The People Component of Land Management

By Katlyn Uhart, Coordinator, Results Oriented Grazing for Ecological Resilience Group

Recreation, public lands, natural resources, and livestock grazing are a few of the key components discussed when regarding the health of sagebrush ecosystems in the West. It is no secret that these are some of the hot topics constantly bouncing between stakeholders with a wide variety of perspectives. For every opinion, there is an opposing voice, and for every discussion, there is a counterpart. Resolving the challenges facing these delicate ecosystems can be found in a puzzle piece that is too often forgotten: The people component of land management.

It is desirable to avoid hard conversations, simply because most of us detest the potential for conflict or confrontation. Yet without conflict, there is often no durable momentum toward solutions. Without collaboration, a little give and a little take, there is little to no common ground discovered between the people who passionately work in the realm of land management.

“To me, the biggest thing of collaboration and working together is talking about the things I wouldn’t have thought of. Not that it’s not important to me but it makes for a better solution because it’s all the angles being thought through and gone over,” said Sam Lossing, previous cow boss at the Winecup Gamble Ranch. “The group addresses stuff that I wouldn’t have thought of and we come to a better product in the end. You end up with friends that you may have never made and they definitely enrich your life. When you run into a problem you can give them a call.”

One example of a collaborative group that epitomized a good amount of give-and-take to reach durable solutions that encompass the people component is the Results Oriented Grazing for Ecological Resilience (ROGER) collaborative group. ROGER was formed in the fall of 2015 when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rolled out their Land Use Plan Amendment (LUPA) to conserve the Greater Sage-grouse. In an effort to address the concerns within the ranching community surrounding the LUPA, this group of Nevada ranchers came together with various partners, including Federal and State Agency leaders, in early 2016. This effectively raised the people component to the forefront of everyone’s minds and helped break down the divisive barriers that so often stall the solutions needed across public lands.

Bringing this diverse range of people together illuminated the similar concerns that were shared by the group, in addition to fostering conversations about potential solutions that were agreeable to all. ROGER provided a platform for the group to focus on sagebrush ecosystem health as a whole, through the lens of the individual people involved. The ROGER group continues to work to:

• Develop a shared vision of on-the-ground conditions;

• Create a common understanding of what it will take to achieve those outcomes;

• Identify ways to provide ranchers needed flexibility and take action; and,

• Document and share successes, failures, and lessons learned with this group and others.

“Roger is a one-stop shop. It’s a concentrated way to get a variety of stakeholders in one place at one time,” says Kathryn Dyer, Nevada BLM Range Lead and National Outcome-Based Grazing Lead. “It’s a reoccurring time for a wide variety of problem-solvers to get together and share conversations aimed at constructive solutions.”

Today, the trust and relationships built through ROGER have helped create a working group that is focused on one of the pilot ranches participating in the BLM’s Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations (OBGA) program taking place on the Winecup-Gamble Ranch outside of Wells, Nevada.  Under the umbrella of ROGER, the amount of collaborative work that has been poured into this project from across the country has been pivotal to its progress, particularly with the help of essential partners from the ranch itself, BLM, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, University of Nevada Reno, Nevada Department of Wildlife, and more.

This working group has provided the space for partners to have extensive discussions on difficult questions, share their concerns, and find dynamic solutions. The innovative science in this project is possible because of the foundation of trust, transparency, and communication between everyone involved. That is the people component.

“Nevada has so much variability - from place to place and year to year.  We need strong foundational relationships that allow us to work together to adapt to every new event or condition if we want to achieve the goal of ecological resilience,” says Liz Munn, TNC Nevada’s Public Lands Strategy Director. “With climate change that variability is becoming more pronounced – which means those relationships become all the more important.”

There is no quantifying the midnight emails, five-hour-long meetings, and tearful conversations that happen when the hard questions are asked. There is no quantifying the imperfect human component that makes the science hit the ground. As ROGER and the Winecup-Gamble Ranch working group have shown, the unique obstacles OBGA presents will continue to crop up, and the people component will continue to be a crucial puzzle piece in the process.

Check out this feature story on the ROGER group click here and contact Katlyn Uhart, ROGER Coordinator for more information: katlyn@rci-nv.com