Many rural economies are directly or indirectly reliant on the management and exploitation of natural resources, the management of which is often complicated by the diversity of stakeholders involved. Hence, effective collaboration between stakeholders is potentially a key driver of sustainability in rural economies.

The overall aim of this project was to produce a framework for the development of effective, informed, inclusive, collaborative and sustainable management of rural resources in Britain, using wild deer as a case study.
This showed the value of co-construction of maps to facilitate and negotiate management options and to combine practitioner and scientific knowledge across a landscape to create a better understanding of the distribution of a mobile resource such as deer.

There is now an opportunity to build capacity among conservation agency staff to utilise this framework to engage with land-managers early in the process and foster collaboration over public and private objectives through a follow-on project.

The research is conducted as part of the Research Councils' Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) Programme (Projects: RES 227-025-0014 and RES-811-25-0002).

RELU is funded jointly by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Natural Environment Research Council, with additional funding from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Scottish Government Environment and Rural Affairs Department. Support is also being provided by the Forestry Commission.