The Emergence of the Wyoming Core Area Strategy: "The Sage Grouse Rebellion"

This research sought to explain the emergence of the Wyoming Core Area Strategy (WCAS), a state-based Greater Sage Grouse conservation plan. It presents a theoretical framework that is based on and adds nuance to the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). The hypothesis this study explored was: if a subsystem's jurisdiction is threatened by a hierarchically superior subsystem's policy outputs and this jurisdiction is necessary to meet the threatened subsystem's goals, then policy change may occur as a result of a strategy by the agents in the threatened subsystem. The data used to examine the hypothesis included expert interviews, historical documents, and interviews from media sources (secondary source interviews). The hypothesis was supported; the WCAS emerged because the Endangered Species Act listing outputs within the Species Conservation Policy Subsystem threatened the Wyoming Land Use Policy (WLUP) Subsystem's jurisdiction, which was necessary to meet the WLUP Subsystem's economic and lifestyle goals; the Governor of Wyoming drove the development and enactment of the WCAS as a strategy to retain jurisdiction. The research demonstrated that in order to fully account for the WCAS's emergence, a less mechanistic view of the framework, one that accounts for the ability of agents in a subsystem to act strategically, was needed. The research also demonstrated that the Greater Sage Grouse conservation benefited from the ESA listing process despite its warranted but precluded listing status. The time frame the research explored was 2002 through March 2012.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Political Science

Department dc:contributor.department

Political Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Trefren, Jennie Lee

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Hult, Karen M.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Cook, Brian J.
• Hoon, Parakh

• jurisdictional dynamic
• environmental federalism
• greater sage grouse
• strategy
• casual mechanism
• Endangered Species Act
• advocacy coalition framework
• Wyoming core area strategy

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-05132012-195100

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/42650