Kentucky bluegrass, an invasive cool-season grass in the US northern Great Plains, embodies the Greek story of the Trojan horse in which an apparent gift initially seems to bestow benefits but ultimately becomes harmful and subversive.

Its competitive nature and early spring growth give it an advantage over native cool season grasses. This early and prolific growth provides forage for livestock but eventually leads to a decrease in other plant species and to negative impacts to multiple ecosystem services. Developing effective landscape-scale management techniques for invasives like Kentucky bluegrass depends on understanding the perceptions, coping capacity, and management abilities of private landowners. Through a mail survey conducted in North Dakota, this research provides insight into the cognitive processes that motivate agricultural landowners to manage Kentucky bluegrass and investigates psychological factors that constrain or enable the implementation of management behaviors. The results showed that less than half of the landowners surveyed had a management goal for Kentucky bluegrass, and among those with such goals, the perceived capacity to cope with the species was moderate to low. The majority of landowners who wanted to decrease the abundance of Kentucky bluegrass on their rangelands did not believe they could effectively do so. This highlights the need for the rangeland science and extension community to develop effective and feasible management techniques and conservation programs that integrate research findings to provide viable solutions. Participatory processes that include diverse interested and affected parties and rights holders can provide social learning environments conducive to the joint exploration of problems and refinement of actionable solutions. Through the focus on Kentucky bluegrass in the northern Great Plains, our research approach and recommendations also provide transferable insights for invasive species management and conservation in other social-ecological systems.

肯塔基早熟禾是美国北部大平原的一种入侵性冷季草，它体现了希腊特洛伊木马的故事，在这个故事中，一种明显的礼物最初似乎会带来好处，但最终会变得有害和颠覆。

其竞争性和早春生长使其比本地冷季草更具优势。这种早期多产的生长为牲畜提供​​了饲料，但最终导致其他植物物种的减少并对多种生态系统服务产生负面影响。针对肯塔基早熟禾等入侵植物开发有效的景观规模管理技术取决于对私人土地所有者的看法、应对能力和管理能力的了解。通过在北达科他州进行的邮件调查，这项研究深入了解了激励农业土地所有者管理肯塔基州早熟禾的认知过程，并调查了限制或促进管理行为实施的心理因素。结果显示，不到一半的受访土地所有者对肯塔基早熟禾有管理目标，而在那些有此类目标的土地所有者中，应对该物种的感知能力为中等到低。大多数想要减少牧场上肯塔基早熟禾丰度的土地所有者并不相信他们可以有效地做到这一点。这凸显了牧场科学和推广界需要开发有效且可行的管理技术和保护计划，整合研究成果以提供可行的解决方案。包括不同利益相关方和受影响方以及权利持有者的参与过程可以提供有利于共同探索问题和完善可行解决方案的社会学习环境。