The Art of Range Podcast

Ted Turner started buying ranch land in the early 1990s as both an investment and to conserve habitat for imperiled species at a spatial scale that would be meaningful. Today, Turner Enterprises owns nearly 2 million acres of land across the Western United States. Mark Kossler manages the ranching operations on these 15 properties, all of which include bison. Carter Kruse is the lead scientist for...

Spring 2021 arrived with a large percentage of the Western U.S. exhibiting below-average precipitation, in some places a lot below the 15-year mean. Matt Reeves discusses current conditions and potential ecological responses, and Shannon Neibergs analyzes livestock management options, including current cattle markets, hay supply, and herd management scenarios. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE M...

Ashley Hibbard may seem an unlikely rancher, but she may do more to change minds about ranching than most who seem more likely advocates. Ashley, who astute listeners will remember from the Women in Ranching Forum from SRM's 2020 annual meeting, runs an artist-in-residency program on the Sieben Live Stock Company home place in central Montana. Good art can bypass bad logic, and the beauty of ranch...

Gus Hormay worked with the Sieben Live Stock Company in the 1970s and 80s to help him understand rotation grazing principles. Chase and Cooper have adapted these ideas, centered on extended rest, to their context and needs. This approach has worked especially well on public lands managed for elk habitat. They received the National Cattlemen's Beef Association's Stewardship Award in 2003 in recogni...

"Big ranches mean big risks", says Chase Hibbard. Large lands and lots of cattle doesn't equal guaranteed success in the economically unforgiving world of family ranching. The Sieben Live Stock Company has been around for 6 generations and has both awards and scars to show for their perseverance. All good stories have tension and dark threads in the weaving. Join Tip in a conversation with Chase a...

Farmer and rancher mental health has been in the news the past few years, with farmer suicide rates alarmingly high. Farmers and ranchers are often seen as the embodiment of the American ideal -- the rugged individualist who is self-sufficient, doesn't need help, lives on the land, doesn't have problems . . . but the stresses of modern farming, especially financial stresses, leave many feeling hop...

Americans often refer to electric fence as "New Zealand" fence, and many other grazing innovations seem to have origins in this relative small island in the southern hemisphere. Thomas Maxwell, a pasture scholar from Lincoln University in NZ, provides an overview of the history of indigenous land use, European settlement, and domesticated grazing animal use in New Zealand. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN T...

Americans are vaguely aware of pastoralism as a term connoting a lifestyle that revolves around animal raising, but most of us don't have much more understanding than a loose attempt at a definition. Fiona Flintan has spent much of her career with the International Livestock Research Institute working with pastoralist cultures in Africa, helping secure rights to land and address conflicts, and com...

Maurice and Beth are a father-daughter team who raise and sell farm-finished beef in Eastern Washington and are perhaps the first two-generation pair trained in holistic management. They have experienced the highs and lows of making a family ranch run well: for people, for land, for animals, for consumers. They reflect in this interview on decades of practice and adaptive learning and offer entrep...

Some people are called to work at the intersection of theory and practice and to challenge unchallenged ideas about what we do and why we do what we do. Clay Conry is one of those people. His Working Cows podcast is occupying a niche in livestock agriculture. As both a practicing rancher and a thinker, Clay is influencing sustainable agriculture for the good, for healthy land and animals as well a...

The Society for Range Management's annual meeting will be held virtually Feb 15-18, and the keynote speakers for the plenary sessions will address three 'wicked problems' in range. Drs. Lynn Huntsinger and Nathan Sayre, who are moderating two of the plenary sessions, discuss the outline of these wicked problems to introduce the important subject matter for this year's conference. SHOW NOTES Regist...

Decisions about how and whether to suppress fire on semi-arid rangelands are full of "if, then" statements. Altered plant communities, the absence of historic fire regimes, costs of restoration, and risks of human property or life are just the beginning of considerations necessary for sound wildfire management. Tip and Matt Germino discuss the big picture of how to think about fire on rangelands a...

The relationship between grazing and fire is complex. And the national conversation about using livestock grazing as a control measure is sometimes controversial. Wildfire in general is a difficult topic because of the higher fire potential of many altered plant communities, the recognition that periodic fire is probably necessary in fire-adapted plant communities, and the economic consequences of...

To fertilize or not to fertilize? That is NOT the question. Nitrogen is a driver of plant growth but its complex relationship with soil carbon and soil microorganisms makes fertilizing rangelands a complicated subject. Simple solutions often miss the mark, and adding nitrogen to natural plant communities as opposed to agricultural monocultures is usually not a good way to boost forage production....

Climate influences vegetation, and a variable climate challenges land management. Cliff Mass, University of Washington atmospheric scientist, discusses climate drivers in the Pacific Northwest, how topography affects weather, whether 2020 wildfires can be attributed to global warming, and state-of-the-science approaches to modeling future climate. This tight episode finishes with Dr. Mass's recent...

Did you think of dormant-season grazing as grazing standing hay--not much to worry about? There's more going on in the plant than you think. Dr. Steve Fransen sheds some light on multiple dormancy and root shedding periods in grasses as well as eight other growth phases where there is more than meets the eye. Knowledge of these phases should change how we think about grazing grass throughout the y...

The last few decades have brought significant technological transitions in rangeland science and animals, specifically with advances in wireless and sensor technologies and access to “big data”. Dr. Cibils answers a few key questions: How can we direct inevitable change in desirable ways? Through these transitions, which can sometimes be disruptive economically or socially, how can we sustain the...

It is cliche but true that most range grazing problems are animal distribution problems. And no one's name is more closely tied to distribution than Derek Bailey. Dr. Bailey and Tip discuss frontiers in understanding and manipulating livestock distribution to conserve rangeland health. The conversation includes animal selection, attractant placement, herding, and technologies for range livestock m...

The Western U.S. has experienced catastrophic fire frequency and extent in 2020. Matt Reeves, USFS, shares some wildfire prediction tools that may help landowners and agencies prepare in the future for both wildfire and grazing decisions that may help mitigate the effects of fire. He introduces a new monthly webinar for the growing season called “Reading the Tea Leaves”. https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm...

"We've overdone management and undervalued leadership." James Rogers is the manager of the Winecup Gamble Ranch in northeastern Nevada, one of the largest ranches in the country, spanning an area larger than Rhode Island. Tip and James discuss the history of the Winecup Gamble, pros and cons of large corporate ranches, their role in ranching and conservation communities, and unique challenges at t...

Restoring desirable native species and ecosystem function after wildfire is challenging and frequently unsuccessful. Land managers increasingly recognize the need to practice adaptive management of burned areas at both the project and regional scales. Acting on this recognition will require managers and scientists to develop a shared understanding of their roles and the challenges and opportunitie...

Dr. Lauren Porensky is an ecologist interested in plant communities, herbivores, and spatial complexity. Her research focuses on balancing livestock production with conservation and restoration in semi-arid rangelands. Porensky got her PhD at UC Davis working on livestock management and wildlife conservation in central Kenya. She currently investigates the interactive effects of grazing, fire, pra...

Dr. Leslie Roche is a UC Cooperative Extension Specialist in Rangeland Science and Management with the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences. She earned a Ph. D. in Ecology from UC Davis, and was a USDA-NIFA Postdoctoral Fellow and Project Scientist before joining the faculty in September 2015. Her research and extension program is at the intersection of agricultural, environmental, and social iss...

Stewart Breck is a research carnivore ecologist with the USDA-APHIS-WS National Wildlife Research Center and a member of the new Colorado State University Center for Human Carnivore Coexistence in Fort Collins. He has been focused on carnivore ecology and behavior and minimizing conflict between carnivores and people many years. The interview also includes Matt Barnes, a grazing consultant out of...

Ranching and rangelands are undergoing rapid and intertwined changes. Changes include ecological transitions due to climate and invasive species; land use transitions associated with urbanization and shifting priorities for public lands; demographic transitions reflected in the increasing average age and decreasing number of ranchers; and market transitions associated with changing consumer attitu...