1994 Annual Report for LST94-002
Environmentally and Economically Sustainable Use of Rangeland
Summary
County extension agents are generally well qualified for their jobs, and usually come from strong agricultural backgrounds. However, most receive college degrees in animal science and agricultural education disciplines. Therefore, many have little or no formal training in the area of rangeland management and may be unprepared to effectively help producers within their counties. The Environmentally & Economically Sustainable Use of Rangeland project was established to provide training and education for county extension agents in rangeland management. This was accomplished through a series of three workshops conducted in one year.
Objectives
The objectives of this project were to provide course participants with the skills necessary to be able to understand and develop ecologically and economically sustainable range management practices affecting livestock and wildlife enterprises on the ranch. Specifically:
1) Train agency personnel in setting goals and objectives and in learning techniques to assist ranchers in systematically developing alternative strategies to meet their goals and objectives.
2) Implement the elements of the strategies for sustainable rangeland management.
3) Evaluate the training and implementation project for further development into a sustainable rangeland management program to be made available to ranchers nationally and internationally.
Approach
The first session of the three workshops was held on July 18-20, 1995, at the Krooked River Ranch near Haskell, Texas. This session was attended by 19 county agents from five Extension districts across the state of Texas. Each agent was required to attend all three sessions in order to complete the worship series. The material covered during the three days of the first session consisted of learning the importance of 1) setting goals and objectives for ranch management planning and 2) economic and biological planning skills which are used to assess and monitor ranch and range conditions.
Instructors included Peggy Sechrist, president of Holistic Resource Management (HRH) of Texas, Dr. Larry White, extension range specialist with the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, and Dr. Lorraine Zinn, an adult education specialist of Lifelong Learning Options in Boulder, Colorado.
The second session was held on October 10-12, 1995, at the Krooked River Ranch, near Haskell, Texas. This session discussed how:
1) Range inventory and monitoring techniques are utilized to set and adjust stocking rates.
2) Habitat requirements for different wildlife species and how range management practices and livestock grazing can influence habitat diversity and populations.
3) Prescribed burning can be utilized to support and promote sustainable grazing systems.
Instructors included J.F. Cadenhead and Richard R. Riddle of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service in Vernon, Texas, Dr. Dale Rollins, extension wildlife management specialist from San Angelo, Texas, Dan Caudle and Reggie Quiett of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS), Craig Winters, wildlife manager for the Nail Ranch in Albany, Texas, Drs. Jim Ansley, Bill Pinchak, and Richard Teague of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Vernon, Texas, and Dr. Lorraine Zinn of Lifelong Learning Options in Boulder, Colorado.
The third workshop session was held March 19-21, 1996 on the Waggoner Ranch near Vernon, Texas. This session emphasized the integration of grazing management systems with prescribed fire as a major tool in the manipulation of brush and noxious weeds. Agents examine different grazing systems, constructed a fire plan, and conducted an actual prescribed burn on rangelands.
During the first two sessions, Dr. Zinn served as an instructor as well as a critic of the program. Dr. Zinn taught several sections dealing with adult education and demonstrated to the participants how they may utilize the information gained from the workshop sessions to better serve the producers within their own counties. Dr. Zinn was also instrumental in helping to set up an evaluation form for both sessions. These evaluations were used to determine how the agents felt about various sections of the workshops, as well as the program as a whole. Dr. Zinn summarized the evaluations and made suggestions as cooperators planned future sessions and workshops.
Results
The evaluations determined that the agents responded much more favorably to hands-on learning experiences, as opposed to lecture-style work sessions. Therefore, as they planned the second and third sessions, more field exercises, ranch visits, and realistic problems were added to the schedule. This produced a very positive response from all participants.
Evaluations received at the conclusions of the third workshop showed an overall program rating of a 4.22 out of a possible 5 (scale of 0=not applicable to 5=excellent) for a percent score of 84.4%. As expected, the outdoor sessions on conducting an actual burn rated the highest, with a 4.78% score or a 95.6% approval rating. The economics session or whether or not one could make the management system pay received a score of 4.44 out of 5 for a percent score of 88.8%.
Of special interest to workshop sponsors and instructors was the rating of "usefulness of the program’s information to clientele in your community" (people back home). This was a measure of the degree to which trainees perceived their clientele would or could use the information in real life situations. The score averaged a 3.89 our of 5 possible, for a percentage of 88.8%. It was also to some degree, an indication of the importance of the information the agents believed they received. It was not a measure of the percentage of trainees (agents) that planned to use the information once they returned home.