7965

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7965
• Author: Brown, C.
• Title: Handling Confrontation
• USFW Year: 1993.
• USFW - Doc Type: Negotiated Adaptive Management.
• Copyright Material: YES

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INTRACT ABLE CONFLICT/
CONSTRUCTIVE CONFRONTATION
PROJECT

Developing Constructive Approaches for
Confronting Seemingly Intractable Conflicts

CONFLICT RESOLUTION CONSORTIUM

University of Colorado

Working Paper 93-13, October 14, 19931

HANDLING CONFRONTATION: NEGOTIATED ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT

By Curt Brown
Bureau of Reclamation

Every river system in the West right now--the Platte, the
Colorado, the Sacramento, the San Joaquin, the Snake, and the
Columbia--are involved in endangered species issues. Major
studies are being conducted to address these issues. But,
everyone involved in these conflicts would agree that in most
cases what is being done is management at the brink of species
extinction, at the brink of resource exhaustion, or at least at the
brink of full allocation of the resources. In these cases, all parties
have their attorneys in court and various injunctions have been
f11ed. The parties are polarized and the whole process is
politicized. Consequently, there is not a lot of room to maneuver
in these cases. How do we manage these sorts of conflicts?
I think there are approaches that can move us away from
managing at the brink. The new administration, particularly the
Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, is very interested in
doing this. He is seeking ways to enable federal and state
resource managers to adopt ecosystem-based management
strategies to protect potentially imperiled species at reduced
levels of cost and conflict. The question is how can we do that?
Current studies addressing endangered species issues reflect
the old model of managing conflict--that is, the legal/regulatory
model. In this model' of conflict, the problem is defined as a
violation of the law, for example it is violation of Section 7 of the
Endangered Species Act. This defmition sets the boundaries of
the discussion and the formulation of the alternatives to resolve
the problem. Solutions are motivated to meet the legal
requirement. The problem is solved within the legal system by

imposition of a judgement and a direction by the courts to
do something--it may be a change in dam operations, a
change in river flows; it may be the setting aside of an area
for recovery of a species. But usually it is a one-shot solution
that is supposed to solve the problem.
There are some benefits to that system, but it has some
drawbacks, too. One is that this process constrains the issues.
My experience with endangered species conflicts is that the
law often forces the parties to focus on issues that are not
really their main concern. One example is a recent case
involving the Forest Service. The Service lost a case in which
they tried to establish federal reserved water rights in the
National Forest for in-stream flows. They had to argue that
case based upon arcane geomorphology relating flows to
maintenance of the stream cross-section, because that issue
is given legal standing in a very old law. In my view, what
they really wanted to do was protect the water in the slream
for aesthetic, recreation, and biological purposes. But the
law forced them to argue on grounds that were really
separate from their main concerns.
Similarly, the Platte River, particularly the central Platte,
is under Section 7 consultation on potential impacts to
whooping cranes. The Bureau of Reclamation has been in a
long-term process of negotiating with parties on that. But,
I've noticed in facilitating some of those negotiations that
environmental groups are hesitant to bring to the table issues
relating to the many riparian values that water in the Platte

1 Tltis paper is an edited transcripl of a talk given by Curt Brown for the Intractable Conf/ict/Conslnlctive Confrontation Project
on April 10, 1993. Funding for tltis Project was provided by lite William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the University of
Colorado. All ideas presellted are those of tlte author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Consortium, the University,
or Hewlett Foundation. For more infonllation, contactthe Conf/ict Resolution Consortium, Campus Box 327, University of Colorado,
Boulder, Colorado 80309-0327. Phone: [phone], e-mail: [e-mail].

1C1993. Conflict Resolution Consortium. Do not reprint without permission.