It's been said there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors. But in the same way that not all practice makes perfect, only good practice, it's important to listen to people with a proven record of range management success. This panel of experienced range professionals discusses principles that have helped them adapt well personally and professional…

It's been said that the only thing that is certain is change. These young rangeland professionals engage in interview discussion around what "Change on the Range" means to them. The 2023 annual meeting plenaries addressed the synthetic nature of rangeland science and the necessity of working across disciplinary and geographic and social boundaries …

Neighbors helping neighbors fight fire--this is the goal of Rangeland Fire Protection Associations (RFPAs) according to the Idaho Dept of Lands: "RFPAs empower local landowners to protect their own property and their neighbors’ where fire protection services are limited or not available. RFPAs can also respond to fires nearby that would otherwise t…

Australia is hosting the IRC2025 in Adelaide, and this is the biggest rangelands event leading up to the 2026 UN International Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists. Australia boasts more rangeland than the United States, with wild, open spaces everywhere. Andrew and Nicole discuss uniquenesses of Australia, challenges common to other parts of the worl…

"Layer something on your dirt that increases revenue opportunities and reduces risk." Clay Worden and James Rogers offer capstone comments on The Art of Range ranch financial resiliency series, from the importance of leveraging land assets (the big value in a ranch property) to tracking and managing production unit costs and revenues.Transcript and…

Is it possible to generate renewable energy, beef, and wildlife habitat in the same space? Long-time collaborators Puget Sound Energy, WSU Extension, Stingley Ranches, and Washington Dept of Fish & Wildlife have proven the reality of this unlikely combination for more than 15 years on sagebrush ecosystems in the Intermountain West. The Wild Horse C…

The North Complex Fire of 2020 was estimated to produce more carbon dioxide and pollutants in one week than all of the cars in California in one year. That fire was in the list of 5 biggest fires in state history until it got surpassed by the August Complex Fire the same year. But it remains one of the deadliest, with 15 human deaths. This fire als…

Jim Gerrish is in the top 10 names known to ranchers in grazing management. His career, both as a researcher and as a rancher, spans animal nutrition, plant and community physiology, East and West, irrigated and dryland, rhizomatous and caespitose. Our conversation covers all of that as well as livestock industry history, the decline in sheep produ…

Listen to Jay Smith, a rancher in Idaho, and Joel Yelich, a University of Idaho researcher, describe their experience managing cattle on a 100,000 acre U.S. Forest Service grazing permit that had burned the year before. Jay was able to keep grazing the permit because virtual fence allowed him to keep cattle off the burn footprint without putting up…

Are you optimistic about 2024? This brief non-interview provides an overview of upcoming content on The Art of Range and an invitation to become a more active listener. Thanks so much for listening. And I'm optimistic, by the way.Bởi Tip Hudson

Should we keep the farm? Can we afford to keep farming and ranching? How do conservation easements work? How much could an easement help? What do I have to give up? Food production is important (No Farms, No Food, No Future), but it has to pay enough to support a family in order to persist. Addie Candib is American Farmland Trust's Northwest direct…

What if grazed wild, open spaces were actually open? Is barbed wire still useful? Can we afford it? Are there other ways to control livestock distribution today? Would other options be "better"? Fenceless control of livestock has been discussed for decades, and these technologies may mimic herding, which was practiced nearly everywhere, at least on…

Rangelands and people inevitably change. Managing that change involves people influencing people. The Society for Range Management's international annual meeting is the flagship ecological event of the year, bringing together ranchers, researchers, agency land managers, students, and other professionals from all over the world to share information …

Can grazing be used to help ecosystem function or is 'do no harm' the best we can do? What is meant by the new buzzword "regenerative"? Graeme Hand has been teaching and practicing grazing decision-making for a long time and has championed the idea of experimentation at spatial scales at which failing is not fatal to the environment or a livelihood…

"Beef is what's for dinner; open space is what's for dessert." Rick Knight is a wildlife professor who has spent decades bridging ranchers and environmentalists (whatever that means now). His research has shown that private ranchlands are critical for wildlife and that grazing may be quite important for conservation of habitat values.Transcript and…

Anna Clare is a rangeland ecosystem scientist, systems thinker, synthesizer, and collaborative facilitator. This interview continues with one of the major themes of the SRM Ecosystem Services report introduced in episode 111 with Lauren Porensky and Jeff Goodwin -- human dimensions of ecosystems, including sociocultural valuations. The conversation…

Napier Downs is a million-acre cattle station in the Kimberley region of Northwestern Australia. They export Red Brahman yearlings live to Indonesia, 15-20,000 animals per year, raised in a tropical savanna. We discuss the humanitarian importance of this live export market, the love-hate relationship with fire in this part of the world, land tenure…

This is a re-release of one of the first episodes on The Art of Range. Fred Provenza discusses ideas from decades of research and experience on how animals and environment affect each other. Dr. Provenza calls this interaction a dance, which he has written about in his book “Nourishment”. Discussion includes how domestic animals can be selected or …

How does your agricultural business compare to similar operations in financial performance metrics? That's the question answered by benchmarking. Megan Shroyer is the president of Montana AgWest Farm Credit Services and she offers guidance on how to properly use benchmarking as one element of understanding and managing ranch financial health. Finan…

Is environmentally sound livestock grazing more financially viable than overgrazing or just thoughtless grazing? If so, why? Dave Voth is a rancher in Nevada who helps lead the Society for Range Management's Good Grazing Makes Cent$ Program, an effort to take range science directly to those who make a living on the land. At least in rangeland setti…

A new report published by the Society for Range Management, Connecting Nature and People, outlines key ecosystem services provided by rangelands and their benefits to society. Agricultural Research Service scientist Lauren Porensky and Texas A&M Center for Grazinglands and Ranch Management director Jeff Goodwin discuss the report’s origins, framewo…

Remotely-sensed data products are not new, but applications using these data that are available and useful to landowners are relatively new. Matt Reeves discusses the current status of forage volume and phenological development across the Western U.S. (midsummer 2023) and the sources of data in useful fuel tools such as FuelCast, Rangeland Producti…

Livestock distribution is the key to good grazing, and water is the limiting factor to distribution. What if you could have water anywhere, produced from air? Genesis Systems, a company founded by Dave Stuckenberg, now offers atmospheric water generation devices that could revolutionize grazing management. This sounds like science fiction, but ther…

Don Stuart is the author of a new book "No Farms, No Food: Uniting Farmers and Environmentalists to Transform American Agriculture", a history of American Farmland Trust and the origins of national-scale efforts to bring to America's attention the loss of farmland and the need for conservation effort. Don is a former commercial fisherman, lawyer, a…

Plants and animals and weather patterns do not respect property boundaries, state lines, or national borders. Managing landscapes requires not the obliteration of human-defined boundaries but working across them. In this plenary session from the Society for Range Management's 2023 annual meeting, Tammy VerCautere and David and Holly Ollila describe…

Rangeland science is not a single discipline but a synthesis of numerous scientific topics and lived experiences. Successful management of rangelands requires knowledge of soils, water, climate, plants, livestock, wildlife, humans, and much more. It is impossible to master all topics in a rangeland textbook or land management handbook. It takes a u…

This is the story of Sharon and Richard Kline, a couple in southern California who became unlikely ranchers by buying an unlikely property. They have worked with California Rangeland Trust to keep the land as rangeland and conserve both habitat and ranching. Conservation easements are controversial and must be considered on a case-by-case basis, bu…

Wise management and conservation of rangelands in the future will require knowledge from the hard-earned experience of those near retirement and the fresh and uninhibited ideas of young professionals. However, reaching across these generations of ideas and experiences can be challenging. This final plenary will be a thought-provoking discussion tha…

The PRF program insures against unusually low precipitation during 60-day periods critical to your forage growth, unlike drought insurance, which typically is based on annual precipitation over a water year or calendar year. Matt Griffith of WSR Insurance in California explains how PRF works in this episode in our ranch financial resiliency series.…

Dick Coon is a rancher in Eastern Washington who has used LRP insurance for nearly a decade to reduce the significant financial risks of ranching in pretty tough country. And because the Northwest cattle markets tend to be lower than the rest of the country, LRP has added attraction. In this episode, Dick describes why and how he has used LRP and P…

Reducing financial risk in ranching requires first identifying and defining those risks. John Nalivka, owner of Sterling Marketing and a well-known expert in beef industry economics, has been consulting with cow-calf producers, feeders, and packers for 35 years. In this episode, John discusses with Tip and Clay Worden global trade trends, cattle pr…

Management recommendations for limiting undesirable ecosystem state shifts driven by cheatgrass in the West and Eastern red cedar on central US grasslands can now be outlined with greater certainty. Jeremy Maestas, NRCS National Sagebrush Ecosystem Specialist, and Dirac Twidwell, range and fire scientist at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, present t…

Is it time to surrender the Western U.S. to cheatgrass and frequent fire or regroup and work smarter? Jeremy Maestas, NRCS National Sagebrush Ecosystem Specialist, and Dirac Twidwell, range and fire scientist at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, present the Defend the Core framework for invasive species management, a fresh approach that prioritizes p…

Trying to stay up on the most recent developments in soil health? SoilCon, a free virtual conference, will address the latest research to help people put soil health principles into practice for regional systems. In this episode, Molly, an organizer of SoilCon, shares more details on the speaker lineup and the Washington Soil Health Initiative. Soi…

What if you could insure calf price against catastrophic price drops? LRP puts a price floor under feeder calves, paying for the difference between an insured calf price and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange feeder cattle index value for a selected marketing date. This episode with Jack Field and Clay Worden continues our series in ranch financial he…

"1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" has been a New York Times best-selling book since publication in 2006. Charles C Mann's writings have reformed popular ideas about Native Americans and challenged cherished notions of nature. Join Charles and Tip in part 2 of a two-episode discussion about the origins of the book and some of t…

"1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" has been a New York Times best-selling book since publication in 2006. Charles C Mann's writings have reformed popular ideas about Native Americans and challenged cherished notions of nature. Join Charles and Tip in part 1 of a two-episode discussion about the origins of the book and some of t…

The global nature of agricultural trade and market forces makes cattle price cycles less predictable, and this presents a different kind of risk than historical pricing pressures. But Dr. Shannon Neibergs, director of the Western Center for Risk Management and a livestock economist, believes there are real opportunities to respond to (in winter 202…

"Nature’s regeneration was the primary source of the Pristine Myth." --Shawn Miller. The influence of the idea that the American continent was essentially untouched by man at the time of European arrival is great. The Pristine Myth, a term coined by William Denevan, a cultural geographer, strikes at prejudicial ideas about the primitive-ness of ind…

The giant bathtubs off the western and southern coasts of North America contribute large amounts of heat and moisture to the continent, driving much of the climate (long-term) and weather (short-term) of the Western United States. And oceans have regular oscillations in temperature, which drives moisture delivery. Researchers looked at historical y…

What exactly are we hoping to sustain in applying the term sustainability to ranching? Without definition, sustainability could just be circular reasoning: "that which persists is sustainable". But this is not what is meant by any of the many proponents of rangeland-based livestock production. Dr. Sayre offers partial answers to this question and p…

Measuring the financial health of a ranch operation is as important as measuring rangeland health. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) combine production and financial data into metrics that measure various elements of ranch financial health. Stan Bevers describes how to accurately calculate KPIs and use them to improve a cow-calf operation. OTHER RE…

You need a ranch financial team. Keeping ranch financial records for tax purposes is not the same thing as managing the financial health of a ranch. Stan Bevers has been teaching and consulting on ranch finance for decades with Texas A&M Extension, the King Ranch Institute, and now RanchKPI. This is the first episode in a two-part series with Stan …

The summer of 2022 is nearly in the books, as they say, but range managers and graziers should pay attention to increasingly sophisticated tools to characterize both forage yield and fire risk in order to respond to annual and seasonal anomalies in forage quantity and type proactively. Listen to an update on 2022 conditions and a description of Fue…

Financial resiliency requires knowing and tracking costs of production and comparing the costs and revenues of a specific enterprise against other possible enterprises. In this second episode with Jack Southworth, James Rogers, and Clay Worden, they discuss the many ways every ranch's context is different from another's, highlighting the importance…

Many ranchers don't do it for the money, but one cannot ranch for long only losing money. In this first episode in a grant-funded series on ranch financial resiliency, Jack Southworth discusses principles and common problems in ranch money management with James Rogers and Clay Worden. Stay tuned for more.TRANSCRIPT available at https://artofrange.c…

Americans hear news of social conflict and small-scale warfare in Africa and we ignore the news because it's far away and doesn't affect us. It's also not possible to meaningfully engage emotionally with everything bad happening around the globe. But there are real people and animals in Cameroon whose lives are disrupted, and because pastoralists a…

Paul Bechtel is an almost-centenarian, born 1923, whose family was lured to Eastern Montana by hopes of homesteading good land still free for the taking. Reality wasn't quite so gentle in the northern Great Plains in the rainshadow of the Rocky Mountains. He lived in Ekelaka in harsh conditions through the Great Depression and until he joined the U…

This episode is the second in a two-part series with the authors of a recent article in the journal Rangeland Ecology & Management telling the story behind their work on ranch sustainability: Clare Kazanski & Marissa Ahlering (The Nature Conservancy), Patrick Lendrum (World Wildlife Fund), and Sheri Spiegal (Jornada Experimental Range). Sheri was r…

This episode has the authors of a recent article in the journal Rangeland Ecology & Management tell the story behind their work: Clare Kazanski & Marissa Ahlering (The Nature Conservancy), Patrick Lendrum (World Wildlife Fund), and Sheri Spiegal (Jornada Experimental Range). Sheri was recently honored with the USDA ARS Early Career Scientist of the…