Symposium # 25: Cows and Conservation: A Role for Ranching in Protecting Biodiversity.

Organized by: L. Hidinger, B. Budd, R. Dueser, C.H. Sieg and N. West.
Sponsored by: Western Chapter and Rangeland Section, The Nature Conservancy, Society for Range Management, National Cattleman's Beef Association and NRCS Wildlife Management Habitat Institute.
Thursday, August 10, 2000
8:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Ballroom I - Cliff Lodge

Despite the historical animosity between ranchers and conservationists, these two groups do share some objectives (clean water, flourishing wildlife, and healthy ecosystems). Out of these joint concerns, private, public, and non-profit collaborations are being formed. A notable example is the Malpai Borderlands Group, a collaboration of ranchers, environmental groups, government agencies, and university scientists with a commitment to restore and maintain the natural processes that create and protect a healthy, unfragmented landscape to support a diverse, flourishing community of human, plant, and animal life. Conservation-minded ranches, such as The Nature Conservancy s Red Canyon Ranch in Wyoming, can provide examples of how saving biological diversity goes hand-in-hand with a financially viable business venture. They can also serve as research sites for scientists, classrooms for students, and neutral meeting places for ranchers, community members, recreationists and conservationists. Conservation and ranching can be a tremendous combination, as ranching may be one of the best alternatives for protecting threatened open space and areas of high biological diversity already being ranched. Ranchers are changing their operations and management techniques to include ecological processes and protect environmental values. Some of these changes include more fences (fencing off riparian areas to provide habitat for neotropical birds and/or to exclude cattle from stream banks), water troughs to divert cattle from streams, rotational grazing systems that change the timing and duration of grazing, dam removal to restore natural water flow, noxious weed mitigation, and native plant reintroduction. Ranchers are also collaborating with scientists to advance the understanding of grassland and riparian ecosystems, the impacts of grazing, and the conservation of biodiversity.