can bring political, financial and capacity support.
While these things might seem obvious, it’s not the way the story is often told. Too often we hear about the accomplishments of one agency, nonprofit, or leader. But the deep collaboration and relationship-building that have driven restoration successes in Western Montana are worth noting and learning from. Nature benefits when we find common ground; being open to changing your mind is the first step.