Socio-economic impact assessment of rangeland management plans in the city of Mashhad

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the socio-economic impacts of range management plans in the Mashhad County. Accordingly, 16 range management plans, approved during 1993 to 2012, were studied in three categories including executed, unexecuted and under execution plans. To achieve this purpose, some questionnaires were prepared with respect to the number of the beneficiaries in 15 range allotments and 48 samples were selected at random. The questionnaires were answered by the beneficiaries and the data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics in the SPSS software. The results showed that the beneficiaries considered the implementation of these plans to be effective; however, they also face a lot of problems. In areas where range management plans are not implemented, beneficiaries believe that these plans cannot solve many of their problems. However, despite all these problems, they hope that the implementation of these plans will reduce the problems of rangelands, including rangeland ownership. Finally, according to the beneficiaries' responses and many interviews conducted, range management plans are evaluated positively from a socio-economic point of view.