Investigating the Difference between Experts and Local Communities Viewpoints on the Use of Rangeland by Products (Case Study: Azadshahr and Gonbad Rangelands)

In the field of natural resource’s utilization and management, the two groups of stakeholders, utilizers and official experts are not quite agreed. It is obvious that each of these two social groups, depending on their interests and duties, have different points of views, as a result different plans for the development and managent. Finding the differences thus, could be effective in decision making and planning. In this study, the views of two groups of utilizers, managers and facilitators in Azadshahr and Gonbad rangelands in Golestan province were taken into account. The focus was on the reasons for low rate of acceptance for multiple-use projects. Required data were gathered through questionnaires and open interviews (consist of 6 indices and 90 items) with members of both groups. The results of questionnaires and interviews were analyzed using Discriminant Analysis (DA) in STATISTICA. Survey shows that utilizers have a different view of about 50.12% from the expert group of executives and managers. The most different issues were institutional, political, social and economic. On environmental issues such as water shortage (12.06%), human resources including literacy and household dimension (12.14%) there was almost agreements. The highest disagreement was found on organization-policy including inadequate government services, insufficient interaction of authorities with local and utilizers, etc. (65.32%). Based on the results, facilitators must take part in educational workshops on the mechanism of implementation of the multiple-use projects to encourage the utilizers to accept and well use of the plans.