If you’re studying at the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society, why should you take a field trip to Australia’s snow sports hotspot, the Snowy Mountains?
Not for the skiing or the snowboarding, but for the contentious and often competing views you’ll find there—both on and off the slopes—on how the land should be used and managed.
Over the course of our three-day field trip, we met with a variety of stakeholders to understand their perspectives, including the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Services, cattle farmers, sustainability-focused farmers, environmentalists, traditional Indigenous land owners, recreational users like skiers and mountain-bikers, as well as deer hunters.
One of my favourite parts of the field trip was learning from a park ranger about endangered species in the area, such as the corroboree frog, pygmy possum and sphagnum mosses. We even saw these mosses during a hike on Porcupine Ridge Trail.
After the trip was over, we wrote up a report comparing the landscape perspectives of two different stakeholders. This involved the creation of systems thinking diagrams to visually represent the different values between stakeholders’ land uses, and to discover where interventions to reconcile these differences would be most effective.
Studying environment and society at ANU can take you to the snow, the surf, and everywhere in between. Find out more about our science field trips.