title: Can digital reinvention of ecological monitoring remove barriers to its adoption by practitioners? A case study of deer management in Scotland.
abstract: Monitoring is one of the key tools employed to help understand the condition of the natural environment and inform the development of appropriate management actions. While international conventions encourage the use of standardised methods, the link between the information monitoring provides and local management needs is frequently overlooked. This problem is further exacerbated when monitoring is employed in areas where there are divergent interests among stakeholders in land use and management. Such problems are found in the management of wild deer across Scotland, where monitoring, in the form of habitat impact assessments, have been introduced as an innovation in sustainable deer management. However, the uptake of habitat impact assessments has been limited. We used deer management in Scotland as a case study to explore whether reinventing habitat impact assessments, and hosting the system on a familiar digital platform (a mobile phone) could help to remove perceived barriers to the implementation of assessments. Using the diffusion of innovations as a theoretical framework three sets of workshops were conducted with participants representing different stakeholder interests. While the proposed digital system did address perceived barriers to the conduct of habitat monitoring, in addition it revealed underlying concerns on the use and purpose of habitat monitoring as a tool in land management. Such concerns indicate friction between scientific and management perspectives, which need to be considered and addressed if monitoring is to become more widely acceptable as a tool to inform the management of natural resources.
authors.affiliation: dot.rural, RCUK Digital Economy Research, MacRobert Building, King's College, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 5UA, United Kingdom. Electronic address: ginazoo@outlook.com.
authors.forename: Georgina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Maffey
authors.affiliation: The James Hutton Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen AB15 8QH, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: R Justin
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Irvine
authors.affiliation: Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability (ACES), University of Aberdeen, School of Biological Sciences, 23 St. Machar Drive, Aberdeen AB24 3UU, United Kingdom; Centre for Rural Economy, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Reed
authors.affiliation: dot.rural, RCUK Digital Economy Research, MacRobert Building, King's College, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 5UA, United Kingdom; Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability (ACES), University of Aberdeen, School of Biological Sciences, 23 St. Machar Drive, Aberdeen AB24 3UU, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: van der Wal
mesh_terms: D065136:Animal Culling; D000818:Animals; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003670:Deer; D017753:Ecosystem; D006801:Humans; D012606:Scotland
keywords: Deer management; Habitat monitoring; Innovation; Natural resource management; Reinvention