Grazing Management for the Future: Six-Part Film Series
This series highlights the Bureau of Land Management’s Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations through the ranching families and federal staff dedicated to environmental and rural community well-being.
The six videos in Grazing Management for the Future will be released throughout fall of 2024.
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The Intermountain West Joint Venture (IWJV) is pleased to announce a new video series in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM): Grazing Management for the Future.
The videos follow five ranching operations across Oregon, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and Nevada as they work to ensure the health of landscapes they manage and the livestock they steward. The ranchers are faced with ever-changing challenges: fluctuations in weather, drought, forage availability, and wildfire, as well as new BLM staff and family management as roles change hands across generations.
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BLM grazing authorization: An authorization is required for livestock to graze on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, also known as a grazing permit or lease.
Outcome-based grazing: Outcome-based grazing is a strategy to adaptively manage livestock to meet established objectives and desired outcomes.
Outcome-Based Grazing Authorization: Bringing these two concepts together, an Outcome-Based Grazing Authorization is similar to a traditional grazing authorization, but must include established objectives, outlined flexibilities, a monitoring plan, and annual reporting. This provides a framework within which the BLM and ranch manager may make changes to livestock management to better respond to annual variation in weather, vegetation, or unexpected events like drought or wildfire, while making progress toward achieving established objectives.
Flexibility: Authorized mandatory terms and conditions of a grazing authorization that allow for management changes are called flexibilities. Examples include changes in livestock numbers, rotation timing and duration, and grazing season dates in response to annual conditions, among others.
These five ranches have collaborated with their local BLM offices to design a new kind of public lands grazing authorization. Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations are designed with flexibilities built into their terms and conditions, which allow ranchers to adapt their annual livestock management to changing on-the-ground conditions as they emerge. While traditional BLM grazing authorizations have set when and where ranchers may graze their cattle, the flexibilities written into Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations enable managers to assess ecological conditions and adjust grazing, for the benefit of both landscape health and their businesses.
“This video series highlights how the BLM and grazing operators are working together to explore innovation and collaborate with grazing systems that can adapt to the many changes facing public lands,” said Marlo Draper, BLM Division Chief of Forestry, Range, and Vegetation Resources. “These film stories depict the value of flexibility when managing grazing in the face of varied social, seasonal, and environmental changes across a diverse landscape.”
For these ranches, the flexibilities built into their Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations have included terms that enable grazing location and timing changes in response to drought, weather, and vegetative health in a given year. Additionally, information collected from required annual monitoring allows ranchers to adapt their management to meet identified objectives.
“A big part of the BLM’s Outcome-Based Grazing effort is to demonstrate how effective flexibility in grazing authorizations can be and how relatively simple land health monitoring can be used to track the effects of using these flexibilities,” said Mandi Hirsch, IWJV’s Sagebrush Program Coordinator. “When we all are on the same page with what’s happening out on the range, we can all be informed to make the best decisions for it.”
Videos: Grazing Management for the Future
Partners and Neighbors
For BLM field staff, building and maintaining long-term relationships is a key ingredient when collaborating with operators to renew their grazing authorizations. This video features the voices of BLM employees speaking to their experiences working with Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations, which enable ranch managers to respond to changing conditions, as needed.
As Hunter Seim with the Little Snake BLM Field Office in Craig, Colorado, said, “They’re partners and neighbors. That’s the way I approach permittees, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount about this piece of ground in northwest Colorado from those that I work with.”
More of a Team
Water is a limiting factor for Fitzgerald Ranch in Oregon. One of their allotments did not have consistent water and the ranch operators were able to work with the BLM while developing their Outcome-Based Grazing Authorization to address this. The new water source uses the flexibility to modify their pasture rotation or timing of grazing in specific pastures. This authorization requires monitoring to ensure the objectives in the management plan are being met.
“During the droughts having consistent reliable sources of water is huge,” Eleanor Fitzgerald said. “I feel that we are more of a team with the BLM than we were on the traditional program.”
First to Know
PH Livestock’s ranching operation spans a highly diverse region in Wyoming with different moisture regimes across many miles. These innovative ranchers are combining a long history of knowledge with use of emerging technologies to monitor their cows, fences, stock tanks, and forage. This monitoring is also written into their Outcome-Based Grazing Authorization, which enables them to respond on the fly by adjusting their grazing plan mid-season. This added flexibility has enabled them to target crested wheatgrass early in the grazing season, which provides native vegetation the rest it needs during the later growing season.
“Having that data, whatever it is, is a benefit,” Neils Hansen said. “I want to be the first to know that there’s a problem out there so I can address it.”
Eternal Optimists
The Schultz and King Ranches collaborated with the Lewistown Field Office in Montana to develop their Outcome-Based Grazing Authorization. Their authorization allows them flexibility in the dates by which they turn their cattle out and pull them off individual allotments, in response to range conditions that arise throughout the season. They may also adjust their pasture rotations and timing to respond to non-native vegetation, targeting grazing on undesirable species.
“In agriculture, you’re the eternal optimists, always hoping for just a little more rain or a little cooler weather,” Nick Schultz said. “Every year the grass starts at a different time. There was one year that it was super early, and everything was blooming. On the other end of it, sometimes winter doesn’t come until the end of February.”
Suitable to the Ground
The Greater Sage-grouse and its habitat has become an increasingly important factor in how public land is managed. Little Snake Land and Livestock in Colorado has been actively managing and adapting their practices for generations. They worked with the BLM to build an Outcome-Based Grazing Authorization that provides flexibility in their grazing season so that they can time their livestock grazing to benefit habitat for both their cows and the birds.
“Now the greatest part about outcome-based grazing is the flexibility to just change year to year,” Angelo Raftopoulos said. “So if we didn’t get the moisture, now we can adapt and do something different that’s suitable to the ground. Our objective is to provide good cover for the sage grouse habitat, and how we do that with the flexibilities of outcome-based is that we can graze the dormant season grasses, and we can have a full year growth season, to obtain the cover that we need for the sage grouse.”
Trying Something New
The Horseshoe Ranch in Nevada is all too familiar with the changes brought on by wildfire, invasive species, and drought. Ranchers are working closely with the BLM in a checkerboard landscape of public and private lands to restore deep-rooted perennial grasses and expand sagebrush habitat. The land managers worked together while developing their Outcome-Based Grazing Authorization so livestock grazing can complement and work alongside restoration efforts.
“Whenever we are locked into a very specific regime, it becomes very difficult to get creative or try something new,” Chris Jasmine said. “Many times trying new things is where you find solutions that truly work for the land, for the vegetation that’s there.”