Issue Paper

Draft Ranching Briefing Paper

Ranching is an important part of the cultural, economic, and ecological landscape of the Western United States.  Counting both the ranchlands in private ownership, as well as the public lands they lease for grazing, ranchers have an impact on over 400 million acres of grasslands, rangelands, and forests in the eleven Western states.  Today, this region faces a dynamic of inter-related social, economic and ecological factors that threaten ecosystems, wildlife and ecological services, and also the lifestyle and economies of traditional ranchers and ranching communities.

These threats include ranch real estate values that far surpass the agricultural value of the land, fragmentation and conversion of large landscapes, conflicts and misunderstandings regarding regulatory laws, and a reduction in permanently-employed rangeland conservationists.  These issues have led to an aging population of ranchers and a lack of young people interested in remaining in ranching communities, the erosion of a stewardship workforce needed to maintain the ecological landscape, and the inability of conservation delivery systems to provide technical and financial assistance to a growing number of landowners in the wake of these trends.

RVCC Key Recommendations:

1. Adaptive Management: basing private and public rangeland management on the best available scientific and practical (local) knowledge, and treating the landscape as an integral whole.
2. Collaboration and Partnerships: supporting collaboration among the diverse, sometimes competing, interests that affect ranchlands, and creating strong local capacity to innovate and implement solutions.
3. Market Support: adding value to traditional ranch products, and diversifying the economic uses of working landscapes through new markets and products such as carbon sequestration.
4. Access to Financial Capital: increasing public investment in conservation-based ranching programs, models and economies. (Farm Bill, easements, etc.)
5. Landscape Level Conservation: developing policies that recognize the social, economic, and ecological connections between private and public lands throughout the west.

To learn more read the Memo to the RVCC Core Group draft Ranching briefing paper.

Working Group

The Ranching and Rangeland Restoration working group seeks to promote and create collaborative approaches to ranchland stewardship that ensure successful public lands grazing and conservation practices.  Its efforts support integrated management across ownerships, establishing public lands grazing and monitoring systems, and reforming tax policies and easements that conserve open space and encourage public investment in ranching.  The group also attempts to enhance the viability of ranching by increasing access to payments for ecosystem services and local markets related to ranching and range stewardship enterprises

Chairs: James Honey, Sustainable Northwest; Johnny Sundstrom, The Siuslaw Institute

To learn more read the 2010 draft ranching plank.