Trust-building as a Keystone Activity in Beaver-related Restoration Practice

Abstract

North American beavers (Castor canadensis) are increasingly being used to achieve restoration goals, prompting practitioners to engage with private landowners in efforts to promote beaver coexistence. Through 23 semi-structured interviews with restoration practitioners in Oregon, USA, we explored how practitioners from government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), service organizations, and private businesses communicate with private landowners about nonlethal beaver management and habitat creation. Using abductive analysis, we identified trust-building as an essential element of restoration practice. Practitioners described 60 tactics for building trust, which we organized using the Shared Foundations model of trust and distrust and the adaptive management cycle to bridge theory with field-based experience. Practitioners also reported navigating tensions between tactics and adapting their approaches to individual landowners and contexts. We argue that trust-building is a craft that can be mastered, propose a potential progression from novice to master trust-builder, and highlight the need for greater attention to trust, relationships, and trust repair in environmental management. Our findings offer a theoretically grounded yet practitioner-informed framework for understanding and improving trust-building efforts in restoration practice.