Guidelines for engaging outside the ecological community: Fostering local and regional interactions with communities in need

Guidelines for engaging outside the ecological community: fostering local and regional interactions with communities in need

Background/Question/Methods: Researchers and managers seeking to work with local residents outside the ecological community often lack guidance on best practices for working with the very people that they seek to serve or inform.  We surveyed the literature on working with local communities and reviewed our experiences as ecologists working with urban community residents.  From these we developed a set of general guidelines for identifying and approaching issues ecologists can expect to face, especially when working with or in minority communities.  Our goal is for scientists, particularly ecologists, to be able avoid development of contentious interactions and to facilitate establishment of long-term dialogues that will support effective outcomes for both scientists and communities.

Results/Conclusions: Surveys of literature on Rapid Ethnographic Assessment Procedures, participatory action research, and conservation outreach, as well as other approaches used by social scientists revealed a variety of models that ecologists might want to consider when working with local communities. Many of the models focused on a number of similar points.  These included the need to establish meaningful initial connections, to develop effective methods of communication, to avoid appearing arrogant (scientists are sometimes viewed as believing or acting as if they "know" everything), to avoid conflict, and to implement effective mechanisms for developing projects that foster active inclusion of and participation by local residents in all aspects of the project.  Because ecologists continue to expand field research efforts into the human realm and because they increasingly recognize the need for establishing effective communication for the development of policy, we  suggest that ecologists will gain greatly by incorporating these guidelines not only in early stages of planning for research, but also during both implementation and concluding stages.  By considering their interactions at the public-science interface ecologists will not only be able to more effectively conduct their research, but will foster community interactions that will benefit future scientists as well.