Urgency and deliberateness are often at odds when executing conservation projects, especially as the scale and complexity of objectives increases. The pace of environmental degradation supports immediate and measurable action. However, best practices for adaptive governance and building resilient social-ecological systems call for more deliberate efforts and participatory processes, which can be slow. We explore conflicts between urgency and deliberateness and the potential for their reconciliation through a case study of the challenges of conserving native rangelands in North America’s Northern Great Plains, an ecoregion targeted for global conservation initiatives. This region is undergoing a significant social-ecological transition, which underscores a need to rethink conservation strategies in light of the social-ecological system dynamics and potential future trajectories. Based on a structured narrative literature review process and iterative engagement with key regional stakeholders, we identify three interrelated factors critical to the system’s future outcomes that illustrate system complexity as well as trade-offs between urgent and deliberate action and unilateral and multilateral approaches to conservation: (1) influences of land management on biodiversity, (2) economic restructuring and shifting land use priorities, and (3) changing climate and disturbance regimes. We identify key gaps in the literature for each factor and across the factors—an effort that informs our call for research and practice agendas that address uncertainty and complexity at regional scales through more inclusive and future-oriented approaches.

中文翻译：

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采取紧急而又刻意的保护战略：在蒙大拿州北部大平原的牧场上维持社会生态系统

在执行保护项目时，紧急性和故意性常常是矛盾的，尤其是随着目标的规模和复杂性的增加。环境退化的速度支持立即采取可衡量的行动。但是，适应性治理和建立有弹性的社会生态系统的最佳做法要求进行更多的刻苦努力和参与性过程，这可能会很慢。我们通过对北美北部大平原保护本地牧场的挑战进行案例研究，探讨了紧迫性与蓄意之间的冲突及其和解的潜力，该地区是全球保护计划的目标。该地区正在经历重大的社会生态转型，这强调了需要根据社会生态系统动态和潜在的未来轨迹来重新考虑保护策略。基于结构化的叙述性文献审查过程以及与主要区域利益相关者的反复参与，我们确定了对系统未来成果至关重要的三个相互关联的因素，这些因素说明了系统的复杂性以及紧急和蓄意行动与单边和多边保护方法之间的权衡取舍： （1）土地管理对生物多样性的影响；（2）经济结构调整和土地使用重点的转移；（3）气候和干扰制度的变化。