Rangeland Management, Monitoring, and Policy

10/31/2023
By: Wendy Millet

In our work to scale regenerative ranching practices, we regularly engage with other organizations to learn, collaborate, and advance initiatives that hold promise. To that end, in September 2023, we attended two terrific workshops at the High Lonesome Ranch in Grand Junction, Colorado.

The first event was a meeting with major U.S. conservation organizations to discuss ways we might work together to improve the health of rangelands, ranches and grasslands. We came together inspired by our collective work and by a report showing that data from Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) monitoring sites showed severe declines in the “health, diversity, and productivity” of public grazing lands, the need for improved data collection and mapping to track range health, and the need to restore ecosystems through improved management. We also came together for the chance to hear from Indigenous grazing specialists about the challenges Indigenous ranchers face and how white-led groups can be allies.

The second event was hosted by Woodwell Climate Research Center in collaboration with Colorado State University’s Soil Carbon Solutions Center and the Mighty Arrow Family Foundation. Presentations and discussion topics included:

• How to define “rangeland health” and monitor changes over time.
• Management practices to optimize land productivity and profit while protecting key ecosystem resources such as wildlife habitat, water, and carbon storage. 
• Monitoring strategies that integrate local knowledge with science-informed data and technologies including GIS, remote sensing, and ecosystem modeling.
• Policies that incentivize best management practices.

For a detailed description, photos, and a beautiful set of graphic recordings (*such as the one posted here), you can read this article by High Lonesome Ranch.

We look forward to continuing to work with others to learn about ways to advance opportunities for grazing to enhance the ecosystem and economic health of our nation’s grasslands and rangelands.