In recent decades, government staff and local citizens have increasingly employed cooperative schemes of natural resource management (co-management), in lieu of more conventional, top-down approaches of addressing user conflicts as they relate to water resources. The focus of this project was on the Niobrara Council, a partnership of local, state, and federal representatives charged with cooperatively managing the reach of the Niobrara River that was federally designated under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1991. The project’s purpose was to explore the co-management framework of the Council, using the methodology outlined by Carlsson and Berkes (2005). This methodology involved investigating the functional tasks of the Council and analyzing the linkages between those tasks and the individuals who perform them in order to develop a descriptive picture of how the Council functions. Qualitative data for this project was gathered through interviews with the Council members, Council meeting minutes, and enabling documents and laws related to the Niobrara National Scenic River (NNSR) and the Council. This data was used to inform a qualitative thematic analysis of the Council and clarify how relationships between participants and management activities in a co-management framework are organized, and how they might be enhanced to promote institutional capacity-building and long-term problem solving.

The findings from this project provided a clearer picture of how the various partners involved in the co-management framework of the Council manage the NNSR. A better understanding of the roles of various partners and the specific management tasks that they were responsible for was uncovered; illustrating where various actors play key roles, how responsibility for some tasks is shared, where collaboration is most prevalent and where it is intermittent, and at which junctures entities outside of the Council play a significant part. Additionally, data was analyzed in order to define what aspects of the co-management framework could be enhanced for capacity building, the most prevalent needs being increased access to resources, enhancing institutional arrangements, supporting appropriate government policies and planning, and enhancing stakeholder participation. These and other themes that emerged from the findings of this analysis provide a starting point for the Council to use when reflecting upon potential enhancements to their management framework and planning for future endeavors.