Influences of Society, Politics and Local Knowledge on Ranch Management

Participants’ priorities regarding conservation reflected their professional involvement with, and wider concern for, the natural environment. With one exception, all participants expressed a clear desire for well-functioning, non-degraded rangelands, seeing this as foundational to their other aims and purposes for ranchlands.

Most of the ranchers grow forage, primarily grass, in order to raise and sell cattle. Others derive income based on tourism, relying on the aesthetic appeal of their ranch. One ranch seeks to further diversify their income, growing a variety of crops. All but one rancher interviewed expressed a strong interest in conserving the natural environment, typically for its own sake and often also to preserve their income and way of life. These ranchers displayed thoughtful consideration and application of conservation measures. Only one rancher expressed a laissez-faire attitude to the natural environment with little interest in taking active conservation measures.

Personnel from government agencies were interviewed in their professional capacities and expressed conservation aims corresponding to their agencies’ mission statements. Mission statements vary between government agencies. However, conservation is written into the mission statement of each agency (BLM 2003, FWS 2003, NRCS 2005, AZGFD 2007, FS 2007, AZSLD 2009, Pima 2009). All agencies which allow ranchers to use their land for pasture receive financial remuneration for doing so. Arizona State Land Department includes in its mission ‘to enhance revenue production’ and ‘to enhance the future productivity of the Trust’s land and assets’ (AZSLD 2009), and Arizona State Land Department personnel regarded protection of future productivity as being one benefit of rangeland conservation. Arizona Game and Fish Department receives important financial income from selling hunting and fishing permits. The core of their mission is conservation of wildlife and habitat and the enabling and management of their enjoyment by the public (AZGFD 2007). For personnel in Arizona Game and Fish Department and Arizona Fish and Wildlife Service, conservation was in large part seen in terms of provision of suitable habitat for wildlife. However, all agency participants expressed strong general commitment to conserving ranchland ecosystems.

The principal conservation concerns expressed by ranchers were soil erosion, woody plant proliferation and effects of illegal cross-border traffic such as littering and trail formation. Ranchers typically consider that soil erosion and woody plant proliferation reduce the quantity and quality of forage available for livestock and reduce the aesthetic appeal of rangelands. The volume of illegal cross-border traffic in the study area varies but remains at high levels (Moore 2010). Most ranchers reported that illegal immigrants leave considerable amounts of litter, which can cause serious harm to livestock either by ingestion or directly by cutting from used cans. Illegal traffic, away from established highways, is also considered to increase soil erosion by trail formation.

Similar concerns were also expressed by government agency personnel. Agency personnel often also stressed maintaining or raising biodiversity. For Arizona Fish and Wildlife Service and Arizona Game and Fish Department personnel, maintaining or raising wildlife populations was typically expressed as the top priority, in line with these agencies’ mission statements. As habitat requirements vary between wildlife species, the most desirable habitat overall was often a mosaic of grass- and shrub-dominated areas. In contrast, most ranchers expressed a strong preference for a reduction in woody plant abundance.

Personal safety was a major expressed concern for most ranchers and for most agency personnel who spend a high proportion of their time in the field, due to the prevalence of illegal cross-border traffic. Inasmuch as this may reduce their abilities to work effectively on rangeland conservation in isolated areas, this should be seen as a conservation issue as well as a significant security problem.

For livestock-raising ranchers and government agency personnel, grazing management is a central tool in pasture management and conservation. Government agencies that allow use of their land for pasture generally set upper limits on animal unit months (AUM) allowed per pasture per year, based on estimated carrying capacity. For some agencies, there are mechanisms to alter AUM limits in response to temporal variations in vegetation condition, such as result from below- and above-average precipitation. Within the yearly AUM limits per pasture, ranchers are able to manage livestock movements between pastures largely as they see fit. Among the ranchers interviewed, rotational grazing systems are common. For most, rotational or other plans are modified throughout the year according to prevailing conditions.

The principal methods for controlling woody plant populations are mechanical, chemical and fire (Bovey 2001). All three methods have been employed in the Altar Valley since at least the 1960s. Erosion control measures currently include installation of small rock piles and gabions in washes and modifying ranch roads to reduce water flow rates (LaFayette et al. 1996). However, a small number of ranchers interviewed do not employ any active brush or erosion control measures beyond grazing management.

Consent is required from government agencies for any conservation treatments on land they allow ranchers to use for pasture. However, prior to implementation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in the early 1970s (Vanderver et al. 1991, Czech and Krausman 2001), ranchers were largely able to plan and implement all three brush control methods autonomously, based on their own informal assessments of its possible efficacy and in consultation with government landowners. Thus, a ranch could control woody plants chemically, mechanically or with fire without involvement of conservation agencies and largely without legal restrictions other than those of land ownership. Fire was the cheapest brush control method, costing about $2 per acre in the 1960s according to Rancher A. A prescribed fire could be implemented by a ranching family alone, though the local fire crew would generally be contacted and involved.

Since implementation of ESA and NEPA, prescribed fire has required a rigorous planning and approval process which can be beyond the capabilities of a single ranch. Rancher A estimated that, due to these laws, burning 1,000 acres would involve a considerable amount of paperwork and cost $30,000 to $40,000. This cost level is often prohibitively expensive and can prevent ranchers from employing prescribed fire in brush management.

Formal rangeland monitoring is highly valued by most ranchers and by all government agency personnel interviewed as an input to rangeland management and conservation. The Forest Service and BLM conduct their own monitoring, principally in the autumn at the end of the summer growing season. Most formal monitoring on private and on state- and county-owned ranchland is conducted by NRCS, in partnership with the land owners, also in the autumn. Most ranchers use formal monitoring results and NRCS advice as an input in developing year-long grazing management plans. However, some ranchers prefer to rely solely on informal monitoring of the environment.

Most ranchers and some agency personnel use and value informal monitoring grounded in local knowledge of the natural environment. Some ranchers value informal monitoring more than formal monitoring, but others value them equally. Advantages of informal monitoring include the ability to monitor across the entire ranch rather than being limited to a few strategically located transects, and to do so at high temporal frequency, typically daily. Thus, areal coverage is greater and temporal resolution finer than formal monitoring. In addition, comparisons of informal observations with knowledge of local environmental history contribute to assessments of rangeland condition. These elements render informal monitoring invaluable in enabling ranchers to respond to seasonal variations such as timing and amount of monsoon and winter precipitation, which cannot reliably be predicted a year in advance during more formal planning.

All field-based ranchers assess quantity of forage species and of bare ground. Some also note specific indicators of stress or good growing conditions, e.g. color of prickly pear leaves (yellow indicating stress) or the presence or absence of ocotillo leaves (Fouquieria splendens Engelm., a species which responds rapidly to changing moisture levels (Lloyd 1905)). Some ranchers also integrate knowledge of prior conservation treatments on particular areas into rangeland condition assessments. In so doing, some also assess efficacy of treatments over periods of a few years to a few decades.
Decisions regarding when to move livestock from one pasture to another typically depend on ranchers’ judgments of current conditions of livestock, vegetation and water supplies. In principle, though largely not in method, this is consistent with current developments of adaptive management in the range science literature (Allison et al. 2007).

Several ranchers and personnel from all agencies which own ranchland consider formal monitoring a potential defense against environmental litigation. This view matches the requirement that expert evidence should generally be ‘scientific’ and ‘derived by the scientific method’ if it is to be admissible in court (Edmond and Mercer 2004).

Most of the ranchers interviewed were concerned that environmentalists could bring lawsuits that would threaten continued livestock grazing on public lands. One such legal conflict in the Altar Valley is documented in Sheridan 2007. In that case, in 2002, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) alleged that a ranch’s livestock were degrading Forest Service land. The ranchers were ultimately successful in court, in large part because extensive formal monitoring over several years was available, was admissible in court and documented the good condition of the rangeland in question (Holechek and Galt 1998).

Concerns over such lawsuits may encourage the use of formal rangeland monitoring among ranchers. However, no participant reported altering rangeland management or conservation practices in anticipation of possible lawsuits.

Most of the environmental knowledge expressed by ranchers was consistent with the range science literature and with the knowledge expressed by government agency personnel. However, there were exceptions regarding brush management effects on endangered species (outlined above) and the value of historic introduction of Lehmann’s lovegrass (Eragrostis lehmanniana Nees.). Lehmann’s lovegrass, an invasive exotic C4 grass, was introduced in southern Arizona in 1932 (Anable et al. 1992) and in the Altar Valley by the 1940s. The range science literature reports concerns over consequent plant and wildlife community changes and increases in fire frequencies. However, several ranchers were of the opinion that the introduction of Lehmann’s lovegrass had certain clear beneficial effects. They consider that it has much higher establishment rates than native grasses. Introduced after a period of drought and reduction in vegetation cover, Lehmann’s lovegrass is reported to have increased ground cover, and thereby reduced soil erosion to an extent that would not have been possible by seeding native grasses. In an area where soil erosion is a persistent and intractable problem for ranchers and government agency personnel such benefits could be of lasting value.

In both the cases of disagreement between ranchers’ local environmental knowledge and agency personnel or ecological orthodoxy, the disagreements are not conceptual, in that the terms and processes described by ranchers can easily be expressed within ecological paradigms and frameworks. Rather, the disagreements are over processes and ecological interactions as they occur in the field and over the utility or value of their outcomes. Thus, there appears to be scope for integrating ranchers’ local environmental knowledge in ecological research to take account of and improve understanding of both ecologists and ranchers.

Multiple aspects of the human and natural environments interact to influence ranchland management. As outlined above, collaboration between ranchers and land-leasing agencies is necessary when ranchers wish to implement conservation treatments on government-owned land. Beyond that, the value of collaboration appears to depend on the nature of the treatment in question. For example:

• Prescribed fire (for brush management) requires significant planning and permission costs which are prohibitively onerous for many individual ranches, and fire often operates at a larger spatial scale than that of individual ranches. Thus, for ecological, legal and economic reasons, fire planning benefits from collaboration between multiple neighboring ranches and a variety of government agencies (both those leasing land and those with conservation or extension remits).

  Small-scale erosion control measures are relatively inexpensive. They can be implemented autonomously by individual ranches, provided permissions are granted by land-leasing agencies for any treatments conducted on agency-owned land. However, social and professional contacts appear to have been instrumental in dissemination of two locally popular erosion control measures: rock pile installations in channels and water-spreading humps in dirt roads.

The desire to use prescribed fire for brush control was one of the motivating factors in the formation AVCA. In turn, AVCA has provided a forum for discussing not only brush management but for sharing ideas for erosion control. It also appears to have played a role in strengthening relationships between ranchers, government agency personnel and others interested in conservation.

The coupled nature of human-natural interactions may also be illustrated by a second example, involving the legal environment, personal relationships, differing but overlapping conservation aims and local environmental knowledge.

Conservation of endangered species by Arizona Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is based on population surveys. An area believed to be good habitat for the endangered species may be inaccessible except via private ranch land. In such a situation, the private land owner can prohibit access, and thus prevent a wildlife survey from taking place. This occurred in one case in the Altar Valley, when FWS wished to conduct a survey for the endangered cactus ferruginous pygmy-owls (Glaucidium brasilianum cactorum) on a site owned by Arizona State Land Department but accessible only via private ranchland. FWS were particularly interested in surveying this site as it had a suitable level of woody plant habitat, and it would connect two other areas known to be inhabited by cactus pygmy-owls. The site thus had the potential to maintain connectivity of critical habitat. However, there was a low level of trust between Arizona Fish and Wildlife Service and the ranchers involved. The ranchers expected that if a survey found a pygmy owl population, brush control techniques which they had carried out intermittently at the site for several decades would be prohibited.

Over several years, the relationships between Arizona Game and Fish personnel and these ranchers improved, in part through dialogue and the appreciation of both their shared and differing aims in conservation. The two parties arrived at a compromise position whereby, should pygmy owls be found, brush would be maintained in riparian areas but could be controlled elsewhere. The survey was then performed, pygmy owls were found, and, as agreed, the ranchers have not attempted to control brush in riparian areas at the site. In this case, the combination of local geography of access and the legal power of private property forced dialogue and consensual access to conduct the survey, resulting in a mutually acceptable conservation plan.

The ranchers involved maintain that the areas on their ranch where there are significant populations of pygmy owls have undergone brush control for several decades by chaining, herbicide and fire, as well as consistent cattle grazing. Pygmy-owl populations are generally rare and small in other areas. It is therefore the contention of these ranchers that their historical brush control measures and livestock grazing cannot be highly detrimental to pygmy-owl populations. The local environmental knowledge and logic behind this view could have been overlooked by government agencies had the site access configuration been different. It would therefore appear advisable that, regardless of the precise power relations of a particular case, local environmental knowledge should be considered and formally evaluated by the ecological and conservation community.