Lynn Huntsinger

Professor
Ph.D.  University of California, Berkeley, 1989
B.A.   Chinese Modern History    University of California, San Diego, 1979
Mail: 137 Mulford Hall, MC 3110; Office: 313 Hilgard Hall; Lab: 10 Hilgard Hall 643-7243
Berkeley, California 94720
huntsinger@berkeley.edu
office: 510-643-7243   lab: 510-642-1022   fax:  510-642-0598

Web site    CV       Recent publications      People

To find out who works and has worked in the lab, download papers, and see what we are up to, please visit my website at: http://nature.berkeley.edu/huntsingerlab/Huntsinger_Lab.html

California's oak woodlands depend on landowner decisions. Valued for agricultural production, and enjoyed for their beauty, the woodlands are crucial reservoirs of biodiversity. Sharply reduced in extent by changes in land use and management, they are more than 80% privately owned. Most of the remaining oak woodlands are owned by ranch enterprises relying on “extensive” grazing use of the woodlands to produce cattle. Some of these enterprises also use public lands. We will examine how evolving conservation initiatives fit landowner goals, institutional settings, and ecological dynamics. The goal is to learn how to work with ranch landowners, NGOs, and agencies to conserve working landscapes. Research includes identifying what factors are affecting ranch sustainability, and what new markets for ecosystem services can contribute to this sustainability. Spain, with similar oak woodlands, is also conserving oak woodlands through encouraging traditional ranching, providing us opportunity to compare and explore alternative approaches.

The “working landscapes” conservation movement arose from a recognition that conservation—and rangeland research—was an activity that should not be confined to public or reserve lands. Although range science and the history of public lands management are thoroughly intertwined, and in fact “mutually constructed”, the recognition that ecosystems cross jurisdictional lines, and that ecosystem management must cross property lines, seems to gradually have become a more prominent part of the natural resource management conceptual framework in the 1990s. At the same time, the backlash to the export of American conservation models to the third world, which in many cases resulted in impoverishment and displacement of local populations, stimulated a re-examination of how natural resource paradigms and science were being applied in the United States (Fortmann and Fairfax 1989). In my 1996 article, “Sustaining rangeland landscapes,” I argued that it was time to recognize that private lands, and private land managers, are critical to biodiversity conservation in the United States, and that property lines could not be crossed without the willing participation of landowners.

According to a past-president of the Ecological Society of America “far more habitat has been destroyed to provide water for cities, subdivisions, and irrigated agriculture than by even the heaviest grazing pressure. The most serious challenge facing the West is keeping ranches intact” (Clifford 1998). The rangeland “working landscapes” literature has developed along four main lines of enquiry:

1). How important are private ranch lands for biodiversity conservation?

2). Who are ranchers?

3). How can ranches can “jointly produce” livestock and ecosystem goods and services?

4). How can socially and ecologically integrated working landscapes be created?

We continue to work on these lines of inquiry.

Ongoing studies include research on oak woodland landowners and management in California and Spain, land fragmentation and conservation in oak woodlands, and participatory management strategies. I am a team leader for the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project, working with the Forest Service and state agencies to restore forest "health." I continue to pursue lines of inquiry and theory I have found useful to my work: ecological models for disequilibrium systems as tools to understand the linkages between human relationships and ecological change; work in political ecology founded in basic notions of who (or what) wins and who (or what) loses in struggles over access to natural resources; and adaptive management as arbitrator in landscape and resource management.

ESPM C11/L&S C30U: Americans and the Global Forest: http://nature.berkeley.edu/classes/espm-c11/Welcome.html

ESPM 279: Graduate Seminar in Rangeland Pastoralism

ESPM 268: Graduate Seminar in Rangeland Ecology (topics: ecological histories, adaptive management, natural resource management)

ESPM 186: Management of woodlands and grasslands: http://nature.berkeley.edu/classes/espm-186/Welcome.html ESPM 280: Rangeland Planning and Policy (Management models for natural resource lands: from expert to adaptive)

Huntsinger, L., Campos Palacin, Pablo, (eds). Oak woodlands in Spain and California. Springer-Verlag People and Forest Landscapes Series.

Huntsinger, L. (in preparation). Turn of the century attitudes of Nevada citizens toward grazing and public lands.

Huntsinger, L. and Sulak, A. (in preparation). Permitees vs. non-permitees in the central Sierra Nevada.

Sulak, A. and Huntsinger, L. (in preparation). Public lands and private ranchers in California’s oak woodlands.

Huntsinger, L. (in preparation). The lower Klamath’s virtual reservation.

Huntsinger, L. (in preparation). Cork oak woodlands and the consumer: what you can’t see will hurt.

Huntsinger, L. The stockpond: Correcting scientific management with science and local knowledge. (in preparation).

Certified California Rangeland Manager

Lynn Huntsinger. In Press. Into the Wild: Vegetation, Alien Plants, and Familiar Fire at the Exurban Frontier. Chapter 8. The Planner’s Guide to Natural Resource Conservation: The Science of Land Development Beyond the Metropolitan Fringe. Esparza A. and McPherson, G. (eds). Springer.

Huntsinger, L., Forero, L. and Sulak A. In press. Transhumanance and pastoralist resilience in the western United States. Pastoralism: Research, Policy, and Practice.

Huntsinger, L., Johnson, M., Stafford, M. and J. Fried. Accepted. California Hardwood Rangeland Landowners 1985 to 2004: Ecosystem Services, Production, and Permanence. Rangeland Ecology and Management

Campos, P., Oviedo, J, Caparrós, A., Huntsinger, L., and I Coelho. 2009. Contingent valuation of woodland owners private amenities in Spain, Portugal and California. Rangeland Ecology and Management. 62 (3):240-252

Huntsinger L. and P. Starrs. In press. Commercial livestock production in North America. Chapter in: Range and Animal Sciences and Resources Management . UNESCO/EOLSS

Huntsinger, L. 2008. Conservation through grassland use. In: People and policy in rangeland management: a glossary of key concepts, prepared for the 2008 International Grasslands and Rangelands Congress, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, June 29-July 5, 2008. Chinese and English. Science in China Press, Beijing, China. (ISBN 978-7-03-022097-4)

Huntsinger L. and Starrs, P. 2008. Landscape-level analysis. Conservation through grassland use. In: People and policy in rangeland management: a glossary of key concepts, prepared for the 2008 International Grasslands and Rangelands Congress, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, June 29-July 5, 2008. Chinese and English. Science in China Press, Beijing, China. (ISBN 978-7-03-022097-4)

Huntsinger L. and Starrs, P. 2008. Multiple-use nature reserves. Conservation through grassland use. In: People and policy in rangeland management: a glossary of key concepts, prepared for the 2008 International Grasslands and Rangelands Congress, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, June 29-July 5, 2008. Chinese and English. Science in China Press, Beijing, China. (ISBN 978-7-03-022097-4)

Brunson, M. and L. Huntsinger. 2008. Can old ranchers save the new west? Synthesis paper, Journal of Range Ecology and Management 61:137-147.

Sulak, A. and Huntsinger, L. 2007. Public lands grazing in California: untapped conservation potential for private lands? Rangelands 23(3):9-13.

Huntsinger, L. and Sayre, N. 2007. Introduction: The working landscapes special issue. Rangelands 23(3):9-13

Huntsinger, Lynn, Bartolome, J.W. and C.M. D’Antonio. 2007. Chapter 20. Grazing management of California grasslands. In: Ecology and Management of California Grasslands, Corbin J, Stromberg M, and D’Antonio CM (eds). UC Press, Berkeley, CA.

Sulak, A, Huntsinger, L. Barry S. and L.C. Forero. In press. Public and private land relationships in the East Bay. Proceedings, Sixth Annual California Oak Symposium, Santa Rosa, Ca. Oct. 9-12.

Huntsinger, L., Johnson, M., Stafford, M. and J. Fried. In press. A resurvey of oak woodland landowners: 1985, 1992, and 2004. Proceedings, Sixth Annual California Oak Symposium, Santa Rosa, Ca. Oct. 9-12.

Huntsinger, L., Sulak, A. and Barry, S. 2006. Public land grazing is important to the conservation of East Bay private rangelands. U.C. Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. http://ucanr.org/delivers.

Huntsinger L. and Starrs, P. 2006. Grazing in arid North America: A biogeographical approach. Sècheresse: 17 (1-2): 219-234. Lynn Huntsinger and Paul F. and Starrs. in press[Dec. 2006]. Livestock production in arid North America. Sècheresse.

Lynn Huntsinger, Adriana Sulak, Lauren Gwin, and Tobias Plieninger, T. 2004. Oak woodland ranchers in California and Spain: conservation and diversification. In: Schnabel, S. and Ferreira, A. (eds). Sustainability of Agrosilvopastoral Systems: Dehesas, Montados. Chapter 6. Advances in Geoecology 37:309-326.

Fairfax, S.K., Gwin, L. and Huntsinger, L. 2004. Presidio and Valles Caldera: A Preliminary Assessment of Their Meaning for Public Resource Management. Natural Resources Journal 44(2): 445-473.

Merenlender, A., Huntsinger, L., Guthy, G. and Fairfax, S. 2004. Land Trusts & Conservation Easements: Who is Conserving What for Whom. Conservation Biology 18(1): 65-75.

L. Huntsinger. 2002. End of the trail: ranching in transformation on the Pacific Slope. In: E. Marston and R. Knight (eds.) Ranching West of the 100th Meridian: Culture, Ecology and Economics, pgs. 77-90. Island Press.

R. Liffmann, L. Huntsinger, and L. Forero. 2000. To ranch or not to ranch: home on the urban range? J. Range Management 53(4)362-370.

Emery Roe, Lynn Huntsinger, and Keith Labnow. 1998. High reliability pastoralism. J. Arid Environments.

Jeremy Fried and Lynn Huntsinger. 1998. Managing for naturalness at Mt. Diablo State Park. Society and Natural Resources 11.

Lynn Huntsinger, Lita Buttolph, and Peter Hopkinson. 1997. Ownership and management changes on California's hardwood rangelands, 1985-1992. Journal of Range Management 50:423-430.

Sally K. Fairfax and Lynn Huntsinger. 1997. The new western history: an essay from the woods (and rangelands). Arizona Quarterly 53(2):191-210

Lynn Huntsinger. 1997. Managing Nature: Stories of Dynamic Equilibrium. Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Watershed Management Conference, Watershed Management Council, October 23-25, Lake Tahoe, California/Nevada. University of California Water Resources Center Report No. 92: 3-8. ISBN 1-887192-06-9.

Lynn Huntsinger. 1996. Use of livestock grazing to manage understory vegetation in a California silvo-pastoral system: effects of season, intensity, and frequency of grazing. Agroforestry Systems 34: 67-82.

L. Huntsinger and P. Hopkinson. 1996. Sustaining rangeland landscapes: a social and ecological process. Journal of Range Management 49:167-173.

Lynn Huntsinger and Sarah McCaffrey. 1995. A forest for the trees: Euro-American forest management and the Yurok environment, 1850 To 1994. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 19(4):155-192.