Landscape and Place Concepts Meeting through Encounters between Birdwatchers and Farmers

Determining stakeholders‘ different perspectives on the same place can create an important platform for processes of mutual learning in natural resource management. We have interviewed farmers and birdwatchers who were members in a project called Swedish birdwatchers and farmers in cooperation. The aim of the project was to create discussions and meetings between these different users of the landscape; farmers and birdwatchers. In interviews were focused on their view of landscape, birds and nature conservation. To understand how the farmers and the birdwatchers perceive the landscape and discuss around this we use a landscape relation model created by Gustafsson (1993). The model describes three ways of relating to a landscape/place. According to Gustafsson people can relate to landscapes as 1) Pictorial landscapes, 2) Perception landscapes or 3) Identification landscapes. The different perspectives on the same landscape can derive from for example a person‘s function in the landscape and how long time that he or she has spent there. The model can also be a base for discussions about identities. How one perceive and relate to the landscape will affect how one uses and talk about the landscape, the species within the landscape and farm practice