Stephen McCool
Professor Emeritus at the University of Montana
Steve believes that vibrant societies are connected to and bond with their natural and cultural heritage. Regions of outstanding beauty and biodiversity are key in developing and retaining those connections. The Crown of the Continent is one of those regions and public land managers play significant roles in sustaining those connections. To that end, he works with recreation managers and scientists in conducting research, facilitating workshops, writing journal articles, and sharing ideas about the nature of the planning and management environment to enhance understanding. Steve is Professor Emeritus at the University of Montana. He has worked on and off with managers and other scientists in the Crown over the last 45 years, at one time serving as the Staff Officer for Recreation and Wilderness at the Flathead National Forest.
Abstract
We work in a turbulent, complex and dynamic setting where surprises dominate. Our planning and managing must account for this complexity at every turn, emphasizing managing adaptively, but always driven by the legislative mandates we work under. The problems and challenges that face management of recreation on wildlands in the Crown of the Continent do not escape this complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. As a field we have been searching for simplistic solutions to many of these problems. And while such solutions do occur, they inevitably are wrong as noted by journalist H.L. Mencken over 100 years ago. In our field of recreation management, which we all work in, directly or indirectly, we have learned a number of lessons about how to make our management more effective and inclusive. In this presentation, I very briefly mention a few of these lessons (there are many more) because they permeate everything we do when working in complex situations. These lessons have been generated by working with managers and other recreation management scientists for over the last half century.