Managing Forest Road Access on Public Lands: A Conceptual Model of Conflict

Abstract

Conflicts around the provision, maintenance, and removal of forest road access abound in resource management. These conflicts arise since road access benefits some people while negatively affecting others. Through qualitative interviews with key stakeholders from two northern Ontario, Canada, communities, we examined issues around road access. Conflict emerged as the core category from the interviews, with conflicts primarily arising between tourism operators and local (road-based) recreationists. Social, physical, and managerial contexts are primary drivers of differences in conflict observed within the two communities. Contextual difference in scarcity and allocation of surface water between road-based recreation and remote tourism (i.e., train or float plane accessible tourism establishments) led to much greater conflict in the Dubreuilville than in the Ignace area. Conflict in the two communities also arises from goal interference, social values differences, and perceptions of inequities of past decisions (i.e., distributive inequity) and decision-making processes (i.e., procedural inequity).

Keywords:

• access
• conflict
• forests
• goal interference
• grounded theory
• roads
• social values

We thank the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources for funding this research. We are grateful for the constructive comments and suggested edits provided by three anonymous reviewers. Finally, we thank the interviewees for their time and willingness to assist the project, and Sarah Breen for her assistance with conducting and transcribing interviews.

Notes

^a Statistics Canada (2001).

^b Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (2002).

Almost all stakeholders absolved the forest industry of any responsibility for conflict. While Aboriginal People have interests in road access issues, resource managers typically exempt them from any regulatory tools used to limit access. Therefore, Aboriginal People do not experience the same extent of conflict around road access management as do non-Aboriginal People.

One interviewer conducted the first 19 interviews while another interviewer conducted the last 5 interviews. Since the second interviewer transcribed the first 19 interviews before conducting the final interviews we believe that this interviewer change resulted in few if any effects on interview responses.

The recording of one interview failed. In this instance, field notes were used to understand the reality of the respondent.