Trojan Horse on the Great Plains: Landowner Thresholds, Coping Capacity, and Management of Kentucky Bluegrass

Abstract

Kentucky bluegrass, an invasive cool-season grass in the US northern Great Plains, embodies the Greek story of the Trojan horse in which an apparent gift initially seems to bestow benefits but ultimately becomes harmful and subversive.Its competitive nature and early spring growth give it an advantage over native cool season grasses. This early and prolific growth provides forage for livestock but eventually leads to a decrease in other plant species and to negative impacts to multiple ecosystem services. Developing effective landscape-scale management techniques for invasives like Kentucky bluegrass depends on understanding the perceptions, coping capacity, and management abilities of private landowners. Through a mail survey conducted in North Dakota, this research provides insight into the cognitive processes that motivate agricultural landowners to manage Kentucky bluegrass and investigates psychological factors that constrain or enable the implementation of management behaviors. The results showed that less than half of the landowners surveyed had a management goal for Kentucky bluegrass, and among those with such goals, the perceived capacity to cope with the species was moderate to low. The majority of landowners who wanted to decrease the abundance of Kentucky bluegrass on their rangelands did not believe they could effectively do so. This highlights the need for the rangeland science and extension community to develop effective and feasible management techniques and conservation programs that integrate research findings to provide viable solutions. Participatory processes that include diverse interested and affected parties and rights holders can provide social learning environments conducive to the joint exploration of problems and refinement of actionable solutions. Through the focus on Kentucky bluegrass in the northern Great Plains, our research approach and recommendations also provide transferable insights for invasive species management and conservation in other social-ecological systems.