April 11, 2025 • 56 mins
In this week's interview episode, Cal and Jordan sit down with Jeff Goodwin, the Director of the Center for Grazinglands and Ranch Management. They talk about what rangeland is, how it's managed, and why hunters should care.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
This is Col's week in Review with Ryan cal Kalla.
Here's Cal, all right, friends and neighbors.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Is uh, you know your old buddy Cal and Jordan
Sillers here on Col's weekend Review. We got another interview
episode out here for you right now today with Jeff Goodwin,
who is the president for the Society for Range Management
or SRM. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us.
(00:48):
What we want to attempt to do here today is
is try to bridge that divide that many folks, including
folks in the hunting community here in America have of
folks who can look out at range land, which often
would be described as just a barren field, and see
(01:12):
it as something good for wildlife habitat, something great for cattle.
Tall grass makes fat cattle, as we like to say.
And those that look at it and say this is
nothing and it's not doing us any good.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Well, I'm honored to be with you today. Hopefully we
can shed some light on those ideas.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, that would be fantastic. So would you mind telling
us what SRM is and why it exists.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, SRM's it's a professional Society for Promoting Sound Science
in our rangeland industry. And so our members are the ranchers,
their their academics that make up you know, the research
scientists that that work and communicate science to the general public,
(02:01):
to to the ranching community. They're also federal agency folks,
and so we're we're a very diverse community of rangeland
practitioners and rangeland professionals that work in the space every day,
and so, uh, you know, trying to create the opportunities
(02:23):
and the and the science to keep driving the stewardship
of those landscapes because they do provide a number of
ecosystem services that are often overlooked by the general public.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
I just hung out with some ranchers who are in
the Lesser Prairie Chicken Landowner Alliance and it was really interesting.
They're they're in it to save ranching and chickens, not
to save chickens and then ranching. Uh is there their
(02:58):
point of view, which I think is is is great
are fined by men of our remaining lesser Prairie chickens,
which is a newly listed endangered species, are on private
ground and that's where that private ground is still native prairie.
(03:22):
So rangelands, like you said, they're there. They exist on
private and federally managed ground, both Forest Service and Bureau
of Land Management, plus plus some other agencies some National Park,
(03:42):
Bureau of of Wreck and so on, but predominantly it
would be Bureau of Land Management.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Fair to say, yeah, I think so, maybe maybe just
some context here. So, so rangelands make up seven hundred
and seventy million acres in the United States, and it's
about thirty six percent of the land cover, right, So
if you look at look from the top down, thirty
six percent of the country is what we would call rangelands.
And these are landscapes that are we call them natives.
(04:14):
So they have indigenous vegetation, you know, grasses, forbes, shrubs,
trees that are all native to that region. Certainly contextual,
there's different areas of the state that grow different kinds
and different plant communities that support a number of different
ecosystem services. I'll get into that in just a second.
(04:34):
But of that seven and seventy million acres, about two
thirds of those are privately owned, right, And so we've
got this sort of dichotomy of public or private lands.
You know, in the certainly, if you looked at the
Great Plains, most of that's privately owned. But if you
look out towards the west, most of those rangeland landscapes
(04:55):
are publicly owned. And so if you look at the
nineteen states west of the Mississippi, fifty three percent of
that land base is rangeland. And so most of the
rangeland acres or western west of the Mississippi, including the
you know, the Prairies, the Great Plains, and then the
western rangelands. And so I think it's important to understand
(05:17):
too that these rangelands are disturbance dependent ecologies. And what
I mean by that is they rely on some level
of disturbance. And so the two primary disturbances are fire
and grazing, and so those are the two disturbances that
created the habitats that we that we've seen, and they've
(05:39):
been managed that way for hundreds of years. Historically, it
was it was thirty to sixty million bison grazing on
these rangeland landscapes. And it was it was also both
wildfire and human caused. Are our Native Americans used prescribed
fire and for seven in seventy different ways, over seventy
(06:02):
different ways, it's been postulated, and so from that aspect,
these landscapes have been managed for a very long time.
So fast forward two hundred years now we have these
subdivided private landscapes into what we call ranches today, and
then the federal lands are then further subdivided into sort
(06:22):
of just say grazing allotments, right, and so they're all
still being managed. And I think the point here is
they require that level of management, right, So it's the
conservation of that landscape that's the wise use of our
natural resources. So this idea of preservation just walking off
and not doing anything that doesn't work in this typical scenario.
(06:46):
So it's really important to understand the you know, sort
of the landscape of private versus public range lands, but
also their importance. They create a number of eco system
services for the public in or the general public in
the cities that that they may not understand. Number one,
(07:07):
food and fiber, food and fibers and ecosystem service produced
by these range lands that we often overlook, but certainly
water quality and water quantity. In a state like Texas,
eighty three percent of every rain drop that falls in
the state of Texas falls on on some working land.
That's that's that's that's primarily rangeland carbon security is another one, uh,
(07:29):
securing carbon and the and in those landscapes, plant and
insect biodiversity. And then the last one and probably one
of the very most important is wildlife habitat provision. You know,
the outdoor recreation space is I mean, it's a three
hundred and eighty five billion dollar industry and that includes
hunting and fishing. But but those are those are the
(07:51):
ecosystem services that that are provided to you know, an
urban public that that many times is they're over look
that to your point earlier, you said, you know, there
is a you know, there's a perception that that's just
unused or unimproved land. But they're providing a number of
benefits that sometimes they're easier or harder to quantify, but
(08:16):
they're absolutely happening. And they have a they have a
they have an ecological value, they have a social value,
and an economic value.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
And yeah, if we could magically connect all of our
urban dwelling friends with the fact that a rain drop
in grasslands one hundred miles away can affect them and.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
That's the value of that land, that would be a
hell of.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
A victory on today's short podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I'd love to see that happen, can you.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I'm always been fascinated with water, you know, grown up
in the West, we grew up in like hard drought
times in Montana. You know, I'm a nineteen eighties kid,
and certainly drought exists in Montana right now as well.
But you know, I like always laugh when I see
(09:11):
fireworks going off or on Independence Day weekend here in Montana,
because like, we did not grow up with that, Like
it was never legal to shoot off fireworks. Everything was
so dry, right, So would you mind just taking a
second and talking about that relationship between between water conservation
(09:32):
and water conservation and in grasslands.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Sure, So for me, it all starts with the soil,
and it's the and it's the health of that soil.
Most of the time we think of soil as this
it's just this sort of inactive medium to grow a plant. Right,
That's not the case. It's a it's a living ecosystem.
There's a biological component to that soil that impacts the
(09:59):
canmical and physical structure of that soil. And so it's
often said we can't control how much rain we get,
but we can control how much we keep, and so
from a rancher's perspective, if we think about what are
the opportunities to keep more of the rain that we
that we do get, a couple of different things can happen. Right,
There's some basic soil health building principles that we would
(10:22):
focus on. Number one is keeping the ground covered as
much as we can and so ensuring that we try
to limit bare ground where possible. Now that goes back
to the individual landowners specific goals and objectives. Maybe they're,
you know, managing for a specific habitat type that may
require some bare ground. In the Great Plains, maybe it's
(10:43):
a little different. You will have less brown ground here
typically than we do in some of the western landscapes.
But trying to reduce bare grounds one thing, because if
the soil is moving or blowing, it's not becoming healthy. Right,
If it's washing away, we're having seeing erosion issues. The
next thing is building the structural capacity of that soil
(11:06):
to be able to hold water and so not only
instead of that rain drop falling and having this many
explosion displacing all these soil particles and then they wash
into the creek and ultimately end up into the you know,
in a basin or a water body. It's getting the
water into the soil, so increasing the ability for that
(11:27):
soil to infiltrate, right, infiltrate the water into the soil.
Once we get the water to slow down, we can
infiltrate it once we That's one of the things that
we talk about when we manage for healthy soils. We're
trying to increase the organic matter content of that soil
because organic matter and soil not only helps hold particles
together that increases the ability for that water to infiltrate,
(11:48):
but it also holds water longer, so you can withst out.
Many times, the folks that we work with that have
worked to increase organic matter in our soils, they're the
last one in a drought and they're the first one
out because they've held water longer. And then when it
does rain h they infiltrate it and they can they
get green up sooner. So managing our uplands has a
(12:10):
significant impact on the health of our riparian zones.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
And we're at a time right now where we were
losing about two million acres of grasslands a year. Right now,
like a lot of the literature that's out there says
the most imperiled the ecosystem on the planet.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I agree, And there's so there's three strategies I would
I would propose, and we've published all this in a
in a technical report through the Society for Range Management.
It's called rangeland Ecosystems Connecting Nature and People. I would
encourage your readers to look on the SRM website. They
can find it there and it outlines those primary eco
ecosystem services. But uh, there's those three management strategies. One
(12:54):
of them is is avoiding conversion, just like you know
you were alluding to. You know, it's been reported that
we've lost thirty two million acres of grassland to cropland
since twenty twelve. That's nearly fifteen times the size of
Yellowstone Park, and so significant amounts of areas have been converted. Also,
(13:16):
look and I kind of bring that a little bit
closer to home, and I'll just speak to Texas. We're
seeing not only conversion but land fragmentation. And so from
nineteen ninety seven to twenty twelve, the population in the
state of Texas has increased fifty five percent, over eleven
hundred people. A day or moving to the state of Texas,
(13:38):
the number of small farms, these are farms smaller than
which is the majority of those farms have increased thirty
one percent. Mid sized farms have decreased by twenty seven percent.
So these larger ranches are getting broken up into smaller
partss of land. And so everybody wants their peace right
(13:59):
and which is great eight but we're but it's fragmenting
the landscape into smaller parcels of land that that, you know,
it becomes a little bit more of a challenge to
have collective conservation across a broader, more broad landscape. When
you think of wildlife habitat, they don't stop at the fence, right,
(14:21):
and so and so we've got to we've got to
think about this from from sort of a larger perspective.
Texas has saw the larger ranches, you know, greater than
a couple of thousand acres, they've seen the sharpest decline
over the last five year period. And since we've been
recording it, we'll lost over a thousand operations in that
time period. And so not that they're lost, they're just smaller, right,
(14:46):
And so the number of smaller operations have has certainly increased.
So avoiding conversion is one thing, right, trying to keep
range lands range lands. The next one is range land restoration.
We've got to have the tools. We've got to have
the funding to implement the management practices that steward those
(15:07):
help with steward those land capes. And more importantly, we've
got to have the people that can provide the technical guidance,
the technical expertise to the know how to know how
to communicate the science to producers that are managing these
lands and learn from them as well. It's a two
way street.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Jeff, I thought your whole job was to look at
a chunk of grassland, a pasture, if you will, and
say this is how many cattle you can run out
here for how long?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
That's part of the story, that's part of it. It
is certainly one piece. It's not the whole pie.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
And it sounds like the other pieces of this pie
take a little a little bit of time to learn.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
You know, they do. It's just like anything. You know,
you walk out and I started my career just by
walking out. And I kind of grew up on a
ranch and my grandfather managed and probably wasn't ever an
own one. So I kind of got into this conservation
role because I wanted to work with ranchers. But you know,
I would walk out there and I didn't know what
(16:13):
I was walking on, And so it started by just
knowing the plants. Right. Then when you learn the plants,
you want to learn how to manage them. Then when
you learn how to planetge them, you want to tell
somebody about it, and so that's it just kind of
grows from there.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah, and you know, right now.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
We seeing a reduction in at least the federal side
of that workforce. Obviously with some federal funding freezes. It
puts universities in an interesting spot too, because there's a
lot of funding that goes to our universities to continue
(16:51):
education like this is there are you seeing an impact
in like the rangeland ecology escape right now?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
From a from a grant perspective, you know, there's been
some there's been some Certainly there's been some halting of
some grants. Some of it's precautionary on you know, kind
of maybe a subwordy may say, Okay, we're gonna pause
work until we figure out what's going on. So some
of that's happening some grants have been halted, so there's
(17:22):
certainly an impact, you know, I think I think when
we step back and look at it from a from
a larger perspective and the impact. There was an interesting
report by in twenty thirteen, so this data is a
little bit older, but they estimated the direct spending impact
(17:45):
of conservation efforts to be about just under forty billion dollars,
which is about and sixty percent of that came from
federal and then you had state and local conservation efforts
as well. But when they looked at what that generated
from a total economic activity perspective, it was over ninety
billion dollars, and so it was like a two point
four to one to one return on investment for conservation
(18:09):
activity benefits from the investment, And so, you know, I
think we we've got to look at it from a
from a larger perspective. There certainly are opportunities where there
there have been some some assessment of some of the
funding that's being spent. I think I think they're gonna,
(18:31):
you know, they they have a priority to work through
and try The administration has a defined opportunity to work
through and try to find efficiencies, and I think that's
what they're doing, you know, it's it's you know, how
they go how they go about it is is up
to the administration. I think our role as from an
(18:51):
SRM perspective is to ensure that they understand the importance
of rangelands, understand those those range lands require management and
ensuring that that, you know, if there's an opportunity for
us to provide insight, help or guidance on on how
to most appropriately implement that stewardship from a scientific perspective,
(19:16):
that's our role. And you know that that that requires people. Right,
most of these landscapes are managed by people with two feet,
you know, it's the two legged people that are that
are managing all these landscapes. And so we've got to
have a technically adequate, scientifically sound workforce that can that
can implement the strategies on private and public landscapes.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Where do the bulk of like rangeland ecologists come from?
Are they generally starting in one sector or another?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
What's like the federal to private to NGO split? If
you're aware of it, you.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Know, I don't know they answer to that question, but
I know that the sort of the federal the NGO
space is growing, I think, uh, I think there's certainly
opportunities there for what we call private public partnerships, and
r CS does a really good job of that through
their Regional Conservation Partnership program. That's what that's for. It's
(20:23):
it's a program through the Farm Bill where they partner
with conservation organizations to implement conservation on the ground, both
technical and financial assistance. And so that that's been a
really successful model for them. In terms of the breakout,
I'm not really sure how to answer that, but I
would say that, you know, there's there's there's different sectors, right.
(20:46):
There's there's the scientists that work for the Agricultural Resource
Our Research Service and and so those are the primarily
the research scientist PhD level scientists they are doing of
science within the U s d A. You know, there's
there's conservationists rangeland conservationists that work for BLM, for nr CS,
(21:10):
for you know, there's a whole cohort of folks that
are that are providing either tech technical assistance to an
allotment UH or a permittee or technical assistance to private
farmers and ranchers on a day to day basis. And
they're they're implementing. They're helping those those producers develop conservation plans.
(21:31):
And then on the on the private side and uh,
and then helping facilitate those actions through farm build programs.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
And and a conservation plan in this instance, that's that's
typically something that would be like a long term grazing plan.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Yeah, it would, it would. An overarching conservation plan would
include a grazing management plan. But it starts by working
with that particular landowner defining their goals and objectives. It's
their property, and I'm talking on the sort of the
private space, and then and then identifying the what what
the resource concerns there are. It may be an erosion problem,
(22:17):
it may be lack of forage availability, there may be
other resource concerns. And then they had done it. They
work through a process of identifying or or identifying the
resources they have to work with, going working through the
alternatives that the landowner has in terms of implementing management practices.
They work through the process helping them make that decision.
(22:37):
And then one of the most important parts is developing
a longer term monitoring program so that you have that
when they provide this financial investment, we have the monitoring
to help them see if they're getting better, right, monitoring
forage alloications or forage productivity and or monitoring maybe it's
(22:58):
monitoring for brush encroaching, woody encroachment, whatever, the monitoring strategy
is that that monitoring and follow up is keenly important.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, amazing fact that I was recently made aware of.
To go back to the lesser prairie chicken. And you
know here in Montana, we're always talking about the greater
sage grouse, right, which is an awesome bird that I
grew up with on big open range cattle country in
(23:28):
eastern Montana. But the lesser prairie chicken won't nest within
six acres of a vertical structure, right, So it's a
bird that is just by evolution. Gram design is made
for wide open spaces. And I imagine your job, especially
(23:51):
when you start talking about these landscapes getting more fragmented,
broken up into more individual owners versus you know, something
that we would certainly think of as like a traditional
agricultural path where it's it's family expansion. Not saying all
families do things the same way, but that that job
(24:13):
gets gets harder to get out and educate more and
more individual property owners who may or may not take
that education.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's it's certainly a dynamic we
work with. You know, each individual operation is going to
be different. You've got a different history, you've got a
different dynamic. You know, some ranches we work with have
are large and have a board of directors they answer to,
you know. You know, some of these smaller operations have
(24:44):
you know, their their their family owned. But many of
them that's not their single source of income anymore. They
have a job in town. Uh, and it's a you know,
it's a it's a maybe even a recreational property for them.
And then there's this dynamic of abs and tee ownership,
you know, where the property owner lives in the city
(25:05):
but and doesn't live on the land anymore. And so
there's all these uh dynamics that you have to work
with dealing with you know, families or decision maker maybe
one or two or three people or more. And and
so anytime, anytime you work through those types of scenarios,
you just have to step back and and and understand
(25:25):
that there is a there's a social dynamic to managing landscapes. UH.
And it's it's not just grass cows and white tail
deer anymore. It's we have to we have to work
through the manager's lens and help them see where their goals,
how we're going to help them implement their goal and objectives.
And it's not a straight path all the time.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Sure. Sure.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
And then when we're you know, talking about like the
really important stuff, which is like growing big antelope bucks
and and mule deer bucks and making sure there's a
bunch of upl birds out there, it's it's probably pretty
nice to be able to point back to the fact
that there were millions of very heavy bison roam in
(26:11):
the range and had many times of abundance during that
like open management system to where you know, I'd point
out all the time that grazing isn't always bad because
from certain conservation circles, folks can point at that and
be like, well, that shouldn't be here.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
It's often stated that it's the it's the how, not
the cow, and uh, and that that it's certain that
that's certainly true. I mean, how we manage these landscapes,
whether it's a you know, you're reintroducing bison to a
to a landscape or we're grazing, a grazing you know,
(26:53):
Herford steers it how we manage the herbivaly or the
grazing managements really and so you know, you had mentioned
that historically we have these really large herds of bison
and they would they would travel to forage and water.
Many times they were following a prescribed fire because it
got green it would green up, or a wildfire and
(27:16):
so and so that's what we try, honestly to mimic
in many situations from a grazing perspective. I mean, that's
that's essentially what we're trying to mimic in any type
of rotational grazing strategy is to not only that have
that animal impact, but have the long recovery periods. And
(27:39):
so it's to me, from a grazing perspective, that recovery
period is way more important than the grazing period, right,
And so we work with ranchers to develop a strategy
that not only works for the ranch and those plant
communities and their operational design, but also works for the rancher, right.
And so it it's not very helpful for us to
(28:01):
walk in and say, well, you know, ought to graze
it this way. If it doesn't fit their context, it's
never going to work. And so so we have to
figure out how do we develop a strategy that number
one fits their economic context, text, their social context, and
the ecological context of the ranch. And so it's a
dynamic situation. It's more than just putting up fence and
(28:22):
rotating cows. But the just is to provide the use
and the recovery so that those plants have the opportunity
to recovery and increase the health and function of that
range land system.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
And then when you jump over on to the public
side of the fans, the federally managed side of the fans,
how do things change from a rangeland ecologists perspective?
Speaker 3 (28:47):
You know, it's a it's it's it's still rangeland right.
We we have to manage those landscapes. There are some regulations.
There's there's regulations with you know BLM and for Service
both have have set regulations around how UH or the
animal unit months or a u MS that will be
provided for each of those and the permittees work with
(29:09):
a range specialist to develop a plan and then and
then they implement those accordingly. I think there's you know,
there's a lot of people working on uh those those
grazing regulations and uh, most of my experience has been
on private land than than the the public landscapes. But
I know that there's a lot of people working on
(29:30):
uh outcome based strategies to increase those beneficial outcomes for
both the rancher and the and the and the the
range land landscape, working on ways that that there can
have more flexibility in some of those regulations to provide
the rancher more flexibility in their operations by still by
still maintaining the function and the stewardship of the landscape.
(29:54):
And so they're working hand to hand every day, UH,
trying to do the best job that they can.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And I would imagine though, like that multiple use mandate
of public lands more or less BLM words, it a
little bit different, but.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
That has to just add some complication. Two things like
you have.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
The the the big ranch that's managed by a board
of directors where you may get a few more questions
on your management plan and maybe have some sometimes where
things come to an impasse. But you know, it's still
a different can of worms than than on the the.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Federal public landscape.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
And you know I think noxious weeds, noxious uh or
invasive plant education for the general public. Like, there's nothing
in any state I've ever hunted that says, hey, in
order to go out there and enjoy yourself, you better
(31:01):
be aware of noxious weeds. We're certain parts of Montana
you talk to producers and they're looking at your license
plate to see what county you came from, and they're like,
did you wash your truck? Like stay on the gravel roads,
don't take the two tracks, and and that can be
a fire conversation too, But a lot of times it's
(31:22):
trying to reduce the spread of weeds or grasses that
are going to be detrimental to that that grazing plan
on that property.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Yeah, I mean that there's certainly that's certainly a concern
for for public landscapes. You know, cheap gas is a
big one too, and in that part of the world,
you know, it's a sort of you know, it's an
invasive annual grass that can be susceptible to wildfire and
things of that nature. Noxious weeds are are are a
(31:55):
big one some of the you know, the federally named
you know, I think I think from that perspective, you're right,
it is. It is different. On the private side. You know,
you've got privatey proper private property rights. I mean the
landowner can ultimately, within most bounds, manage that property. How
(32:18):
are they want to When you get into the public side,
there are federal regulations. There's federal regulations on on you know,
how many how many animal units they can take, how
many how they graze those and so there there are
there's a there's an added level of restriction. I think
for the most part. The good thing about that is
that we're seeing landowners and conservation organizations and the federal
(32:44):
government work together more in recent history than I've seen
than than certainly was you know, ten twenty thirty years ago.
I think they've become more collaborative than not. That's a
good thing. Anytime we got more people at the table
and and we're listening to each other, that's probably step
number one.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
And how do how do we get the public more involved?
Like how do we get folks to look at a
big chunk of range land that's quote unquote not doing
anything and understand that it's actually providing everyone a lot,
(33:25):
whether that's you know, drought tolerance or having that that
that sell healthy native ground system. Sorry I'm spacing out
on the word here, but having that community on the ground,
that's that's not going to let in invasives after a fire. Like,
(33:48):
how do we tie people back to the fact that
this stuff is going away real fast and it's it's
really important and it's and it's it's providing us a
lot of benefits.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Man, that's the gold in question.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
I mean, I had a Montana produced brisket for Saint
Patrick's Day from from Montana and it was full of
fat and it was amazing For a guy who eats
a lot of wild game.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
It was glorious, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
It was it, really, it really was. My girlfriend's not
the biggest fan of Irish dinner, but I make it
a little fancy.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
For her and she gets over it.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
But like, is telling people to eat eat locally produced
beef enough or what are the things?
Speaker 3 (34:35):
I mean, I think it's a lot. I think it's
a sort of a multi dimensional problem we've got. I
think I think our food system is certainly one of those.
And that's you know, that's something that this new administration
is keenly focused on, is the food system. And uh,
(34:56):
I think there's been a movement that we've all seen
over the last several years of uh you know, promoting local,
you know, promoting healthy food choices. And I think our
industry UH has We could always do a better job
at telling our story, right, But I think we've done
(35:18):
a lot better job in the recent history to tell
the story of the beef industry for instance, or you know,
and providing a wholesome, clean, effective protein source for the
American public. I think I think we could always do
a better job. I think tying in it's not just
(35:42):
about it. I think the food's a great angle, and
I think it's an angle that we need to spend
more time and effort on. But I also think we
have to tie in those more intrinsic values that we
often overlook, and it's those ecosystem services that we were
mentioning earlier. There's a couple out there that are harder
to translate to the public than others. And so when
(36:04):
you talk to somebody about organic matter and soil carbon,
it's hard to take that to someone in the city
and say, look how important this is. But if I
take a glass of water and I hold it in
front of them, everybody relates to water. I think water
is going to be a huge one for us in
the future. It already is. I also think I think
(36:25):
wild spaces and wildlife habitat is a huge one for
us too, because whether or not they're a hunter, when
you look at that one hundred and eighty five billion
dollars of recreational revenue, a significant portion, if not the majority,
is wildlife watchers. It's people that just want to go
(36:48):
birding or just want to see wildlife and know that
that you know, they have habitat to you know, sustain
and thrive, and so I think that's another key important
piece is is but but it's the coupling of all
those it's telling the story that we can have the
wise use of these landscapes. We can graze landscapes and
(37:10):
produce and and many many times increase uh the effectiveness
of a habitat for a specific species by using the
right management at the right time, for the right reason.
And so so taking all those things and putting them
together in a package is man. That's that's something a
lot of us are working on. How do we how
(37:32):
do we better tell that story? I think one of
the reasons one of the best ways that we're doing
it nowadays is podcasts, just like this one. It's podcasts,
it's social media. It's uh, I mean, that's that's the
way most people are getting their information nowadays. It's they're
not seeing it and there, they're not reading it in
the newspaper and so and so having that compelling story
(37:54):
and making it relatable to someone in in an urban
environment is probably the key.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, it's not just the beef. It's What's for Dinner campaign,
it's the which I love because I'm a Sam Elliott fan.
But my stepdad, it's been in the beef industry for generations,
always shook his head at that thing because he just
didn't didn't think that that was the the the all
(38:25):
the information that we needed to get out there. But yeah,
Native Habitat, I see some really fantastic accounts that I
love to follow, like a Native Habitat project where they
talk about the importance of fire on the landscape that
native community and the benefits that it provides soil health,
(38:51):
certainly on the wild life side of things, pollinators and
all of these native birds, where everything else can be
right for a turkey, a pheasant, quail, but if that
soil isn't alive enough to produce those invertebrates at the
(39:17):
right time of year. You're just not going to have
birds despite the great thermal cover and the great nesting
cover and the and the water. Right, it is a
big community that I certainly don't know well enough despite
(39:37):
loving it. So yeah, it's making those inroads. Jordan, he
had a question earlier about that I think would like
tie into some of these ecosystem benefits regarding like the
disturbance ecology.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
Yeah, yeah, I wanted to take us BA a little
bit and dig in a little bit to what specifically
are the benefits of those disturbances that you mentioned, of
fire and of grazing. Why are those good things? And
(40:17):
exactly how does that help the rangeland be healthier and
promote the habitat that we've been talking about.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Great question, and so let me take them one by one,
and so let's talk about fire first. We get this
often just gut reaction. Some people either think fire is great,
some people are scared to death of it. And it's
because of this sort of perception that fire is bad.
(40:47):
All fires bad. You know, there's there's smoky the bear
campaigns that were super effective right at fire is a
bad thing. And I'm not saying well fire is good
at all, but the application of prescribed fire in the
right context is absolutely a good a good thing. And
so it's it's it's trying to in a very prescriptive
(41:12):
way plan for you know, the management of a rangeland landscape.
So let's take, for instance, uh, the Great Plains. One
of our key resource concerns is woody encroachment. Most of
that woody encroachment is a is a juniper species, eastern
red cedar, and so that's a non root sprouting species.
(41:34):
So if you take off the top with a fire
or mechanically that that plant's done right. Uh. And so
we've talked about some of the reasons why woody encroachment's bad.
It's it's it can impact wildlife habitat, It certainly impacts
forge productivity. And so so fire is beneficial from uh,
(41:55):
for maintaining a particular plant community that a land owner
wants to maintain. It also cycles nutrients, and so we're
cycling much of that that those those micro and macro
nutrients back into the soil. You know. One of the things,
one of the one of the rocks that's thrown at
fire and is around carbon, right, because we're losing a
(42:19):
lot of the carbon to the atmosphere. There's been a
number of work that's that's been done in Texas and
other states now, but I'll speak particularly to a study
that was done in Texas where they were they were
implementing fire and cool season fires, and and the carbon
that was lost in the in the fire and through
(42:41):
combustion was re sequestered in a in a cool year
or a wet year, UH in twenty eight days, and
in dry years it was something like eighty days. And
so certainly that first year you got the benefits of
the fire and all of that carbon was resequestered back
into the ground. And so there's there's a number of
(43:01):
benefits there of properly implementing UH prescribed fire on the landscape.
I think I think coupling that with proper grazing management
and so so historically we've talked about the bison and
their their broad scale impacts from a from a cattle
grazing perspective. Really it's about again it's about managing UH
(43:24):
that that plant community too, and so when we see
grazing removed from an environment. Those those plants evolved under
grazing too, right, so they produce about twice what they
need to sustain themselves, to sustain a healthy root system.
And when we start to take grazing out of an environment,
(43:46):
that plant begins to to to that community will tend
to degrade over time. So look at environments in the
West where there's no grazing at all, you'll see you'll
see pocketed plants, You'll see more bare ground. Typically, you'll
see uh oxidized gray plants that that that organic matter
(44:07):
hasn't been you know, converted back into uh to organic
matter and back in through that whole carbon uh sort
of regeneration process. And so by grazing properly, we utilize
some of those forages and uh we we we we
(44:27):
stimulate tillering, UH we stimulate function. Uh we help. Another
benefit is is the dispersion of urine and manure through grazing,
helping through uh you know, from a from a nitrogen
and a nutrient perspective. And so there's a number of
(44:47):
benefits to to grazing. I won't say it's all done right.
I mean, there's certainly landscapes that you can drive in
any direction, and you can see areas that have been
over grazed, but you can also sea land that's very
well managed that have very successful habitat components that support wildlife,
(45:11):
both grassland birds, and you know, the sort of non
game versus game species, and so there's a ton of
different benefits. The point is most of the landscapes that
we manage evolved under some type of fire frequency and
some type of grazing frequency. So if I were to
(45:33):
put both of those together, managing the timing, intensity, frequency,
and duration of both of those things or what created
and helped the great planes stay the great planes. The
same can be said for Western landscapes, although the fire
frequencies were much longer, but they did have some level
of fire frequency.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
You know, kind of looking at our whole big picture,
kind of zoom out again where we at in rangeland ecology. Right,
So we've gone through a semi wild humans on the landscape,
(46:16):
implementing some burns, but essentially zero fragmentation of the landscape,
connected ecosystems to ranching comes on the scene, barbed wire
comes on the scene, Jeffersonian grid system, lots of different
management types on the landscape, and now all of a sudden,
(46:40):
you know, here here we are, and we have like
new threats beyond fragmentation, which would be development, right, like
you don't have the option to convert it back to
anything anymore. Like where I guess where we act in
(47:01):
the rangeland landscape right now?
Speaker 3 (47:04):
Well, I think going back to that that earlier sort
of point where we were talking about avoiding conversion, where
we can there is a rangeland restoration pathway, I mean,
we we can restore degraded rangelands. Uh. But I would say,
I guess I would submit once once they go under
(47:24):
the plow, you can seed them back to native species,
but it's never going to be the same prairie that
it once was. Right. That's a that's a defined ecology
with multiple trophic levels and it and it certainly impacts
the health and structure of the soil and the biological
integrity of this oil and so stepping back, I mean,
(47:48):
I think we are on a new frontier on uh,
particularly the soil health front of better understanding how our
management influences soil health dynamics and then these cascading benefits
that we see from managing that way we're seeing. I
(48:12):
would say that technology is becoming much more prominent as
we as we look at the advances in remote sensing,
using tools like light ar to help estimate cover changes,
things like that, even virtual fencing, there's a number of
(48:34):
research opportunities out there, a lot of scientists across the
West looking at virtual fencing opportunities right and limiting infrastructure
costs for producers. And so I think technology is going
to play a key role in the future. But then
stepping back, technology is not going to be the solution
(48:55):
to everything. We have to be grounded in the and
understanding the eclog and those ecological impacts of our actual
management on the land. And so if we make sure
that we understand that technology is a tool to help
us move forward from an ecological perspective, I think we're
in a good state. If we look at technology as
(49:17):
the only answer, I think we're in trouble. It's part
of the story, but I think I think there's been
a keen focus on understanding those ecosystem services and not
only understanding them, but but quantifying them. They're hard to measure, right,
and so there's been a lot of work on the
(49:37):
measurement and the verification of those ecosystem services to help
us tell that story we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
Yeah, I feel like I have a great deal of
empathy for every person who's still doing the jobs that
I did growing up.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Right, Like we pushed cattle on weekends, we branded, we
sorted ar intended. I did carpentry, i'd framed. I did
a little little plumbing, a little low voltage electrician work, landscaping,
kind of you name it, right, So I when I
(50:15):
hear about issues and things that affect these things, I'm
I'm I'm generally in a spot where I'm at least
willing to learn more because I've I've seen it from
that point of view. Not everybody has had that opportunity.
They were probably smart enough to put more money in
their bank account early on versus myself, but they they've
(50:41):
deprived themselves of understanding in this case, like a landscape
and what goes in to preserving that landscape in a
way that it still provides all these these benefits. Right,
You're right, like that's that's probably never going to go away.
(51:02):
In fact, we probably don't want people out tramping all
over all this stuff to to really understand it the
way that those of us on this podcast right now
may right, but we do have to like get across
the why the benefits of what undeveloped natural landscapes do
(51:27):
for us for us, all right, And that's that's just
gonna be a tough job.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
It is, I you know, but I mean that's why
most of us that that work in the rangeland discipline,
I mean, that's why we wake up every day, is
to we want to make sure that not only the
stewardship of those landscapes continue. And I use that word
because it invokes, uh, the idea that the job is
(51:56):
done by the steward right, and so so it's it's
work working with in in our our case, private landowners
to make sure that that stewardship happens, make sure they
have the tools, uh, make sure that that that they
have the knowledge that that they need to effectively steward
them in the same same way would be could the
(52:19):
same thing could be said for our public landscapes, ensuring
that that we have a you know, a trained workforce
that can can work with those the permittees and the
ranchers that are that are managing all those landscapes as well.
And so you know, I think again. Uh, stepping back,
it's it's uh, it's a right and a privilege to
(52:40):
work with these these wonderful range lands, and I'm just
I'm just proud to play a small minute role in it.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
Heck, yeah, well I appreciate what you're doing. Uh, and
you know, hopefully.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
We'll get to a spot where everybody does because it
is important. And once we turn this stuff over, it's
not coming back.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
So I agree, I agree, we were Uh. You know,
I mentioned this a little bit earlier. I think, uh,
I think the importance around the ecosystem service is important
water specifically. I mean that's a driver for for all
terrestrial agriculture, right, but it's also a driver for for
populations and cities. We got all we all have to
(53:28):
drink and and and and provide habitats for those lands
for those wildlife species. And so that's one that's easier
to get our hand around. I think we're at a
position right now when there's probably more eyes on range
lands from a private perspective, a public and a corporate perspective.
(53:53):
There's there's a there's a lot of focus on on
how we're managing both private and public landscapes and we
have an opportunity to do it right and at least
do the best we can with what we have in
front of us, and that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Yeah, and I just hope folks like yourself get the
opportunity to say, hey, this is what we really do,
this is why it matters, because we know there's folks
out there who haven't taken the time yet to understand yep, Yeah, Jeff.
Where can folks go to learn more about the role
(54:31):
of rangeland ecology and why it should matter to us?
Speaker 3 (54:36):
Yeah. So we're site for range managements on all most
of the social platforms. We have a you know, we're
on Facebook and Instagram. We have our website is rangelands
dot org. Feel free to go and take a look
at our website if you If you're really interested and
really want to come, we haven't. We host an annual
meeting every year. Next February, we'll be in Monterey, California,
(54:58):
where all of the range land from professor from around
the country will come and we'll be sharing science and
community and discussing listening to to ranchers and academics. I
like talking about how we're trying the best Steward drange lands.
Speaker 1 (55:13):
Heck, yeah, well, thank you very much for joining us, Jeff, Grasslands,
range Lance. They matter a whole lot and we're only
in to keep them if we remember that and share
that education education with others. So thank you very much.
That's all I got for you this week. Remember to
write in to a s k C A L. That's
(55:35):
Askcal at the meteater dot com. Let us know what's
going on in your neck of the woods. And if
you have additional questions for Jeff, we'll either get them
back on here to answer them, or we'll answer them
with his tutelage on the main podcast. Thanks again, we'll
talk to you next week.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
Thanks for having me
Speaker 2 (56:00):
The n sen at very pressure.
From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
This is Col's week in Review with Ryan cal Kalla.
Here's Cal, all right, friends and neighbors.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Is uh, you know your old buddy Cal and Jordan
Sillers here on Col's weekend Review. We got another interview
episode out here for you right now today with Jeff Goodwin,
who is the president for the Society for Range Management
or SRM. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us.
(00:48):
What we want to attempt to do here today is
is try to bridge that divide that many folks, including
folks in the hunting community here in America have of
folks who can look out at range land, which often
would be described as just a barren field, and see
(01:12):
it as something good for wildlife habitat, something great for cattle.
Tall grass makes fat cattle, as we like to say.
And those that look at it and say this is
nothing and it's not doing us any good.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Well, I'm honored to be with you today. Hopefully we
can shed some light on those ideas.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, that would be fantastic. So would you mind telling
us what SRM is and why it exists.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, SRM's it's a professional Society for Promoting Sound Science
in our rangeland industry. And so our members are the ranchers,
their their academics that make up you know, the research
scientists that that work and communicate science to the general public,
(02:01):
to to the ranching community. They're also federal agency folks,
and so we're we're a very diverse community of rangeland
practitioners and rangeland professionals that work in the space every day,
and so, uh, you know, trying to create the opportunities
(02:23):
and the and the science to keep driving the stewardship
of those landscapes because they do provide a number of
ecosystem services that are often overlooked by the general public.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
I just hung out with some ranchers who are in
the Lesser Prairie Chicken Landowner Alliance and it was really interesting.
They're they're in it to save ranching and chickens, not
to save chickens and then ranching. Uh is there their
(02:58):
point of view, which I think is is is great
are fined by men of our remaining lesser Prairie chickens,
which is a newly listed endangered species, are on private
ground and that's where that private ground is still native prairie.
(03:22):
So rangelands, like you said, they're there. They exist on
private and federally managed ground, both Forest Service and Bureau
of Land Management, plus plus some other agencies some National Park,
(03:42):
Bureau of of Wreck and so on, but predominantly it
would be Bureau of Land Management.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Fair to say, yeah, I think so, maybe maybe just
some context here. So, so rangelands make up seven hundred
and seventy million acres in the United States, and it's
about thirty six percent of the land cover, right, So
if you look at look from the top down, thirty
six percent of the country is what we would call rangelands.
And these are landscapes that are we call them natives.
(04:14):
So they have indigenous vegetation, you know, grasses, forbes, shrubs,
trees that are all native to that region. Certainly contextual,
there's different areas of the state that grow different kinds
and different plant communities that support a number of different
ecosystem services. I'll get into that in just a second.
(04:34):
But of that seven and seventy million acres, about two
thirds of those are privately owned, right, And so we've
got this sort of dichotomy of public or private lands.
You know, in the certainly, if you looked at the
Great Plains, most of that's privately owned. But if you
look out towards the west, most of those rangeland landscapes
(04:55):
are publicly owned. And so if you look at the
nineteen states west of the Mississippi, fifty three percent of
that land base is rangeland. And so most of the
rangeland acres or western west of the Mississippi, including the
you know, the Prairies, the Great Plains, and then the
western rangelands. And so I think it's important to understand
(05:17):
too that these rangelands are disturbance dependent ecologies. And what
I mean by that is they rely on some level
of disturbance. And so the two primary disturbances are fire
and grazing, and so those are the two disturbances that
created the habitats that we that we've seen, and they've
(05:39):
been managed that way for hundreds of years. Historically, it
was it was thirty to sixty million bison grazing on
these rangeland landscapes. And it was it was also both
wildfire and human caused. Are our Native Americans used prescribed
fire and for seven in seventy different ways, over seventy
(06:02):
different ways, it's been postulated, and so from that aspect,
these landscapes have been managed for a very long time.
So fast forward two hundred years now we have these
subdivided private landscapes into what we call ranches today, and
then the federal lands are then further subdivided into sort
(06:22):
of just say grazing allotments, right, and so they're all
still being managed. And I think the point here is
they require that level of management, right, So it's the
conservation of that landscape that's the wise use of our
natural resources. So this idea of preservation just walking off
and not doing anything that doesn't work in this typical scenario.
(06:46):
So it's really important to understand the you know, sort
of the landscape of private versus public range lands, but
also their importance. They create a number of eco system
services for the public in or the general public in
the cities that that they may not understand. Number one,
(07:07):
food and fiber, food and fibers and ecosystem service produced
by these range lands that we often overlook, but certainly
water quality and water quantity. In a state like Texas,
eighty three percent of every rain drop that falls in
the state of Texas falls on on some working land.
That's that's that's that's primarily rangeland carbon security is another one, uh,
(07:29):
securing carbon and the and in those landscapes, plant and
insect biodiversity. And then the last one and probably one
of the very most important is wildlife habitat provision. You know,
the outdoor recreation space is I mean, it's a three
hundred and eighty five billion dollar industry and that includes
hunting and fishing. But but those are those are the
(07:51):
ecosystem services that that are provided to you know, an
urban public that that many times is they're over look
that to your point earlier, you said, you know, there
is a you know, there's a perception that that's just
unused or unimproved land. But they're providing a number of
benefits that sometimes they're easier or harder to quantify, but
(08:16):
they're absolutely happening. And they have a they have a
they have an ecological value, they have a social value,
and an economic value.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
And yeah, if we could magically connect all of our
urban dwelling friends with the fact that a rain drop
in grasslands one hundred miles away can affect them and.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
That's the value of that land, that would be a
hell of.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
A victory on today's short podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I'd love to see that happen, can you.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I'm always been fascinated with water, you know, grown up
in the West, we grew up in like hard drought
times in Montana. You know, I'm a nineteen eighties kid,
and certainly drought exists in Montana right now as well.
But you know, I like always laugh when I see
(09:11):
fireworks going off or on Independence Day weekend here in Montana,
because like, we did not grow up with that, Like
it was never legal to shoot off fireworks. Everything was
so dry, right, So would you mind just taking a
second and talking about that relationship between between water conservation
(09:32):
and water conservation and in grasslands.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Sure, So for me, it all starts with the soil,
and it's the and it's the health of that soil.
Most of the time we think of soil as this
it's just this sort of inactive medium to grow a plant. Right,
That's not the case. It's a it's a living ecosystem.
There's a biological component to that soil that impacts the
(09:59):
canmical and physical structure of that soil. And so it's
often said we can't control how much rain we get,
but we can control how much we keep, and so
from a rancher's perspective, if we think about what are
the opportunities to keep more of the rain that we
that we do get, a couple of different things can happen. Right,
There's some basic soil health building principles that we would
(10:22):
focus on. Number one is keeping the ground covered as
much as we can and so ensuring that we try
to limit bare ground where possible. Now that goes back
to the individual landowners specific goals and objectives. Maybe they're,
you know, managing for a specific habitat type that may
require some bare ground. In the Great Plains, maybe it's
(10:43):
a little different. You will have less brown ground here
typically than we do in some of the western landscapes.
But trying to reduce bare grounds one thing, because if
the soil is moving or blowing, it's not becoming healthy. Right,
If it's washing away, we're having seeing erosion issues. The
next thing is building the structural capacity of that soil
(11:06):
to be able to hold water and so not only
instead of that rain drop falling and having this many
explosion displacing all these soil particles and then they wash
into the creek and ultimately end up into the you know,
in a basin or a water body. It's getting the
water into the soil, so increasing the ability for that
(11:27):
soil to infiltrate, right, infiltrate the water into the soil.
Once we get the water to slow down, we can
infiltrate it once we That's one of the things that
we talk about when we manage for healthy soils. We're
trying to increase the organic matter content of that soil
because organic matter and soil not only helps hold particles
together that increases the ability for that water to infiltrate,
(11:48):
but it also holds water longer, so you can withst out.
Many times, the folks that we work with that have
worked to increase organic matter in our soils, they're the
last one in a drought and they're the first one
out because they've held water longer. And then when it
does rain h they infiltrate it and they can they
get green up sooner. So managing our uplands has a
(12:10):
significant impact on the health of our riparian zones.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
And we're at a time right now where we were
losing about two million acres of grasslands a year. Right now,
like a lot of the literature that's out there says
the most imperiled the ecosystem on the planet.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I agree, And there's so there's three strategies I would
I would propose, and we've published all this in a
in a technical report through the Society for Range Management.
It's called rangeland Ecosystems Connecting Nature and People. I would
encourage your readers to look on the SRM website. They
can find it there and it outlines those primary eco
ecosystem services. But uh, there's those three management strategies. One
(12:54):
of them is is avoiding conversion, just like you know
you were alluding to. You know, it's been reported that
we've lost thirty two million acres of grassland to cropland
since twenty twelve. That's nearly fifteen times the size of
Yellowstone Park, and so significant amounts of areas have been converted. Also,
(13:16):
look and I kind of bring that a little bit
closer to home, and I'll just speak to Texas. We're
seeing not only conversion but land fragmentation. And so from
nineteen ninety seven to twenty twelve, the population in the
state of Texas has increased fifty five percent, over eleven
hundred people. A day or moving to the state of Texas,
(13:38):
the number of small farms, these are farms smaller than
which is the majority of those farms have increased thirty
one percent. Mid sized farms have decreased by twenty seven percent.
So these larger ranches are getting broken up into smaller
partss of land. And so everybody wants their peace right
(13:59):
and which is great eight but we're but it's fragmenting
the landscape into smaller parcels of land that that, you know,
it becomes a little bit more of a challenge to
have collective conservation across a broader, more broad landscape. When
you think of wildlife habitat, they don't stop at the fence, right,
(14:21):
and so and so we've got to we've got to
think about this from from sort of a larger perspective.
Texas has saw the larger ranches, you know, greater than
a couple of thousand acres, they've seen the sharpest decline
over the last five year period. And since we've been
recording it, we'll lost over a thousand operations in that
time period. And so not that they're lost, they're just smaller, right,
(14:46):
And so the number of smaller operations have has certainly increased.
So avoiding conversion is one thing, right, trying to keep
range lands range lands. The next one is range land restoration.
We've got to have the tools. We've got to have
the funding to implement the management practices that steward those
(15:07):
help with steward those land capes. And more importantly, we've
got to have the people that can provide the technical guidance,
the technical expertise to the know how to know how
to communicate the science to producers that are managing these
lands and learn from them as well. It's a two
way street.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Jeff, I thought your whole job was to look at
a chunk of grassland, a pasture, if you will, and
say this is how many cattle you can run out
here for how long?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
That's part of the story, that's part of it. It
is certainly one piece. It's not the whole pie.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
And it sounds like the other pieces of this pie
take a little a little bit of time to learn.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
You know, they do. It's just like anything. You know,
you walk out and I started my career just by
walking out. And I kind of grew up on a
ranch and my grandfather managed and probably wasn't ever an
own one. So I kind of got into this conservation
role because I wanted to work with ranchers. But you know,
I would walk out there and I didn't know what
(16:13):
I was walking on, And so it started by just
knowing the plants. Right. Then when you learn the plants,
you want to learn how to manage them. Then when
you learn how to planetge them, you want to tell
somebody about it, and so that's it just kind of
grows from there.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah, and you know, right now.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
We seeing a reduction in at least the federal side
of that workforce. Obviously with some federal funding freezes. It
puts universities in an interesting spot too, because there's a
lot of funding that goes to our universities to continue
(16:51):
education like this is there are you seeing an impact
in like the rangeland ecology escape right now?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
From a from a grant perspective, you know, there's been
some there's been some Certainly there's been some halting of
some grants. Some of it's precautionary on you know, kind
of maybe a subwordy may say, Okay, we're gonna pause
work until we figure out what's going on. So some
of that's happening some grants have been halted, so there's
(17:22):
certainly an impact, you know, I think I think when
we step back and look at it from a from
a larger perspective and the impact. There was an interesting
report by in twenty thirteen, so this data is a
little bit older, but they estimated the direct spending impact
(17:45):
of conservation efforts to be about just under forty billion dollars,
which is about and sixty percent of that came from
federal and then you had state and local conservation efforts
as well. But when they looked at what that generated
from a total economic activity perspective, it was over ninety
billion dollars, and so it was like a two point
four to one to one return on investment for conservation
(18:09):
activity benefits from the investment, And so, you know, I
think we we've got to look at it from a
from a larger perspective. There certainly are opportunities where there
there have been some some assessment of some of the
funding that's being spent. I think I think they're gonna,
(18:31):
you know, they they have a priority to work through
and try The administration has a defined opportunity to work
through and try to find efficiencies, and I think that's
what they're doing, you know, it's it's you know, how
they go how they go about it is is up
to the administration. I think our role as from an
(18:51):
SRM perspective is to ensure that they understand the importance
of rangelands, understand those those range lands require management and
ensuring that that, you know, if there's an opportunity for
us to provide insight, help or guidance on on how
to most appropriately implement that stewardship from a scientific perspective,
(19:16):
that's our role. And you know that that that requires people. Right,
most of these landscapes are managed by people with two feet,
you know, it's the two legged people that are that
are managing all these landscapes. And so we've got to
have a technically adequate, scientifically sound workforce that can that
can implement the strategies on private and public landscapes.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Where do the bulk of like rangeland ecologists come from?
Are they generally starting in one sector or another?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
What's like the federal to private to NGO split? If
you're aware of it, you.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Know, I don't know they answer to that question, but
I know that the sort of the federal the NGO
space is growing, I think, uh, I think there's certainly
opportunities there for what we call private public partnerships, and
r CS does a really good job of that through
their Regional Conservation Partnership program. That's what that's for. It's
(20:23):
it's a program through the Farm Bill where they partner
with conservation organizations to implement conservation on the ground, both
technical and financial assistance. And so that that's been a
really successful model for them. In terms of the breakout,
I'm not really sure how to answer that, but I
would say that, you know, there's there's there's different sectors, right.
(20:46):
There's there's the scientists that work for the Agricultural Resource
Our Research Service and and so those are the primarily
the research scientist PhD level scientists they are doing of
science within the U s d A. You know, there's
there's conservationists rangeland conservationists that work for BLM, for nr CS,
(21:10):
for you know, there's a whole cohort of folks that
are that are providing either tech technical assistance to an
allotment UH or a permittee or technical assistance to private
farmers and ranchers on a day to day basis. And
they're they're implementing. They're helping those those producers develop conservation plans.
(21:31):
And then on the on the private side and uh,
and then helping facilitate those actions through farm build programs.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
And and a conservation plan in this instance, that's that's
typically something that would be like a long term grazing plan.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Yeah, it would, it would. An overarching conservation plan would
include a grazing management plan. But it starts by working
with that particular landowner defining their goals and objectives. It's
their property, and I'm talking on the sort of the
private space, and then and then identifying the what what
the resource concerns there are. It may be an erosion problem,
(22:17):
it may be lack of forage availability, there may be
other resource concerns. And then they had done it. They
work through a process of identifying or or identifying the
resources they have to work with, going working through the
alternatives that the landowner has in terms of implementing management practices.
They work through the process helping them make that decision.
(22:37):
And then one of the most important parts is developing
a longer term monitoring program so that you have that
when they provide this financial investment, we have the monitoring
to help them see if they're getting better, right, monitoring
forage alloications or forage productivity and or monitoring maybe it's
(22:58):
monitoring for brush encroaching, woody encroachment, whatever, the monitoring strategy
is that that monitoring and follow up is keenly important.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, amazing fact that I was recently made aware of.
To go back to the lesser prairie chicken. And you
know here in Montana, we're always talking about the greater
sage grouse, right, which is an awesome bird that I
grew up with on big open range cattle country in
(23:28):
eastern Montana. But the lesser prairie chicken won't nest within
six acres of a vertical structure, right, So it's a
bird that is just by evolution. Gram design is made
for wide open spaces. And I imagine your job, especially
(23:51):
when you start talking about these landscapes getting more fragmented,
broken up into more individual owners versus you know, something
that we would certainly think of as like a traditional
agricultural path where it's it's family expansion. Not saying all
families do things the same way, but that that job
(24:13):
gets gets harder to get out and educate more and
more individual property owners who may or may not take
that education.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's it's certainly a dynamic we
work with. You know, each individual operation is going to
be different. You've got a different history, you've got a
different dynamic. You know, some ranches we work with have
are large and have a board of directors they answer to,
you know. You know, some of these smaller operations have
(24:44):
you know, their their their family owned. But many of
them that's not their single source of income anymore. They
have a job in town. Uh, and it's a you know,
it's a it's a maybe even a recreational property for them.
And then there's this dynamic of abs and tee ownership,
you know, where the property owner lives in the city
(25:05):
but and doesn't live on the land anymore. And so
there's all these uh dynamics that you have to work
with dealing with you know, families or decision maker maybe
one or two or three people or more. And and
so anytime, anytime you work through those types of scenarios,
you just have to step back and and and understand
(25:25):
that there is a there's a social dynamic to managing landscapes. UH.
And it's it's not just grass cows and white tail
deer anymore. It's we have to we have to work
through the manager's lens and help them see where their goals,
how we're going to help them implement their goal and objectives.
And it's not a straight path all the time.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Sure. Sure.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
And then when we're you know, talking about like the
really important stuff, which is like growing big antelope bucks
and and mule deer bucks and making sure there's a
bunch of upl birds out there, it's it's probably pretty
nice to be able to point back to the fact
that there were millions of very heavy bison roam in
(26:11):
the range and had many times of abundance during that
like open management system to where you know, I'd point
out all the time that grazing isn't always bad because
from certain conservation circles, folks can point at that and
be like, well, that shouldn't be here.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
It's often stated that it's the it's the how, not
the cow, and uh, and that that it's certain that
that's certainly true. I mean, how we manage these landscapes,
whether it's a you know, you're reintroducing bison to a
to a landscape or we're grazing, a grazing you know,
(26:53):
Herford steers it how we manage the herbivaly or the
grazing managements really and so you know, you had mentioned
that historically we have these really large herds of bison
and they would they would travel to forage and water.
Many times they were following a prescribed fire because it
got green it would green up, or a wildfire and
(27:16):
so and so that's what we try, honestly to mimic
in many situations from a grazing perspective. I mean, that's
that's essentially what we're trying to mimic in any type
of rotational grazing strategy is to not only that have
that animal impact, but have the long recovery periods. And
(27:39):
so it's to me, from a grazing perspective, that recovery
period is way more important than the grazing period, right,
And so we work with ranchers to develop a strategy
that not only works for the ranch and those plant
communities and their operational design, but also works for the rancher, right.
And so it it's not very helpful for us to
(28:01):
walk in and say, well, you know, ought to graze
it this way. If it doesn't fit their context, it's
never going to work. And so so we have to
figure out how do we develop a strategy that number
one fits their economic context, text, their social context, and
the ecological context of the ranch. And so it's a
dynamic situation. It's more than just putting up fence and
(28:22):
rotating cows. But the just is to provide the use
and the recovery so that those plants have the opportunity
to recovery and increase the health and function of that
range land system.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
And then when you jump over on to the public
side of the fans, the federally managed side of the fans,
how do things change from a rangeland ecologists perspective?
Speaker 3 (28:47):
You know, it's a it's it's it's still rangeland right.
We we have to manage those landscapes. There are some regulations.
There's there's regulations with you know BLM and for Service
both have have set regulations around how UH or the
animal unit months or a u MS that will be
provided for each of those and the permittees work with
(29:09):
a range specialist to develop a plan and then and
then they implement those accordingly. I think there's you know,
there's a lot of people working on uh those those
grazing regulations and uh, most of my experience has been
on private land than than the the public landscapes. But
I know that there's a lot of people working on
(29:30):
uh outcome based strategies to increase those beneficial outcomes for
both the rancher and the and the and the the
range land landscape, working on ways that that there can
have more flexibility in some of those regulations to provide
the rancher more flexibility in their operations by still by
still maintaining the function and the stewardship of the landscape.
(29:54):
And so they're working hand to hand every day, UH,
trying to do the best job that they can.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And I would imagine though, like that multiple use mandate
of public lands more or less BLM words, it a
little bit different, but.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
That has to just add some complication. Two things like
you have.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
The the the big ranch that's managed by a board
of directors where you may get a few more questions
on your management plan and maybe have some sometimes where
things come to an impasse. But you know, it's still
a different can of worms than than on the the.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Federal public landscape.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
And you know I think noxious weeds, noxious uh or
invasive plant education for the general public. Like, there's nothing
in any state I've ever hunted that says, hey, in
order to go out there and enjoy yourself, you better
(31:01):
be aware of noxious weeds. We're certain parts of Montana
you talk to producers and they're looking at your license
plate to see what county you came from, and they're like,
did you wash your truck? Like stay on the gravel roads,
don't take the two tracks, and and that can be
a fire conversation too, But a lot of times it's
(31:22):
trying to reduce the spread of weeds or grasses that
are going to be detrimental to that that grazing plan
on that property.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Yeah, I mean that there's certainly that's certainly a concern
for for public landscapes. You know, cheap gas is a
big one too, and in that part of the world,
you know, it's a sort of you know, it's an
invasive annual grass that can be susceptible to wildfire and
things of that nature. Noxious weeds are are are a
(31:55):
big one some of the you know, the federally named
you know, I think I think from that perspective, you're right,
it is. It is different. On the private side. You know,
you've got privatey proper private property rights. I mean the
landowner can ultimately, within most bounds, manage that property. How
(32:18):
are they want to When you get into the public side,
there are federal regulations. There's federal regulations on on you know,
how many how many animal units they can take, how
many how they graze those and so there there are
there's a there's an added level of restriction. I think
for the most part. The good thing about that is
that we're seeing landowners and conservation organizations and the federal
(32:44):
government work together more in recent history than I've seen
than than certainly was you know, ten twenty thirty years ago.
I think they've become more collaborative than not. That's a
good thing. Anytime we got more people at the table
and and we're listening to each other, that's probably step
number one.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
And how do how do we get the public more involved?
Like how do we get folks to look at a
big chunk of range land that's quote unquote not doing
anything and understand that it's actually providing everyone a lot,
(33:25):
whether that's you know, drought tolerance or having that that
that sell healthy native ground system. Sorry I'm spacing out
on the word here, but having that community on the ground,
that's that's not going to let in invasives after a fire. Like,
(33:48):
how do we tie people back to the fact that
this stuff is going away real fast and it's it's
really important and it's and it's it's providing us a
lot of benefits.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Man, that's the gold in question.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
I mean, I had a Montana produced brisket for Saint
Patrick's Day from from Montana and it was full of
fat and it was amazing For a guy who eats
a lot of wild game.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
It was glorious, wasn't it.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
It was it, really, it really was. My girlfriend's not
the biggest fan of Irish dinner, but I make it
a little fancy.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
For her and she gets over it.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
But like, is telling people to eat eat locally produced
beef enough or what are the things?
Speaker 3 (34:35):
I mean, I think it's a lot. I think it's
a sort of a multi dimensional problem we've got. I
think I think our food system is certainly one of those.
And that's you know, that's something that this new administration
is keenly focused on, is the food system. And uh,
(34:56):
I think there's been a movement that we've all seen
over the last several years of uh you know, promoting local,
you know, promoting healthy food choices. And I think our
industry UH has We could always do a better job
at telling our story, right, But I think we've done
(35:18):
a lot better job in the recent history to tell
the story of the beef industry for instance, or you know,
and providing a wholesome, clean, effective protein source for the
American public. I think I think we could always do
a better job. I think tying in it's not just
(35:42):
about it. I think the food's a great angle, and
I think it's an angle that we need to spend
more time and effort on. But I also think we
have to tie in those more intrinsic values that we
often overlook, and it's those ecosystem services that we were
mentioning earlier. There's a couple out there that are harder
to translate to the public than others. And so when
(36:04):
you talk to somebody about organic matter and soil carbon,
it's hard to take that to someone in the city
and say, look how important this is. But if I
take a glass of water and I hold it in
front of them, everybody relates to water. I think water
is going to be a huge one for us in
the future. It already is. I also think I think
(36:25):
wild spaces and wildlife habitat is a huge one for
us too, because whether or not they're a hunter, when
you look at that one hundred and eighty five billion
dollars of recreational revenue, a significant portion, if not the majority,
is wildlife watchers. It's people that just want to go
(36:48):
birding or just want to see wildlife and know that
that you know, they have habitat to you know, sustain
and thrive, and so I think that's another key important
piece is is but but it's the coupling of all
those it's telling the story that we can have the
wise use of these landscapes. We can graze landscapes and
(37:10):
produce and and many many times increase uh the effectiveness
of a habitat for a specific species by using the
right management at the right time, for the right reason.
And so so taking all those things and putting them
together in a package is man. That's that's something a
lot of us are working on. How do we how
(37:32):
do we better tell that story? I think one of
the reasons one of the best ways that we're doing
it nowadays is podcasts, just like this one. It's podcasts,
it's social media. It's uh, I mean, that's that's the
way most people are getting their information nowadays. It's they're
not seeing it and there, they're not reading it in
the newspaper and so and so having that compelling story
(37:54):
and making it relatable to someone in in an urban
environment is probably the key.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, it's not just the beef. It's What's for Dinner campaign,
it's the which I love because I'm a Sam Elliott fan.
But my stepdad, it's been in the beef industry for generations,
always shook his head at that thing because he just
didn't didn't think that that was the the the all
(38:25):
the information that we needed to get out there. But yeah,
Native Habitat, I see some really fantastic accounts that I
love to follow, like a Native Habitat project where they
talk about the importance of fire on the landscape that
native community and the benefits that it provides soil health,
(38:51):
certainly on the wild life side of things, pollinators and
all of these native birds, where everything else can be
right for a turkey, a pheasant, quail, but if that
soil isn't alive enough to produce those invertebrates at the
(39:17):
right time of year. You're just not going to have
birds despite the great thermal cover and the great nesting
cover and the and the water. Right, it is a
big community that I certainly don't know well enough despite
(39:37):
loving it. So yeah, it's making those inroads. Jordan, he
had a question earlier about that I think would like
tie into some of these ecosystem benefits regarding like the
disturbance ecology.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
Yeah, yeah, I wanted to take us BA a little
bit and dig in a little bit to what specifically
are the benefits of those disturbances that you mentioned, of
fire and of grazing. Why are those good things? And
(40:17):
exactly how does that help the rangeland be healthier and
promote the habitat that we've been talking about.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Great question, and so let me take them one by one,
and so let's talk about fire first. We get this
often just gut reaction. Some people either think fire is great,
some people are scared to death of it. And it's
because of this sort of perception that fire is bad.
(40:47):
All fires bad. You know, there's there's smoky the bear
campaigns that were super effective right at fire is a
bad thing. And I'm not saying well fire is good
at all, but the application of prescribed fire in the
right context is absolutely a good a good thing. And
so it's it's it's trying to in a very prescriptive
(41:12):
way plan for you know, the management of a rangeland landscape.
So let's take, for instance, uh, the Great Plains. One
of our key resource concerns is woody encroachment. Most of
that woody encroachment is a is a juniper species, eastern
red cedar, and so that's a non root sprouting species.
(41:34):
So if you take off the top with a fire
or mechanically that that plant's done right. Uh. And so
we've talked about some of the reasons why woody encroachment's bad.
It's it's it can impact wildlife habitat, It certainly impacts
forge productivity. And so so fire is beneficial from uh,
(41:55):
for maintaining a particular plant community that a land owner
wants to maintain. It also cycles nutrients, and so we're
cycling much of that that those those micro and macro
nutrients back into the soil. You know. One of the things,
one of the one of the rocks that's thrown at
fire and is around carbon, right, because we're losing a
(42:19):
lot of the carbon to the atmosphere. There's been a
number of work that's that's been done in Texas and
other states now, but I'll speak particularly to a study
that was done in Texas where they were they were
implementing fire and cool season fires, and and the carbon
that was lost in the in the fire and through
(42:41):
combustion was re sequestered in a in a cool year
or a wet year, UH in twenty eight days, and
in dry years it was something like eighty days. And
so certainly that first year you got the benefits of
the fire and all of that carbon was resequestered back
into the ground. And so there's there's a number of
(43:01):
benefits there of properly implementing UH prescribed fire on the landscape.
I think I think coupling that with proper grazing management
and so so historically we've talked about the bison and
their their broad scale impacts from a from a cattle
grazing perspective. Really it's about again it's about managing UH
(43:24):
that that plant community too, and so when we see
grazing removed from an environment. Those those plants evolved under
grazing too, right, so they produce about twice what they
need to sustain themselves, to sustain a healthy root system.
And when we start to take grazing out of an environment,
(43:46):
that plant begins to to to that community will tend
to degrade over time. So look at environments in the
West where there's no grazing at all, you'll see you'll
see pocketed plants, You'll see more bare ground. Typically, you'll
see uh oxidized gray plants that that that organic matter
(44:07):
hasn't been you know, converted back into uh to organic
matter and back in through that whole carbon uh sort
of regeneration process. And so by grazing properly, we utilize
some of those forages and uh we we we we
(44:27):
stimulate tillering, UH we stimulate function. Uh we help. Another
benefit is is the dispersion of urine and manure through grazing,
helping through uh you know, from a from a nitrogen
and a nutrient perspective. And so there's a number of
(44:47):
benefits to to grazing. I won't say it's all done right.
I mean, there's certainly landscapes that you can drive in
any direction, and you can see areas that have been
over grazed, but you can also sea land that's very
well managed that have very successful habitat components that support wildlife,
(45:11):
both grassland birds, and you know, the sort of non
game versus game species, and so there's a ton of
different benefits. The point is most of the landscapes that
we manage evolved under some type of fire frequency and
some type of grazing frequency. So if I were to
(45:33):
put both of those together, managing the timing, intensity, frequency,
and duration of both of those things or what created
and helped the great planes stay the great planes. The
same can be said for Western landscapes, although the fire
frequencies were much longer, but they did have some level
of fire frequency.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
You know, kind of looking at our whole big picture,
kind of zoom out again where we at in rangeland ecology. Right,
So we've gone through a semi wild humans on the landscape,
(46:16):
implementing some burns, but essentially zero fragmentation of the landscape,
connected ecosystems to ranching comes on the scene, barbed wire
comes on the scene, Jeffersonian grid system, lots of different
management types on the landscape, and now all of a sudden,
(46:40):
you know, here here we are, and we have like
new threats beyond fragmentation, which would be development, right, like
you don't have the option to convert it back to
anything anymore. Like where I guess where we act in
(47:01):
the rangeland landscape right now?
Speaker 3 (47:04):
Well, I think going back to that that earlier sort
of point where we were talking about avoiding conversion, where
we can there is a rangeland restoration pathway, I mean,
we we can restore degraded rangelands. Uh. But I would say,
I guess I would submit once once they go under
(47:24):
the plow, you can seed them back to native species,
but it's never going to be the same prairie that
it once was. Right. That's a that's a defined ecology
with multiple trophic levels and it and it certainly impacts
the health and structure of the soil and the biological
integrity of this oil and so stepping back, I mean,
(47:48):
I think we are on a new frontier on uh,
particularly the soil health front of better understanding how our
management influences soil health dynamics and then these cascading benefits
that we see from managing that way we're seeing. I
(48:12):
would say that technology is becoming much more prominent as
we as we look at the advances in remote sensing,
using tools like light ar to help estimate cover changes,
things like that, even virtual fencing, there's a number of
(48:34):
research opportunities out there, a lot of scientists across the
West looking at virtual fencing opportunities right and limiting infrastructure
costs for producers. And so I think technology is going
to play a key role in the future. But then
stepping back, technology is not going to be the solution
(48:55):
to everything. We have to be grounded in the and
understanding the eclog and those ecological impacts of our actual
management on the land. And so if we make sure
that we understand that technology is a tool to help
us move forward from an ecological perspective, I think we're
in a good state. If we look at technology as
(49:17):
the only answer, I think we're in trouble. It's part
of the story, but I think I think there's been
a keen focus on understanding those ecosystem services and not
only understanding them, but but quantifying them. They're hard to measure, right,
and so there's been a lot of work on the
(49:37):
measurement and the verification of those ecosystem services to help
us tell that story we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
Yeah, I feel like I have a great deal of
empathy for every person who's still doing the jobs that
I did growing up.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Right, Like we pushed cattle on weekends, we branded, we
sorted ar intended. I did carpentry, i'd framed. I did
a little little plumbing, a little low voltage electrician work, landscaping,
kind of you name it, right, So I when I
(50:15):
hear about issues and things that affect these things, I'm
I'm I'm generally in a spot where I'm at least
willing to learn more because I've I've seen it from
that point of view. Not everybody has had that opportunity.
They were probably smart enough to put more money in
their bank account early on versus myself, but they they've
(50:41):
deprived themselves of understanding in this case, like a landscape
and what goes in to preserving that landscape in a
way that it still provides all these these benefits. Right,
You're right, like that's that's probably never going to go away.
(51:02):
In fact, we probably don't want people out tramping all
over all this stuff to to really understand it the
way that those of us on this podcast right now
may right, but we do have to like get across
the why the benefits of what undeveloped natural landscapes do
(51:27):
for us for us, all right, And that's that's just
gonna be a tough job.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
It is, I you know, but I mean that's why
most of us that that work in the rangeland discipline,
I mean, that's why we wake up every day, is
to we want to make sure that not only the
stewardship of those landscapes continue. And I use that word
because it invokes, uh, the idea that the job is
(51:56):
done by the steward right, and so so it's it's
work working with in in our our case, private landowners
to make sure that that stewardship happens, make sure they
have the tools, uh, make sure that that that they
have the knowledge that that they need to effectively steward
them in the same same way would be could the
(52:19):
same thing could be said for our public landscapes, ensuring
that that we have a you know, a trained workforce
that can can work with those the permittees and the
ranchers that are that are managing all those landscapes as well.
And so you know, I think again. Uh, stepping back,
it's it's uh, it's a right and a privilege to
(52:40):
work with these these wonderful range lands, and I'm just
I'm just proud to play a small minute role in it.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
Heck, yeah, well I appreciate what you're doing. Uh, and
you know, hopefully.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
We'll get to a spot where everybody does because it
is important. And once we turn this stuff over, it's
not coming back.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
So I agree, I agree, we were Uh. You know,
I mentioned this a little bit earlier. I think, uh,
I think the importance around the ecosystem service is important
water specifically. I mean that's a driver for for all
terrestrial agriculture, right, but it's also a driver for for
populations and cities. We got all we all have to
(53:28):
drink and and and and provide habitats for those lands
for those wildlife species. And so that's one that's easier
to get our hand around. I think we're at a
position right now when there's probably more eyes on range
lands from a private perspective, a public and a corporate perspective.
(53:53):
There's there's a there's a lot of focus on on
how we're managing both private and public landscapes and we
have an opportunity to do it right and at least
do the best we can with what we have in
front of us, and that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
Yeah, and I just hope folks like yourself get the
opportunity to say, hey, this is what we really do,
this is why it matters, because we know there's folks
out there who haven't taken the time yet to understand yep, Yeah, Jeff.
Where can folks go to learn more about the role
(54:31):
of rangeland ecology and why it should matter to us?
Speaker 3 (54:36):
Yeah. So we're site for range managements on all most
of the social platforms. We have a you know, we're
on Facebook and Instagram. We have our website is rangelands
dot org. Feel free to go and take a look
at our website if you If you're really interested and
really want to come, we haven't. We host an annual
meeting every year. Next February, we'll be in Monterey, California,
(54:58):
where all of the range land from professor from around
the country will come and we'll be sharing science and
community and discussing listening to to ranchers and academics. I
like talking about how we're trying the best Steward drange lands.
Speaker 1 (55:13):
Heck, yeah, well, thank you very much for joining us, Jeff, Grasslands,
range Lance. They matter a whole lot and we're only
in to keep them if we remember that and share
that education education with others. So thank you very much.
That's all I got for you this week. Remember to
write in to a s k C A L. That's
(55:35):
Askcal at the meteater dot com. Let us know what's
going on in your neck of the woods. And if
you have additional questions for Jeff, we'll either get them
back on here to answer them, or we'll answer them
with his tutelage on the main podcast. Thanks again, we'll
talk to you next week.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
Thanks for having me
Speaker 2 (56:00):
The n sen at very pressure.
Host
Cal Callaghan
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