Social Science Research to Support the Implementation of a Visitor Use Management Strategy for Commercially-guided, Boat-based polar bear viewing at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The US Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 7 intends to award a single source financial assistance agreement as authorized by 505 DM 2.14 (B) to Dr. Jeffrey Hallo, Associate Professor, Clemson University Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management. This notice is not a request for proposals and the Government does not intend to accept proposals. This financial assistance opportunity is being issued under the Cooperative Ecosystem StudiesUnit (CESU) Network: (http://www.cesu.psu.edu/materials/partners.htm). The CESU network provides research, technical assistance, and education to federal land management, environmental, and research agencies and their partners. The partners serve the biological, physical, social, cultural, and engineering disciplines needed to address natural and cultural resource management issues at multiple scales and in an ecosystem context.Due to an increasing presence of both polar bears and humans along the Beaufort Sea coastline of Alaska, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) conducts community-based polar bear conservation activities annually in Kaktovik, Alaska with a variety of partners and works with key stakeholders to encourage collaborative management in this complex, value-based setting to address multi-faceted natural resource management issues.Arctic Refuge seeks to obtain necessary human dimensions data to effectively plan for its polar bear viewing management strategy into the future, and to consider the need for establishing a visitor capacity and potentially limiting boat-based visitor use on the Refuge waters immediately surrounding Kaktovik. The planning effort is expected to continue through 2019, and result in an EA and preferred alternative for the continuation of a compatible polar bear viewing permitting program and management strategy with a 15-year planning horizon.Researchers uniquely qualified to address the human dimensions aspects of our data need for immediate management decision-making are necessary. Researchers should have spent extensive time on-site at the management setting (which is an extremely remote arctic coastal area) and during the key time for the management need (during a 6-week period when polar bears congregate along the coast). Researchers with specialized academic/research expertise in evaluating visitor experience data to evaluate capacity in recreational boating settings and in relationship-based visitor management must be combined to precisely address our data needs for the rare visitor management setting that involves relationship-based natural resource management and international visitors and boating capacity issues. A successful project will invite collaborative efforts with local stakeholders, but proceed if that level of participation is not offered.