Ranch Sustainability Assessment: Economic, Ecological, - Social Indicator Monitoring

Ranch Sustainability Assessment: Economic, Ecological, - Social Indicator Monitoring

Summary

Workshops and materials funded through this WSARE project are designed to teach conservation professionals, extension personnel and land managers about combining social, ecological and economic monitoring with standard business planning methods for sustainable ranch management. The business planning process and the protocols needed to gather necessary monitoring data will be presented. Applications on federal allotments, as well as within the NRCS conservation planning context for private lands will be addressed. Sections deal specifically with collection of traditional monitoring data for soils, water, plant, animals, productive capacities, economics, and relevant social, legal, and institutional elements.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Workshops will increase participating professionals’ knowledge of indicator-based assessment of social, economic, and ecological sustainability at the ranch level, as well as the evolution and applicability of the rangeland sustainability paradigm. Participants will also be more aware of the business planning process and its interactions with NRCS conservation plans and available technical assistance through NRCS and extension.
The techniques segments of these workshops will provide professionals with opportunity to increase their awareness of rangeland monitoring techniques applicable to soils, water, plants, animals, productive capacities, economic aspects, and social, legal and institutional elements characterized by the baseline set of SRR ranch sustainability indicators. By increasing their skill in using available monitoring techniques, professionals may also improve their capacity to share their knowledge with ranchers and other rangeland management practitioners. Awareness of relationships between monitoring information and business plan goals will be highly beneficial.
Longer term, with knowledge of the ecological, social, and economic elements of sustainability, as well as the skills to monitor, track trends, and evaluate outcomes of management activities, professionals should be able to implement and communicate this information and ability to the communities that they support. If a majority of rangeland professionals eventually assist ranchers and other rangeland managers with planning and monitoring for rangeland sustainability, the ecological and economic health of ranchers and the rangeland-dependent communities in which they live should improve, conserving a unique way of life and the supplies of rangeland goods and services upon which society depends.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Project participants have completed creation and publication of the Ranch Sustainability Assessment Guidebook. This publication was used during the first WSARE workshop, held during February 2011 at the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meeting in Billings, MT. It is available on the Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable (SRR) website at http://www.sustainablerangelands.org/ranchassessment/pdf/ranch_guidebook_B1216.pdf. Revisions are underway based on that experience.
Additionally, we have created a section of the SRR website dedicated to this ranch sustainability assessment effort on the SRR project page http://sustainablerangelands.org/projects.shtml. The set of materials available there includes the guidebook linked above, a short descriptive handout about the process, an illustrative poster presentation, MS Powerpoint presentations from the first workshop, and a coursebook of workshop materials provided to workshop participants for use during the workshop.
The initial participant surveys for the first workshop held at SRM were conducted at the end of the workshop, and the responses have been tabulated. Overall, participants found the session to be very useful. The second survey to gauge longer-term results of the workshop was conducted via Survey Monkey during Spring 2012. Results also indicated that participants were pleased with the session, though not all had any opportunity to implement workshop material.
We have begun working with a rancher as field test for application of the monitoring and business planning techniques described in our ranch assessment guidebook. Monitoring has been set up on his ranch with help from NRCS, and business planning is progressing. We’re finding that financial information must be addressed and documented in a very selective, sensitive manner. We hope to add a second pilot project ranch to this effort later this year.
We have also developed a poster presentation on the ranch sustainability assessment process, as a companion piece to the workshops. This poster has been presented at numerous meetings including Society for Range Management, Soil and Water Conservation Society, Ecological Society of America, and the 5th National Conference on Grazing Lands.
Lastly, we published an article on the ranch sustainability assessment process, including monitoring and business planning components, as described in our original grant proposal. This article appeared in the February 2012 issue of Rangelands magazine and is also available as a pdf on our website, along with the other project materials mentioned above, at http://www.sustainablerangelands.org/ranchassessment/pdf/ranchbusinessplanningarticle_rangelands.pdf.
We had initially planned to hold our second workshop during the Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS) meeting in Washington DC, July 2011. However funding constraints coupled with agency participant travel restrictions effectively scuttled that plan. We requested a no-cost extension to work with SWCS to re-schedule the second workshop for their July 2012 meeting, in Fort Worth, TX. However, agency travel restrictions cut SWCS attendance by almost 75 percent in 2012, so we again postponed the workshop. Our intent now is to hold the second workshop at the 2013 Society for Range Management (SRM) Meeting to be during February in Oklahoma City. Re-scheduling for the third time has necessitated much additional planning and preparatory meetings, since plans in place for Washington DC and Fort Worth all needed to be re-directed for the Oklahoma City meeting. SRM has been very cooperative in helping us adjust, and we have high hopes for a successful session this winter.
A planning meeting for the February 2013 workshop was held during November 2012. At this meeting, speakers re-confirmed their participation and reviewed presentation content. The agenda was reviewed and revised to reflect speaker changes due to retirement and reallocation of tasks. Deadlines were set for both production of the revised version of the Sustainable Ranch Management Guidebook, as well as the workshop coursebook. Both should be submitted for printing by mid-January 2013 to ensure that they are ready for the February 2013 workshop.
Requisite workshop participant surveys for this upcoming meeting will also be conducted following the February 2013 workshop.
A final meeting of WSARE project participants must be held later in 2013 to review workshop outcomes and next steps. As noted in the original proposal, this meeting will also be used to explore results of workshop participant surveys, in conjunction with a full review of materials used to present the workshops, to identify improvements and opportunities for future programs and projects. The final WSARE grant reports would include information from these concluding discussions.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

As competing demands vie for increasingly finite rangeland resources, availability of consistent, comparable economic, social, and ecological information will foster informed, sound decision making relative to sustainable rangeland ecosystems and ranches. Rangeland professionals must be aware and prepared to assist ranchers in collecting, compiling, and evaluating relevant data to support their diversified business plan goals.
Ranchers endeavor to stay on the land and adapt their business practices to changing markets and demands for various goods and services. Collection of monitoring data to track trends in elements elaborated in their business plan goals will become increasingly important to the long-term sustainability of their ranch operations.
Ranchers rely on informed, competent technical assistance professionals for help. Tracking trends in supply and demand of livestock and wildlife forage and associated products can help ranchers appropriately allocate efforts and investments in feed, equipment, labor, and land. Rangeland professionals with knowledge of business planning processes, diversification and use of monitoring information can assist ranchers.
Additionally, managing for multiple goals including cattle production, migrant bird habitat and rare plants can be economically and socially beneficial to individual ranchers and communities, increasing income and conservation. Rangeland professionals need knowledge, skills, and abilities to help ranchers understand and implement such sustainable rangeland management practices. The workshops funded by this WSARE grant will help professionals help ranchers to succeed under increasingly challenging operating conditions by enhancing their knowledge of monitoring, business planning, and elements of rangeland sustainability.

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