Abstract
Traditional natural resource management approaches often focus on a specific natural resource and ignore social components other than economic value. In contrast, new approaches to resource management, such as those employing ecosystem management strategies, recognize and strive to incorporate other social components of the managed system. This study uses a content analysis of regional newspaper coverage of two relatively new reserves in river-floodplain systems, the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway and the Middle Elbe Biosphere Reserve, to analyze each reserve’s success in managing the social components of its resources during each reserve’s first ten years. The results suggest that positive coverage of both reserves has increased, as has the perceived authority of the reserve staff, as measured by trends in the quantity of direct quotes. The Middle Elbe Biosphere Reserve received approximately three times more coverage than its Wisconsin counterpart, suggesting that the more extensive public outreach program of the former is an important tool in dealing with social issues within a conservation reserve.
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Acknowledgments
As this study derives from the author’s doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he gratefully acknowledges feedback from his major professor, MS Adams, and his committee, D. Field, N. Langston, E. Stanley, and P. Zedler. He also thanks D. Fisher and A. Vogelaar for their comments on the previous versions of the manuscript and L. Harvey for her assistance with the preparation of the final manuscript. Lastly, he would like to thank the staffs of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway and the Middle Elbe Biosphere Reserve for their cooperation and assistance during this project. Portions of this work was supported by the NSF IGERT Grant 9870703 (Human Dimensions of Social and Aquatic System Interactions); by NSF Grant INT-9901214; by a research fellowship from the DAAD (German Foreign Exchange Service), and by travel grants from the UW German Department, The Graduate School of UW-Madison (Vilas Fellowship), and the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
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Hale, B.W. Using Newspaper Coverage Analysis to Evaluate Public Perception of Management in River-Floodplain Systems. Environmental Management 45, 1155–1163 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-010-9456-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-010-9456-8