The Art of Range Podcast

Andrew Coppin is the co-founder and CEO of RanchBot, a company aiming to reduce the cost and stress of managing stockwatering supplies in the large percentage of the world's surface where water really matters to grazing operations of all sizes. But as a former investment banker in corporate finance, Andrew has broader socioecological goals: "Ranchers are the largest custodians of natural capital o...

The Montana Grazing Lands Coalition 2025 Grazing Expo is an event designed to empower land managers with tangible resources while highlighting the West-wide impact of sound grazing lands stewardship. In this interview with Megan Terry, executive director for the Montana Grazing Lands Coalition, we discuss the importance of rancher peer-to-peer learning, integrated face-to-face grazing management e...

What would rural finance look like if it truly supported long-term stewardship and resilience? This is the question Zach Ducheneaux has been asking himself and working toward for a couple of decades. Zach is an agricultural producer, a farming advocate, and the former Administrator of the USDA Farm Service Agency. From experiencing firsthand ag lending dysfunction in the 1980s farm crisis, to witn...

Dan Dagget was one of the original members of EarthFirst!, one of the more radical environmental activist organizations of the last 50 years. In his efforts to achieve health for the Earth’s ecosystems, however, he found himself conflicted over environmentalism’s means and the ends those means actually achieved. With that in mind, he began investigating and writing about success stories where acti...

"Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes its laws." People think they are primarily 'thinking things', but this quote by a musician from ancient Athens speaks to the fact that most of our decision-making and the direction of our efforts in the world are shaped more by our affections. Creative and expressive arts are hugely influential. We should pay as much attention to what...

Visual arts that draw attention to wild, open spaces have been culturally important in the United States. The outdoors painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were instrumental in making Americans aware of spectacularly beautiful places most people would not know about otherwise. And they catalyzed efforts to conserve these landscapes for ecological value and future enjoyment. Frank Sti...

Can we effectively limit wildfire risk or change the fire risk profile using deliberate grazing? Or is this just wishful, simplistic thinking: "Cows eat fine fuel so that stops fire, right?" These are questions that demand scientific answers, not just anecdotes or coffee shop opinions. Sergio Arispe has worked with other researchers in the Western U.S. to better understand numerous questions aroun...

Over 15 years ago, the veteran journalist Steve Stuebner and Idaho Rangeland Resources Commission executive Gretchen Hyde set out to use the new media landscape to tell good news stories about rangeland landscapes and the unique people who care for them. This has been a wildly successful venture that has reached far beyond the borders of Idaho. Listen to this interview with Steve and Gretchen abou...

The National Grazing Lands Coalition (NatGLC) promotes and supports ecologically and economically sound management of grazing lands for multiple benefits to the environment and society through science-based technical assistance, research, and education. Bill Fox has been with NatGLC since the beginning. In this interview, Dr. Fox offers a condensed history of NatGLC and what the organization is do...

Does grazing management make a difference? Can we raise livestock and wildlife and take carbon out of the atmosphere and put it in soil on the same piece of land? Meet Peter Byck, self-described scientist wrangler and producer of Roots So Deep, a four-part documentary series that explores the world of adaptive cattle farmers and their conventional farming neighbors. Adaptive multi-paddock grazing...

The concept of carrying capacity has figured prominently in rangeland ecology and wildlife biology for a century and more. Where did this term come from? Nathan Sayre, a cultural geographer at UC-Berkeley and the author of the book "Politics of Scale - a History of Rangeland Science," answers this question. According to Sayre, "It is a truism that the Earth’s resources are finite, and that human d...

Can Farmer-Founded Fibers Save American Fashion? Cate Havstad-Casad, founder of RangeRevolution leather goods, and Daniel Mouw, president of Duckworth wool clothing answered this question in a pre-panel interview at SXSW with Ed Roberson joining in. If Duckworth and Range Revolution are not on your radar screen, and if Mountain & Prairie Podcast isn't in your podcast feed, they should be now. Ed i...

The Sterling Wildlife Management Area in southeast Idaho suffered from accumulated dead cattails, bulrushes, and grasses. Wildlife the area is intended habitat for were avoiding it, especially migratory waterfowl. This Life on the Range story with rancher Chase Carter and biologist Maria Pacioretty describes their successful efforts to use targeted grazing in winter to consume and transform the ov...

Bildo Saravia is the owner and manager of Rancho el Ojo and Origien Raiz Mezcal. His story showcases the ways global marketing and communication can benefit local people oriented around rangeland economies. By "grazing the wild" he is growing agave in sustainable polyculture with a diversity of other native plants for livestock and wildlife in Durango, Mexico. Go to the episode page, https://artof...

Dr. Germino’s latest research, published in the Communications Earth & Environment journal in November 2024, reveals a startling and significant finding: invasive grasses are turning western U.S. rangelands from valuable carbon sinks into potential carbon sources. This research, a two-year collaboration between the US Geological Survey and Envu, provides the first comprehensive assessment of the i...

A research study in the mountains of Idaho tracked cheatgrass consumption by sheep in the spring and fall. Listen to Kelly Hopping (Boise State University) and sheep rancher Riley Kowitz describe their experiences with implementing this approach to controlling invasive annual grass and changing the wildfire risk profile on the Sawtooth National Forest. Go to https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-148...

How does wildfire affect soil carbon, the ecological currency of the 21st century? Careful collaborative research involving US Geological Survey scientists, Envu, and Boise State University has begun to answer some of the many questions surrounding soil carbon and fire. This is the first of a two-part interview on soil carbon storage, sequestration mechanisms, effects of wildfire and plant communi...

Angus's family has managed the Wyndham Station near the Anabranch and Darling Rivers in southern Australia for 4 generations. That and the promise of a great Australian accent should be enough to make you listen to this episode. But we also discuss managing the earth's Living Skin, Angus's efforts to get others to think broadly about caring for land and livestock and all living things, including i...

Riparian management, water quality, and livestock grazing used in the same sentence can warm up a room with heated discussion. John Buckhouse has spent a lifetime contending for the Radical Middle, where people recognize that land conditions that are good for fish are also good for cattle. He has effectively advocated for and led collaborative resource management, published reams of research on th...

"We have to think of beavers as our friend instead of our foe; for these watersheds to be healthy, you need beaver.” Rancher Jay Wilde experienced a paradigm shift some years ago that convinced him beavers were necessary to hold more water higher in the watershed for longer and that this hydrologic change would benefit a cattle operation in numerous ways. He acted on this conviction with some expe...

Riparian management, water quality, and livestock grazing used in the same sentence can warm up a room with heated discussion. John Buckhouse has spent a lifetime contending for the Radical Middle, where people recognize that land conditions that are good for fish are also good for cattle. He has effectively advocated for and led collaborative resource management, published reams of research on th...

How do undergrazing and overgrazing affect soil carbon change? What does "optimal grazing" look like? This sequel episode with Paige Stanley goes deeper into the ways grazing factors affect the ecophysiology elements that are responsible for generating or release the various kinds of soil carbon. These changes remain difficult to quantify, but we can describe them. Listen in on this second intervi...

"The fields of rangeland and wildlife management are brothers in the same fight for the conservation, protection, and management of wildlife and one cannot be completely understood without knowledge of the other." --Paul Krausman. This quote from the foreword of a new edited volume on wildlife ecology highlights the integrated nature of rangeland science. Listen to Drs. Lance McNew and Jeff Beck d...

Meet Mark and Wendy Pratt, ordinary people doing unglamorous work with extraordinary care. C.S. Lewis said "we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. It is frustrating . . . to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it...

Forage on semi-arid rangelands is finite but variable across space and over time. And grazing decisions start with balancing animal forage demand with forage supply, a significant challenge in vast and varied landscapes. In this episode, Matt Reeves, Sonia Hall, and Tip discuss StockSmart, the new free, online decision support tool just launched that accesses remotely sensed forage production data...