Supporting outcome-based management on private & public rangelands: training agricultural professionals on monitoring techniques

Throughout the Western U.S. livestock grazing is an important land use, and many ranchers operate on both private and leased public lands. With increasing wildfire and dramatic inter-annual variations in precipitation as well as markets, ranchers need to make management decisions quickly in response to current conditions. However, many ranchers operating on public lands feel that they are passive recipients of decisions from an inflexible administrative system rather than active decision makers regarding their livestock management. The 2016 Strategic Plan for the Rangeland Center at the University of Idaho, a product of public listening sessions throughout Idaho’s rangelands, identified “Land use policies that limit rangeland management flexibility to account for annual variations in forage, water, drought, pests, disturbance, market conditions, etc.” as a challenge to sustainably managing Idaho’s rangelands (University of Idaho Rangeland Center 2016).

These challenges have led to a joint-effort by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Idaho, the University of Idaho’s Rangeland Center and Policy Analysis Group, private ranchers, other federal and state agencies, and NGOs to propose an “outcome-based management” paradigm that would give ranchers more flexibility to make management decisions regarding livestock (e.g., stocking rates and grazing timing) on public lands. This new approach seeks to address the regulatory constraints that have hampered adaptive management historically (Moir and Block 2001, Ruhl 2007). However, the ability of outcome-based management to achieve sustainability of rangeland health and rancher operations will hinge on being able to quickly and accurately assess the condition of rangeland resources, and coordinate monitoring activities between ranchers and public land managers.

Monitoring is a fundamental part of adaptive management (Walters and Holling 1990, Williams et al. 2011) and sustainably producing livestock on western rangelands (Herrick et al. 2012). A basic principle of adaptive management is that a period of observation follows any management action during which time the effects of the action are observed before management is adjusted if necessary. Within the context of outcome-based management, however, management changes happen frequently in anticipation of changes in environmental or market conditions, necessitating continuous collection and interpretation of monitoring data to ensure defined ecological, social, and economic outcomes are met and rangeland resources are protected. Thus, with outcome-based management, a comprehensive suite of monitoring indicators must include the ecological, social, and economic aspects of rangeland systems. This proposal focuses on monitoring ecological indicators for outcome-based management. Parallel efforts are underway to develop social and economic indicators as part of a monitoring framework compatible with ecological indicators.

Traditionally, rangeland condition monitoring by ranchers has consisted of qualitative, easy-to-implement methods like photo points (Hall 2001), whereas public agencies have tended toward more time-consuming quantitative monitoring methods (Coulloudon et al. 1999, Toevs et al. 2011). However, this approach for ecological monitoring may not function for outcome-based management because photo monitoring lacks the rigor to detect fine changes at site-scales, and quantitative approaches are too time-consuming to repeat everywhere on an annual basis. Thus, outcome-based management will require a new paradigm for monitoring rangelands that adds easy-to-implement quantitative methods to existing monitoring, leverages the ability to combine monitoring data from different sources, and emphasizes cooperative monitoring between ranchers and public agencies. Realizing this new monitoring paradigm in Idaho rangelands will require the development of significant support materials and training of ranchers and rangeland professionals.

For outcome-based management to succeed, there is a need for an easy-to-implement, quick, and quantitative monitoring protocol to fill the gap between photo monitoring and more intensive quantitative monitoring. One such method is the Land Potential Knowledge System (LandPKS), a mobile-phone-based application for monitoring the condition of rangelands relative to their potential (Herrick et al. 2013, 2016, https://www.landpotenial.org). Originally developed to aid pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa make sustainable land management decisions under changing climate and soil conditions, LandPKS could fill the methodological gap between photo monitoring and quantitative monitoring and play a role in helping ranchers monitor the ecological indicators for outcome-based management. The indicators measured by LandPKS were designed to be consistent and interoperable with common quantitative methods used by the BLM (e.g., through the Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring program and on many long-term trend sites). However, while training resources exist for implementing LandPKS, the knowledge of this system in the U.S. is low, and its value for ranchers as a monitoring tool and how to combine LandPKS data with other data sources has not been demonstrated.

In outcome-based management, decisions about stocking rates and timing need to be made despite incomplete or imperfect information on rangelands. Thus, it becomes important to be able to use information from many different sources to support management decisions. This has been termed a “multiple-lines of evidence” approach (Michalak et al. 2017), and has been demonstrated in environmental risk assessments (Bland et al. 2017, Melcher et al. 2017), and commonly used informally in rangeland management. However, with the increased information demands of outcome-based management, demonstrations of multiple-lines of evidence approach to monitoring are needed to illustrate how data from different methods can be combined and interpreted to support management decisions. While training materials are generally available for individual monitoring methods, there currently exists little in the way of training materials for how these methods can be combined and interpreted to support outcome-based management.

Cooperative monitoring of public grazing lands is a way to obtain necessary monitoring data for outcome-based monitoring and maintain positive working relationships between ranchers and public land managers. The opportunity for cooperative monitoring between the BLM and grazing permit holders (ranchers) was established in a 2004 memorandum of understanding (renewed September 2017) between the BLM and the Public Lands Council (BLM MOU WO20-2001-01). This agreement stipulated that ranchers may participate in monitoring conducted by the BLM related to their grazing leases, and that ranchers may collect and submit additional monitoring data collected with BLM-approved techniques (and that meet BLM data quality standards). However, the quantitative and time-intensive nature of many monitoring techniques used by the BLM may discourage ranchers from implementing them. In Idaho, an agreement between the BLM and Idaho State Department of Agriculture (BLM MOU ID-SO-2014-07) encourages photo monitoring conducted by ranchers on their allotments and establishes a mechanism for those photos to be considered in Rangeland Health Assessments pertaining to those allotments. Both agreements provide the opportunity for rancher-collected data to contribute to management decision-making, which will be necessary given that agency personnel will not be able to collect monitoring data frequently enough to meet the needs of outcome-based management. Rapid, quantitative methods that are consistent with BLM’s quantitative monitoring approaches (e.g., LandPKS) could also be a valuable contribution to this process. Training in monitoring methods that can contribute to cooperative monitoring is necessary for this to succeed.

The goal of outcome-based management is to empower ranchers with the flexibility to be active participants in managing the public lands on which they operate. However, enabling management that is responsive to changing conditions could carry a large information burden for ranchers. Unless ranchers are prepared for what kinds of data to collect to gauge outcomes, how to interpret those data, and how to combine data from different sources, attempts at outcome-based management may fail to improve rangeland and ranch sustainability. This proposed project is unique in that it does not seek to develop or implement new techniques for monitoring, but to take existing programs and weave them together into a framework that can support the information needs of ranchers in outcome-based management. The University of Idaho’s Rangeland Center is uniquely qualified to address this challenge because of its diversity of expertise, years of experience, and close relationships with ranchers, agencies, and NGOs. Through this project, we will increase awareness of monitoring in the context of outcome-based management with rangeland professionals (including NRCS and Extension specialists and public agency staff) so they can advocate its use with ranchers. While not directly addressed in this proposal this project will coordinate with efforts by the University’s Policy Analysis Group to develop social and economic indicators for outcome-based management to ensure compatibility of monitoring frameworks.

This proposed work is unique from previously-funded Western SARE Professional Development Program grants, but draws on aspects of previous successful projects including: EW95-003(developed comprehensive monitoring protocols for riparian monitoring in intermountain west rangelands), EW14-024 (increased awareness of monitoring programs in Colorado), EW02-010 (developed and implemented rangeland monitoring programs for livestock), and EW10-020 (development of monitoring frameworks and implementation via workshops for professionals and ranchers). This project complements USDA-CRIS project (#3050-11210-008-00-D) from the USDA-ARS Rangeland Research Unit in Las Cruces, NM under which the LandPKS project is being developed.