Conflict resolution specialist reveals tools for national wolf dialogue

BILLINGS – Few discussions result in more fur flying than those involving people with differing views on large carnivores like gray wolves.

Such issues are “more complex than who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s bad, who’s good,” said Francine Madden, executive director of the Center for Conservation Peacebuilding, CPeace for short.

Madden would know. She helped Washington state navigate its wolf management process and has taken on the issue nationwide.

Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it had “launched a new effort to create and foster a national dialogue around how communities can live with gray wolves (Canis lupus) to include conflict prevention, long-term stability and community security.”

Madden will help guide this dialogue.

“This conversation aims to give voice to all people, build understanding and determine a shared path forward,” said Jennifer Carpenter, chief of the Yellowstone Center for Resources.

Carpenter introduced Madden at the 16th Biennial Scientific Conference on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Big Sky, Montana, in early September. During her talk, Madden explained some of the ways she navigates the complicated task of conflict resolution.

Three steps

For this national dialogue, step one for Madden and her colleague, Australia-native Kim Wolfenden, was to meet with more than 6,000 people – advocates as well as adversaries.

From these 6,000 people the duo selected about a dozen to represent the varied views and values of the multitude. They will soon begin meeting over the course of the next year.

An Emmy-nominated media company was hired to film the process and produce a long-form podcast telling the people’s story “to model a different way of engaging,” Madden said.

The goal is to have the film show that “adversaries can become allies, they can come together.”

From this lengthy process, the goal is for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to use the interactions to inform its policies and future rulemaking regarding wolves. The agency plans to have its “first nationwide gray wolf recovery plan” completed by the end of 2025.

USFWS

Martha Williams, the former director of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks and now the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, reached out to recruit Madden for the national discussion.

Right now, the only way engagement is happening is through lawsuits, Madden said, prompted by fights over the Endangered Species Act.

“It’s a complex issue, and maybe what we need is a little more humility, a little more humanity and a little more understanding,” she said. “That is what led to this national wolf conversation.”

Getting nerdy

To help those gathered at Big Sky understand her conflict-resolution approach, Madden discussed humans’ neurological responses to perceived threats.

As with any divisive conversation, Madden said those involved in the wolf talks come to the discussion prejudiced, a trait that worked to humans’ advantage for thousands of years when we were largely a tribal species.

“The thing about this species is that when they feel under threat, they can be quite vicious,” she said.

In the modern world, instead of having to worry about another small tribe, we must cope with numerous other threats or perceived threats – not only locally but nationally and internationally – that may be bombarding our brains day and night via television, radio and websites.

“So we’re like in hyper trigger mode all the time,” Madden said, which neurologically causes us to want to fight, flight or freeze.

“This is the primary thing that got you away from … the enemy, the lion, the woolly mammoth,” but now that perception of threat is often overstimulated, she said.

Once a threat is perceived, humans may confine themselves to their own tribe – others who agree with them or think like them, Madden explained.

“So, if society has changed, if the system that we’re operating in is constantly evolving, then our process and how we bring people together and how we reconcile these deep-rooted conflicts in society has to evolve as well,” she said.

Tools of the trade

Using this knowledge, along with other conflict resolution tools and insights, in 2015 Madden took on the task of mediating Washington state’s wolf discussion. For three years prior to her involvement, stakeholders had convened with no progress.

“Not only did they not get anywhere, not only did they not come to an agreement on anything, but this wolf advisory group process started fueling destructive conflict in the state,” she said.

To begin, Madden talked to almost 90 people to assess the situation. Then she left it up to the stakeholders to decide if she was the right person to lead the process. They wanted her back, so she asked them to design the method.

She focused on making it a “relationship-centered process where their identity was being legitimized, where they had genuine voice, where they could speak to their need for recognition, and then each could recognize and give respect and acknowledgment to their other.”

At their first meeting, Madden had the group go out to dinner together, but they couldn’t talk about wolves. During that dinner, a livestock producer and vegan found common ground – they both liked whiskey.

Reaching a decision

Following about six meetings over the course of a year, the Washington wolf group devised a policy. When it was put into practice, however, no one liked it. Too many wolves and livestock were being killed. So they regrouped. Following two more meetings, the stakeholders revised the policy to kill wolves sooner, but fewer of them.

This work was being undertaken as rioters protesting the 2020 election stormed the nation’s capitol.

“One of the things that came out of this was a recognition that what was going on across the country was impacting what could be done at a state level,” Madden said. “There was this giant, systemic dark cloud – and I’m not talking about who was president, I’m talking about how society was functioning, how society was dehumanizing, how each side saw themselves as morally and intellectually superior, how they dehumanize their other, how they discredit their way of life, their core values, because they perceive a threat.”

Despite the national conflict, the group pressed on, seeing their collaboration as one possible salve for the nation’s wounds.

The goal isn’t to get rid of conflict, Madden stressed.

“The goal is to have society be able to keep coming back together.

“We’re in this for the infinite game. We’re in this so that we can keep having people and fish and wildlife thriving together. And it starts with people thriving together. The adversaries thriving together.”

With a national conversation about wolves, Madden said, there’s hope people can see the complexity of the issue, that there aren’t just good guys and bad guys, us versus them.