@metcalfhdlab
Associate Professor and Director of the UM Human Dimensions Lab Behavioral science and social-psychology | Human relationships with wildlife & the environment | Conservation social science | Mixed methods
NYU is hiring two postdocs at the Center for Social Media, AI & Politics:
csmapnyu.org/jobs
And a grant manager in Sociology with the Social Science Research Hub:
uscareers-nyu.icims.com/jobs/15327/g...
I'm part of both groups--please share with anyone who is interested!
Phew.
Honestly, far too low.
Seeking applicants to a qualitative social science post-doc position - located at Purdue University, but collaborating with me and others on the human dimensions of white-tailed deer and cwd management.
www.schooljobs.com/careers/ummi...
"America’s debates over wildlife, especially wolves, are often framed as bitter battles between two entrenched camps...
But recent research suggests the story is more complicated—and more hopeful." www.explorebigsky.com/dispatches-f...
Aka, human dimensions.
Big news in the Metcalf house…
Today, Libby was officially named Dean of the College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana & Director of the Montana Forest and Conservation Experiment Station. More to share in coming days, but I’m just so damn humbled to watch this Wonder Woman!
Good coverage of our human dimensions of wildlife study on the dynamic effects of social identity on attitudes!
"Pack Politics: How Political Identity can Twist Perception of Wolves - Study shows that partisan misperceptions about opponents may lead to conflict, even when consensus is possible"
Solid mix of pride and embarrassment to be featured in the inaugural YouTube episode of A New Angle podcast talking about the human dimensions of wolf and wildlife conservation.
"The big (bad?) wolf with Dr. Alex Metcalf" www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VZa...
Most Americans actually like wolves, but when researchers reminded people of their political identities, Democrats became more friendly to wolves and Republicans far more opposed. It’s an interesting study in how politics and social identity can fuel partisan polarization.
buff.ly/aA10yEP
In another paper (under review) we show that a very subtle hunter or landowner identity activation suppresses tolerance among hunters & landowners, too... So my view is that attitudes are DYNAMICLY related to social identities, not statically.
Hope that helps!
Being a wolf hunter or large landowner was a strong predictor of tolerance; being an ungulate hunter was a weak, but significant predictor in the final model.
Figure 5 from that paper:
Thanks @nikolaj-bi.bsky.social - we didn't here, but we did recently in another paper. Found a really interesting (and unique?) increase in ungulate hunters' tolerance of wolves in MT, but a persistent lack of tolerance among wolf hunters. conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
The real trick (beyond isolating and demonstrating this effect) is to overcome it...we show some progress on this front, too.
TL;DR: Americans across the political spectrum generally like wolves - quite a bit, actually - UNTIL reminded of their politics, at which point they dramatically polarize into assumed camps of "for" and "against." Those assumptions are the problem.
Ironically on January 6th, we have a new paper out about political identities and how they divide us on the topic of wolves. doi.org/10.1111/cobi...
I just reviewed a paper with a pile of made up citations - flagged to editor and their question was: “well were the claims in the paper supported or not?” ??!! 🤦🏽
We hear lots of discussion about private land & public wildlife, but I’d never seen a census of ownership - hopefully these facts add to the dialogue.
The implications for wildlife are interesting & likely positive, but consequences for public trust beneficiaries (the public) is more complicated…
The landowner population grown 22% since 2004 = parcelization. But it’s the medium parcels that are getting cut up, not the largest properties (those are growing in size, slightly). You can see that properties 100-1,000 acres are shedding aces to smaller properties:
You can see out of state ownership is about 17% of the private land, up from 13% in 2004. (This is likely an underestimate since many corporate entities can have a MT mailing address even if they’re actually out of state; but we don’t know how much this happens).
Here’s another way to look at it. There are 370,000+ landowners in MT, some own small lots, about 125,000 own properties >640 acres.
But most MT private land is on the largest of properties. ~300 owners control over 25% of the private land. ~3,000 owners control about 2/3rds of the private land:
Perhaps more astonishing to me was how concentrated private land is in a few ownerships. Massive properties don’t just account for an important part of the landscape, they dominate the landscape.
Here’s a view of how much land in the state is owned by the largest 10%, 1% and 0.1% owners 2004 - 2023:
Another way to look at this:
The answer to my OG question is that in 2004 corporate entities owned 44% of the private land but now they own 56%. Ranching interests dominate the corporations, but LLCs are on a dramatic rise both in number and in acres owned.
I’ve also been working with spatial landownership data for a long time and have been frustrated by the typical figures researchers generate. So we took this opportunity to play with some different visualizations. Here are a few that show our most relevant findings:
A couple years back I started to wonder how much of MT is owned by corporate entities, the role of really big properties, & the consequences for public trust wildlife management.
Today we published some answers and how things have (and haven’t) changed over the past 20 years:
missoulacurrent.com/montana-tole...
Quite simply: wolves don’t seem to live up to their big bad reputation and, over time, people notice.
[Stay tuned for a related paper, in press, that explores the divisive consequences of those media narratives about conflict and our false assumptions about division…] #humandimensions 4/4
