The Art of Range Podcast

This is a presentation from the Society for Range Management's annual meeting in February 2020 in a symposium titled "Stakeholder Engagement to Improve Federal Rangeland Wildfire Mitigation and Response". Rangeland wildfires have grown in size, frequency, and length of season due to factors that include increasing human use of rangelands, vegetation state change (e.g., cheatgrass invasion), drough...

When rangeland scientists question why those who manage ecosystems do not implement the information developed into action, the manager's concern is not centrally about the quality of data or information but rather the processes of knowledge production and implementation. Knowledge is a result of human reflection and experience, and it is most often found within an individual or collective routine...

Karim-Aly Kassam is International Professor of Environmental and Indigenous Studies in the Department of Natural Resources and the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University. His aim is to seamlessly merge research and teaching in the service of communities. His research focuses on the complex connectivity of human and environ...

This forum highlighting leading women in ranching operations was recorded Feb 20, 2020 at the National Western Complex in Denver, Colorado as part of the Society for Range Management annual meeting. The speakers included women from non-traditional ranching backgrounds as well as women whose families have been in the ranching business for several generations. The speakers provide a breadth of persp...

When does science become art? We often refer to the “Art and Science of Range Management’ but how often do we acknowledge the “art” or the “artist?” in today’s world of ever-expanding technology and engineering, many aspects of the “art” of natural resource and land management are being overshadowed by a desire for predictability driven decision processes. This session with Jenny Pluhar and Frank...

This talk was recorded at the Society for Range Management annnual meeting and training February 2020. The talk is from a symposium titled "Strategies for sustainability transformations in western rangelands." Lynn's presentation is available as a PDF here. hhttps://bit.ly/2QJXxLi Ranching and rangelands are undergoing rapid and intertwined changes. Changes include 1) ecological transitions due to...

Dr. Karen Launchbaugh's plenary address at the SRM's 2020 annual meeting was titled "Bridging the Gap: What Does SRM Want/Need to be and How to Get There?" This is a recording of that talk. Karen's PowerPoint presentation is available in PDF at http://bit.ly/2TRiox7 if you want to follow along. Karen Launchbaugh is a professor of rangeland ecology at the University of Idaho who specializes in topi...

What's good for cattle nutrition is sometimes different than what's good for plants. Dr. Bohnert talks about the timing of nutrient supply on rangelands and the nutrient demand of late winter- or spring-calving beef cattle and how to manage body condition to optimize calf performance. WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK! Please take 60 seconds to complete this survey: https://wsu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9...

Join Barry Perryman, Matt Williamson, and Karen Launchbaugh as they discuss recent research on cheatgrass causation and association and strategies to hold invasive annual grass at bay. WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK! Please take 60 seconds to complete this survey: https://wsu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9Y3fUWlQdBsyBZX ARTICLES MENTIONED ON THE SHOW Williamson article, “Fire, livestock grazing, topograph...

Join Julie Elliott, Chuck Butterfield, Hailey Wilmer and Matt Barnes as they discuss their new approach to the Society’s 2020 annual meetings. Interaction, conversation and hands-on learning rather than presentation is the outworking of a planning process that capitalizes on the integrative nature of rangeland science and rangeland people and the process of translating and transforming the Society...

"Six patches make you six times less likely to be entirely wrong". Diversity and variability drive rangeland health. Healthy rangelands provide an array of ecological and social goods and services. Resiliency describes the robustness of natural mechanisms that allow land to continue providing those EGS over time with and through disturbance. Disturbances are necessary processes to create botanical...

"Six patches make you six times less likely to be entirely wrong". Diversity and variability drive rangeland health. Healthy rangelands provide an array of ecological and social goods and services. Resiliency describes the robustness of natural mechanisms that allow land to continue providing those EGS over time with and through disturbance. Disturbances are necessary processes to create botanical...

Regenerative agriculture has gained popularity in response to concerns about the long-term effects of various agrochemical inputs we use on a variety of landscapes as well as the growing recognition of the complexity and sheer volume of microbial life in the soil-plant interface and below. Nicole discusses the origins of her book For the Love of Soil and some possible conclusions for building up s...

Lands are tied to people, and any changes in land use necessarily involve people. Understanding people and land together is the work of cultural and landscape geography. Paul Starrs is a geographer who has written some of the more interesting literature on the lifeways of range people. Tip and Paul discuss the culture of the West and challenges to ranching in a wide-ranging interview centered on P...

Rangeland vegetation monitoring has always been hampered by landscape variability, site selection bias, and available time to get to remote areas. With the Rangeland Analysis Platform, range managers can get landscape-scale cover values (perennial grass, annuals, shrubs, and trees) over both space and time, with data going back to 1984. Brady Allred and Matt Jones discuss the origins of the RAP, t...

Perennial bunchgrass roots are the prize fighter in the wildland boxing ring with cheatgrass, and bacteria may be sitting this one out. Matt Germino, range scientist with the US Geological Survey in Idaho, describes recent research on how bunchgrass roots compete with invasive annual grasses below the soil surface. We discuss concepts of resilience and resistance, the ecological mechanisms involve...

Following "Cattle Free by '93" sentiment of the 80s and 90s has come growth in the middle ground, supported by both increasing recognition of the ecosystem goods and services provided by grazed rangelands as well as improvements in grazing management. Tip and Rick continue their discussion here and transition to Payment for Ecosystem Services programs that incentivize stewardship instead of non-pr...

The value of large public lands is largely dependent on adjacent private lands. Charismatic megafauna that characterize the American West will, perhaps ironically, only survive if large livestock ranches remain profitable. Rick Knight, conservation biologist at Colorado State University, discusses with Tip the unequal ecological value of private lands, the rise of the radical center, and the econo...

Epigenetics studies in beef cattle have revealed surprising long-term effects of cow nutrition on performance of offspring in muscle and fat development, calf survivability, growth, carcass characteristics, reproduction, and health. Don Llewellyn and Tip discuss research what is meant by fetal programming (the more familiar name for this branch of epigenetics)and some of the research from Nebraska...

A common misconception about late summer and fall range grass is that low-quality forages serve only as fillers and have little value as feed. If this were universally true, wild ruminants would not be able to survive. Join Tip Hudson and Don Llewellyn for Art of Range episode #20 as they discuss how to get ruminants to digest low-quality forages. Rumen physiology, ruminant nutrition, and the fine...

Why a podcast to teach on range ecology and livestock production? Tip discusses some of the thInking behind using podcasting to counter the ”Age of Distraction” and to promote deep thinking about complex subjects. WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK! Please take 60 seconds to complete this quick 5-question survey: wsu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4GHpHVHlsouSorr TRANSCRIPT The full transcript of this episode i...

WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK! Please take 2 minutes to complete this short survey to help us continue funding the podcast: https://wsu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9Y3fUWlQdBsyBZX TRANSCRIPT The full transcript of this episode is available at: https://bit.ly/32OcUa1

Can satellite data and drones answer questions we’re not even asking yet? Jason Karl, Univ. of Idaho researcher, believes that’s a good possibility. We may be able to make connections, associations, observations, even test hypotheses, using images of whole landscapes in tandem with ground-based measurements to better understand and manage rangelands. Join Jason and Tip as they discuss the limitati...

“If a grain farmer doesn’t have crop insurance, any lender will show him/her the door.” But ranchers have not historically used many financial risk tools such as crop insurance. Tip and Shannon Neibergs, director for the Western Center for Risk Management Education, discuss the variety of risk education products available to ranchers as well as various financial measurement and financial risk tool...

Ethan Lane, director of the national Public Lands Council, makes a compelling case for ranchers to build a record of stewardship in order to tell a positive story as well as provide protection from critics of public lands grazing. He and Tip discuss the work of the PLC, why ranchers should be doing their own monitoring, and suggestions for constructively interacting with state and federal agencies...