Get reliable science

Increasingly rangeland managers face questions about when, where, and how to restore burned, invaded, or at-risk lands. Restoration decisions are fraught with many unknowns, which may be ecological, societal, economic, or institutional. Will next spring's weather be suitable for getting seeds to germinate and establish before being overcome by non-native annual grasses? Is enough money budgeted to cover the cost of seeds? Will interest groups try to prevent use of some practices? If I try to restore proactively, how can I be sure my efforts won't just increase the risk of degradation? Researchers respond to such concerns by generating new and hopefully useful information, and tools to make use of that information. However, too often the information generated is not used. This talk explores why this occurs, and how to improve information uptake. Research shows the No. 1 barrier to manager uptake of new science is time to find information, share it with others, and learn how to implement it. There is little a researcher can do to give a manager more time, but we can reduce how much time we require from managers. New tools can make information more accessible and easy to use, and it's important to design such tools to fit managers' time constraints. New data-visualization methods can be valuable if developed in collaboration with managers. Other barriers include the personal and political costs of being wrong. Managers must be reassured that innovation and initiative will be rewarded rather than discouraged or punished, both within and outside agencies. A third category of barrier is regulatory inflexibility. Research suggests citizens agree with managers that more management flexibility and consideration of local contexts are needed, but the political process of providing such flexibility is fraught with difficulty. Overall, support is needed for efforts to make rangeland science "usable."