Cooperative Watershed Management and Research: The Case of the Henry's Fork Watershed Council

Abstract

Grassroots watershed management, or what has been labeled "watershed democracy," is taking hold throughout the western U.S. Of central importance to grassroots watershed management is the shift away from a fragmented, piecemeal approach to environmental problem solving toward a more holistic approach that more closely matches the biophysical realities encountered on the ground. The holistic world view, however, is concerned with more than just ecology. It seeks to meld ecology with economics and the needs of community in pursuit of symbiotic sustainability. Success thus requires substantial cooperation among not only private and public stakeholders, but also the many government agendes with legal jurisdiction over western water and land. In short, the new approach places a premium on cooperative scientific research and cooperative management of ecosystems. I examined how grassroots watershed management arrangements facilitate cooperative scientific research and cooperative management of watersheds using the case of the Henry's Fork Watershed Coundl (HFWC), an initiative located in east central Idaho. The HFWC facilitates cooperation by maintaining a focus on what everyone has in common, directly sponsoring cooperative programs and research important to watershed management and health, creating a unified, integrated communitybased network, transforming individuals' world views, creating incentives for cooperation through the promise of win-win outcomes, and providing a "one-stop-shopping" forum for communication, integration, and coordination of agency management efforts related to the watershed.