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Grizzly (brown) bears (Ursus arctos) in Canada have been extirpated from much of their historic range, with human-caused mortality recognized as a primary threat to the species’ survival across its North American distribution (Nielsen, 2005; Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada [COSEWIC], 2012; McLellan et al., 2017). This includes Alberta, Canada’s grizzly bear populations, which overlaps multiple human land uses along the Rocky Mountain front extending north into the boreal landscape (Nielsen et al., 2009; Morehouse and Boyce, 2017). Grizzly bear mortality in the province is largely a result of direct human conflict (e.g., livestock depredation, public safety incidences), illegal killing, or accidental death (e.g., motor vehicle collisions) (Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, 2008). Habitat loss and fragmentation are also of concern to the long-term sustainability of Alberta’s grizzly bears (Alberta Environment and Parks, 2016).

To address mortality and population sustainability concerns, in 2010 Alberta’s grizzly bears were listed as a threatened species, with an estimated population of approximately 700 bears distributed across more than 170,000 km² (Alberta Environment and Parks, 2016). Grizzly bears are protected by a provincial recovery policy which uses the best available biological data to formulate policy guidelines and management actions for bears, including instating a 2006 hunting moratorium, conducting population and habitat research, implementing strategies to reduce human linear footprint, and developing educational outreach activities (Alberta Environment and Parks, 2016). To date important steps have been taken to help fulfill recovery objectives across all Bear Management Areas (BMA). This includes completing population inventories, habitat research and treatments, and educational outreach (Nielsen et al., 2006; Alberta Environment and Parks, 2016). Despite much positive work, the public engagement and consultation processes previously used have been controversial for some people, with opinions differing on how best to move forward on grizzly bear recovery.

While Alberta’s grizzly bears are valued as a charismatic species symbolizing the rugged beauty of the wilderness, they also elicit fear, present safety risks, and sometimes negatively impact livelihoods (Black, 1998; McFarlane et al., 2007; Gibeau, 2012; Richie et al., 2012). Further complicating this are the different types and intensities of human land use across each BMA, including residential developments, Indigenous communities, forestry, agriculture, mineral and petroleum industries, and recreational use (Festa-Bianchet, 2010; Statistics Canada, 2013; Alberta Environment and Parks, 2016). Inevitably, these different land uses enable opportunities for people and bears to interact, which can result in positive or negative encounters (e.g., tourism bear viewing, livestock conflict, human safety risk) (Alberta Environment and Parks, 2016). Current attempts through the recovery policy to reduce the likelihood of negative interactions include setting thresholds for human footprint, creating guidelines for attractant management (e.g., electric fencing), and implementing educational outreach (Alberta Environment and Parks, 2016). However, policy implementation can be challenging given that different people have different knowledge and experiences with grizzly bears, different normative thoughts on what should be done about bear management, and different familiarity with recovery policy (Nate Webb, personal communications, 2011). Added to this, grizzly bear recovery is potentially even more challenging in BMAs with stable to increasing populations and increasing human-bear conflicts (Alberta Environment and Parks, 2016; Morehouse and Boyce, 2017; Coogan et al., 2018). Further compounding the complexity of policy implementation are the different views people across different BMAs may have of bear populations, which may influence their support or opposition to recovery actions (Hughes and Nielsen, 2019). This is not unlike conflicts in conservation policy elsewhere (e.g., caribou, elk, grizzly bears, wolves), which include problems in policy design, stakeholder engagement, governance, and values-based disputes (Nie, 2003; Wilson and Clark, 2007; Bixler, 2013; Young et al., 2016; Skogen, 2017).

Previous human dimensions research has examined people’s attitudes and knowledge toward grizzly bears and other species, as well as their support or opposition to conservation strategies (McFarlane et al., 2007; Ebbin, 2011; Young et al., 2015; Slagle et al., 2017). Despite understanding attitudes and preferences for action, disputes around the design and implementation of conservation policy persists, in Alberta and elsewhere (Serenari et al., 2018). Given that policy is intended to help achieve specific goals in the interest of the public good, conservation practitioners increasingly recognize the importance and central role that different people play in conservation (Chase et al., 2002; Gibeau, 2012; Bixler, 2013; Nastran, 2015). This includes understanding the problem perspectives from the people expected to live with large carnivores and implement desired management actions (Clark et al., 2009; Clark and Slocombe, 2011; Hughes and Nielsen, 2019). Arguably then, the challenges to grizzly bear conservation success are more about decision-making processes and issues of legitimacy, power, trust, and respect rather than people’s attitudes toward bears (Clark et al., 2008; Rutherford et al., 2009; Gibeau, 2012; Richie et al., 2012; Clark and Vernon, 2017).

Our case study of Alberta’s grizzly bear recovery policy, conducted between 2012 and 2014 shortly after the 2010 listing and release of the recovery plan, borrows from the policy sciences problem-oriented approach to uncover the problem perspectives from the people who live, work and recreate in bear country (Laswell, 1971; Vernon and Clark, 2015). A problem-oriented approach is a systematic process to uncover different peoples’ perspectives and characterizations on a particular policy problem, in addition to examining the trends and conditions influencing past and present policy trajectories (Laswell, 1971; Nie, 2001; Clark, 2002; Clark et al., 2008, 2014; Reed, 2008; Rutherford et al., 2009; Muntifering et al., 2017). This approach has been used in North America with regards to grizzly bears, polar bears, elk and other carnivore conservation challenges (Primm and Clark, 1996; Clark et al., 2008, 2017; Ebbin, 2011; Richie et al., 2012; Clark and Vernon, 2017). Within this framework, a policy problem is described as the disparity between what people want to happen and what actually does happen (Clark et al., 2014; Redpath et al., 2015). Defining a policy problem is “really about the social significance of a situation, its meaning, implications, and urgency” (Clark, 2002, p. 100; Primm and Clark, 1996). Different people will have different interpretations and experiences with policy, which can have broader implications for policy implementation including whether or not policy is viewed as legitimate (Clark, 2002; Clark et al., 2008; Feldpausch-Parker et al., 2017; Lopez-Bao et al., 2017). In turn, this can affect public acceptance and the adoption of desired actions (Lopez-Bao et al., 2017).

Part of the policy sciences problem-oriented approach is understanding how different people define and experience the ordinary and constitutive policy problems (Laswell, 1971; Clark, 2002; Clark and Vernon, 2017). Ordinary problems are often technical in nature, dealing with knowledge or information used in the decision process (e.g., related to biology, ecology, or economics), whereas constitutive problems address the normative aspects of decision-making, including values, governance structures or processes, and people involved (Laswell, 1971; Clark and Vernon, 2017). Constitutive problems thus refer to who gets to decide what to decide, reflecting aspects of power dynamics, how decision-making is structured, what procedures are employed or ideologies espoused, and who is invited or excluded in the decision process (Nie, 2001; Robbins, 2012; Clark and Vernon, 2017). Often, the constitutive process is overlooked in policy-making, yet is crucial to securing the common interest for conservation success (Brunner and Clark, 1996; Clark and Vernon, 2017).

Our study is part of a larger project that builds on similar work that elucidates the social and institutional problems in policy-making, with recommendations that are useful for localized conservation policy problems and broadly applicable on a global scale (Vernon and Clark, 2015; Hughes, 2018). Part of the strength of this approach is learning first-hand from the people impacted by conservation policies, in order to develop action that will resonate with peoples’ needs and that of wildlife (Chase et al., 2002; Berkes, 2004; Bixler, 2013; Nastran, 2015). It is our hope that in utilizing this approach we help illuminate how future policy design can espouse principles of participatory approaches in decision-making to ultimately more successfully address conservation problems (Chase et al., 2002; Berkes, 2004; Reed, 2008; Treves et al., 2009; Clark et al., 2014; Nastran, 2015; Lopez-Bao et al., 2017).

Following the policy sciences approach, to first situate ourselves in the grizzly bear recovery policy context, we reviewed publicly available documentation (e.g., guidelines, scientific publications, online and print reports, and websites) on the listing of grizzly bears (Laswell, 1971; Clark, 2002). Document review is a common technique used to contextualize multiple sources of information and summarize decision-making processes that approximate intended policy goals and can provide insight into the power dynamics at play in policy contexts (Patton, 1990; Bowen, 2009; Clark and Vernon, 2017). The document review informed our understanding of the trends and conditions of grizzly bear recovery policy.

We then conducted semi-structured interviews across Alberta’s BMAs to gather first-hand accounts, perspectives and experiences with grizzly bear recovery policy from the people who live, work and recreate in these areas (BMA; Laswell, 1971; Clark, 2002; Yin, 2014). We used a key informant list, generated by the provincial governments’ carnivore specialist, to develop an initial interview sample of government biologists, landowners (e.g., cattle ranchers, crop farmers), natural resource sector personnel (forestry, petroleum industry, mining), and environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs; Noy, 2008; Drury et al., 2011). Additional participants were identified via chain referral, which enabled us to collect first-hand interview data grounded in the participants’ own words, from a diverse range of people across Alberta’s BMAs (Biernacki and Waldorf, 1981; Noy, 2008; Goldman et al., 2010; Bixler, 2013; Vernon and Clark, 2015).

Participants were initially contacted via telephone or email and given the study information and consent documentation (University of Alberta, 2016). Once consent was granted, an interview date, time, and location for each participant was established. Face-to-face interviews were preferred, though telephone sessions were made available if there were constraints to meeting in-person (Novick, 2008). A semi-structured interview guide informed by similar studies was used, with latitude to explore topics more deeply as they emerged through the interview (Drury et al., 2011; Bennett, 2016). An iterative process of collection-transcription-analysis was used to determine corroboration and saturation of interview data, which included comparing and contrasting data to develop provisional descriptions of the problem perspectives (Patton, 1990; Clark et al., 2008; Rust and Taylor, 2016). Once data saturation was met, meaning no new patterns or themes emerged, data collection ceased (Fusch and Ness, 2015). Interview transcripts were reviewed again to identify any possible new problem descriptions, provisional codes were entered into NVivo 10 software, and redundancies or co-occurrences in coding were condensed and removed as necessary (Namey et al., 2006; Saldana, 2009; QSR International Pty Ltd, 2012). We also extracted key quotes to help illustrate findings (Young et al., 2015).

We first present the trends and conditions in grizzly bear recovery, including a condensed timeline of noteworthy events (Table 1). We then present the problem perspectives gathered from interview data.

We used the policy sciences problem-oriented approach to explore why grizzly bear recovery remains a complex and contested policy issue in Alberta (Laswell, 1971; Clark, 2002). Certainly, understanding the different problem perspectives people hold is important for policy design and implementation (Primm and Clark, 1996; Cromley, 2000; Wilson and Clark, 2007; Richie et al., 2012; Clark and Vernon, 2017). While we expected different problem perspectives to emerge, we instead found that participants generally shared key features in their perspectives. This included the ordinary, technical problems related to the lack of clarity in policy, inefficiencies in implementation, and inadequate commitments including financial, staffing and political. We also learned that these technical problems are exacerbated by constitutive problems, of which are related to decision-making and governance of recovery policy or who gets to decide what to decide (Laswell, 1971; Clark et al., 2014; Clark and Vernon, 2017). While in North America it is assumed policy decisions made by government agencies are legitimate, representative and transparent, meant to secure and sustain the common interest, this assumption is not necessarily true in Alberta, where ongoing controversy over grizzly bear recovery persists despite nearly a decade of policy implementation (Rutherford et al., 2009; Chamberlain et al., 2012; Gibeau, 2012; Bixler et al., 2015). Our study revealed that different participant groups have in some way felt delegitimized and unable to assert or actualize their perspectives and values in recovery policy processes. This is not unlike many other conflicts in conservation, whereby the ordinary or technical problems are exacerbated by constitutional ones – the power dynamics, mistrust, and feelings of disrespect (Robbins, 2012; Bixler et al., 2015; Nastran, 2015; Young et al., 2016; Clark and Vernon, 2017; Clark et al., 2017; Lopez-Bao et al., 2017). Though government routinely uses consultative processes and assumes that stakeholder perspectives are evenly accounted for, this approach can be inadequate and instead cater to interest group agendas (Nie, 2001; Bixler, 2013; Skogen, 2017). As such, these constitutive problems will persist, relative to whose interests are served, whose knowledge is valued and used, and what decisions are carried out (Clark et al., 2017). In this case study, what participants want is a shift in policy design, from an institutionalized and technocratic approach that elicits information from elites, to a decentralized process that engages a broad range of people to share their knowledge, values, needs and preferred outcomes (Nie, 2001; Berkes, 2004; Bixler, 2013; Young et al., 2015; Mason et al., 2017). This is an important lesson for conservation practice globally, as even in our study the government participants indicated the policy problems partially lie in an outdated process that perpetuates a lack of trust between different interest groups, compounded by bureaucracy to implement recovery action.

The solution space for grizzly bear recovery, which we also suggest applies to other large carnivore policy processes, should consider enabling people a fair chance to assert their voice, to articulate their values and positions, and create a shared understanding of problems and possible solutions (Berkes, 2004; Adams and Sandbrook, 2013). This moves beyond traditional forms of consultation and espouses principles of participatory system improvements that recognize the diversity of participants, their knowledge and experiences, values and needs (Chase et al., 2002; Clark, 2002; Berkes, 2004; Adams and Sandbrook, 2013). In turn this can help policy-makers find leveraging points that bring people together for collective action (Adams and Sandbrook, 2013; Bixler, 2013). Adopting participatory policy processes can also help policy-making participants achieve other values, such as wellbeing, affection, and rectitude, through a decentralized, power-sharing model of decision-making (Treves et al., 2009; Young et al., 2016). This includes engagement from scientific experts, local knowledge keepers and others within the socio-cultural and political sphere (Raik et al., 2008; Treves et al., 2009). Specific to this study, participants indicated that future grizzly bear recovery policy should adopt a collaborative approach process to developing policy objectives that reflect the context and needs of people and bears. This includes clarifying and contextualizing recovery terminology and regulatory authority, securing long-term financial investments and political commitment for implementation, and evaluating and communicating recovery achievements. While we acknowledge that governments operate within established hierarchical decision-making structures that can be difficult to change, negotiating new spaces of cooperative knowledge exchange and decision-making can help balance otherwise asymmetrical power dynamics in conservation policy and create shared understandings (Raik et al., 2008; Ebbin, 2011; Robbins, 2012). That said, while we acknowledge that biological and ecological scientific evidence is considered a cornerstone of effective conservation policy, the role of local and Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge, experiences and values, as well as recognition of their land uses and wildlife practices, is also necessary (Berkes, 2004; Clark et al., 2014; Polfus et al., 2016; Carroll et al., 2017). Future research could explore how to integrate both natural and social sciences data in policy processes (Polfus et al., 2016). However, participatory processes are not without their challenges, so care must be taken in their implementation, to avoid unintended conflict or exacerbate existing problems (Lopez-Bao et al., 2017). This includes careful consideration for who is included in decision processes, with clear and explicit statements indicating peoples’ interests or efforts taken to exclude self-interest, and the use of consensus-based approaches with effective third-party facilitators (Lopez-Bao et al., 2017). In hopes, these careful considerations may help to balance the power dynamics in policy decision-making processes and produce outcomes that work for people and wildlife (Patterson et al., 2003).

While government agencies around the world are mandated to conserve and manage large carnivores, the path that conservationists and managers take to achieve desired outcomes should consider adopting participatory approaches that seek to decentralize decision functions and share power, build trust, and foster respect for different opinions and experiences in policy design (Clark et al., 1996; Berkes, 2004; Pretty and Smith, 2004). This can help foster co-learning, identify capacity-building or technical needs, recruit local champions, encourage stewardship, and improve knowledge, comprehension, and participation in scientific processes (Chase et al., 2002; Pretty and Smith, 2004; Reed, 2008). In turn this can help ward off some of the ordinary, technical problems often evident in the implementation of conservation policies (Vernon and Clark, 2015). Participatory processes often hinge on bureaucratic support for decentralization and collaboration, and while this might be a significant challenge in Alberta or other traditional, hierarchical governments it is certainly worthy of pursuit and arguably necessary for conservation success (Berkes, 2004; Treves et al., 2009; Gibeau, 2012; Clark et al., 2014). Indeed, as Alberta’s grizzly bear recovery suggests, conservation achievements ultimately rest on society’s willingness to coexist with large carnivores (Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, 2008). Engaging all people in meaningful decision processes can help tip the scale toward success.

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

This study involved human research participants. Ethics approval was granted by the University of Alberta in accordance with the Research Ethics Board (REB). Participants gave their written consent to participate in this study.

CH designed the study, collected and analyzed the data for this manuscript, and was lead author. SN assisted in the data interpretation. NY, AM, and SN contributed to writing and revising the manuscript. All authors gave approval for publication of this manuscript.

AM is self-employed by Winisk Research and Consulting. All authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.