FYI: In a day when first graders shoot other first graders, the need for finding an alternative to conflict as a means of dealing with our problems is even more pressing.

Ranchers and environmentalists seek solutions to rangeland management at ag symposium

BY DANIEL BLACKBURN

Several years ago, Tony Tipton was attending what he thought was a Chicago seminar for cattlemen. By the time the Nevada rancher realized he was sitting with the wrong crowd, it was too late.

It soon dawned on him that his fellow conferees were something quite different. There were environmentalists, some government agency people, and a smattering of "boutique" ranchers each with half a dozen head of cattle.

"When it came time to introduce myself," he recalled, "I just said, ‘I’m Tony Tipton from Nevada and I run a few cows, too.’"

He didn’t bother to add that his herd numbered 24,000, because Tipton suddenly had the feeling that he was exactly the kind of environmentally insensitive guy these folks had gathered to talk about.

Before that evening had ended, however, Tipton was amazed to learn the answers to several bedeviling economic questions that he had unsuccessfully sought in other, more traditional cattlemen’s corners. He walked out of that meeting a smarter man, he said, and has since become an unabashed advocate of dialogue as the solution to so many ranchers’ woes.

"There’s still disagreement on whether animal impact on the land is a good thing or a bad thing," he told his seat mate at a Paso Robles Inn mixed-grill dinner Friday night. "We know now, though, that it is absolutely necessary." Then he nodded sagely, figuring this time he was preaching to the choir.

And in most ways he was, munching tri-tip and sipping local wines along with 30 other people who share Tipton’s vision of a world where bustling societies, resource-rich environments, and grazing cattle can all thrive together.

In this crowd, words like "holistic" and "ranching" and "sharing" were melding into an emerging language of love, smoothing the way to a brave new world of collaboration and cooperation where violent and bloody range wars would be a thing of the past.

Yet it wasn’t too long ago that individual participants in last weekend’s Central California Agricultural Symposium might not have agreed to break bread together, much less search for common ground on a battlefield littered with the leavings of centuries of conflict.

Cattle, according to the conventional environmental wisdom, decimate the land when they graze, creating a plethora of problems and raising general havoc wherever they roam. Ranchers and ecologists, it is generally thought, are natural enemies, with different objectives and differing impacts on the land.

But here they gathered, the sheep and the wolves, a patchwork quilt of old adversaries bent on finding new ways to solve persistent problems, and to live (dare we say it?) in peace and harmony. And to find more and better ways to act as stewards of land that is becoming more scarce and less productive with every passing year.

As the stuff of most range wars, water–maximizing its use and protecting its quality–was the centerpiece for discussion at the three-day ag symposium.

Chuck Pritchard is a fourth-generation rancher whose Paso Robles spread, the B6, provides a haven for livestock and hunting for elk, hogs, upland birds, and varmints. He’s also president of the Upper Salinas-Las Tablas Resources Conservation District, and an active participant in state and federal legislative efforts to enhance and preserve the role of ranchers and farmers in America’s social and economic fabric.

Pritchard got enmeshed in the concept of holistic ranch management mostly because of what he calls "concerns" over water quality on his Carissa Plains ranch, and a lifetime of experience which taught him that people working together can accomplish more than people fighting.

With that in mind, said this thoughtful man with graying hair and a wide-rimmed Stetson, he helped pull together the symposium with the intention of "transforming western ranches and farms into sustainable and environmentally friendly lands."

It’s a tall order by any standard, but one that Pritchard and his colleagues say they are willing to try to fill.

"There is a great deal at stake," he said, meaning no less than the very future of agriculture in this country.

He is an outspoken disciple of a modern mantra that teaches that the best way to achieve what is natural is to manage for it. This is a concept reflecting the notion that nothing remains natural without some kind of planned management.

And advocates of this new era of cooperation between formerly warring parties now say they are able to point to evidence of successes.

"There are examples of riparian recovery, of sustaining endangered species, of restoring grasslands and watersheds, of reviving extinct springs," wrote Dan Dagget in his 1995 Pulitzer Prize-nominated book, "Beyond the Rangeland Conflict: Toward a West that Works."

Arizona’s Dagget, the seminar’s featured speaker, said he was encouraged by the event’s turnout of 125.

"It’s just more evidence that the collaborative approach to dealing with environmental problems is gaining broader public acceptance," he said.

Indeed, public and private sponsors of the seminar were as varied as its participants: the resources conservation district; Farm Bureau of San Luis Obispo; Farm Supply Company; University of California Cooperative Extension; State Water Quality Control Board; Regional Water Quality Control Board; Central Coast Vineyard Team; the Nature Conservancy; and the California Conservation Corps.

At the heart of the symposium and similar efforts is a yet unachieved result, said Dagget: "To bring ranchers and environmentalists together in a broad, effective, and sustainable synergy."

Those are words easily spoken but not so easily put into action.

Efforts by Bob and Terri Blanchard of Cayucos to increase returns of their grazing lands without jeopardizing the historic Pecho Ranch’s environmental assets led them toward a cooperative approach to management that has borne tangible results.

When the pair assumed their lease of the 3,500-acre ranch from owner PG&E, they realized the land had been used like most ranch land in California–utilizing continuous grazing and large pastures.

PG&E officials, who acquired the property in 1985, wanted to maintain as large a herd of cattle as possible to maximize rental income.

Five years later, the company formed a "Land Steward Committee" of PG&E employees to assume management of the ranch.

"They were mostly environmentalists," Blanchard told writer Dan Macon for a California Cattlemen’s Association publication, "and a conflict seemed inevitable between them and me, the traditional rancher." But rather than fight, Blanchard recalled, the group compared goals and "found that we had more in common than we had differences."

A management strategy utilizing high-density, short-duration grazing was implemented. The ranch was divided into 25 pastures. The Blanchard’s entire herd uses one pasture for several days before being moved on, which has the effect of creating an extreme impact on the rangeland vegetation. Then, the pasture is rested for 45-60 days or more.

"The point is to mimic the beneficial effects of migratory herds present during the evolution of our grasslands," Blanchard told writer Macon.

The result is a wide range of environmental and economic benefits. Increased production of higher quality forage benefits both livestock and wildlife, said Blanchard. Thatch and other inefficient plants have been supplanted by common rye, burr clover, and filaree. Soil fertility has increased with more uniform disbursal of manure and urine. Water retention has improved, soil erosion has been prevented.

Holistic management, to Joe Morris of San Juan Bautista’s T.O. Cattle Company, is a decision-making tool he uses to exploit grazing and animal impact to manage watersheds, to improve the effectiveness of water and mineral cycles, and enhance biodiversity. Those are words that might have gotten the rancher into a fight only a few years ago.

Morris views the benefits of these management practices in plain terms of practicality. "The economic benefits are increased profits," he said during his presentation to symposium guests. A rancher is then able, he added, to do things necessary to increase profits, and eliminate those practices that don’t produce profits.

* * *

Royce Larson of the University of California stands in long grass adjacent to the tiny waters of Santa Margarita Creek, holding up a long, conical beaker and examining sediment collecting in the container’s bottom.

Water in the stream was an issue of local concern several years ago when the Robert Mondavi Vineyard wanted to plant nearly 1,000 acres of wine grapes nearby. Environmentalists worried about an increase in chemical-carrying sediment that might enter the stream as a result of upstream uses.

Larson heads a Mondavi-funded program monitoring the results of land use on the existing watershed.

Mondavi officials, recognizing they had both a looming public relations problem and a potential environmental controversy, decided at the start of operations to attempt to minimize the impact of both. The monitoring system will provide important data to accomplish that, Larson told the attentive ranchers.

Studying the stream’s ecology posed several unique problems, said Larson.

"Most of the university’s research projects last 2-3 years," he said, "but to study runoff and sediment problems in creeks like these, a 10-year study window is more desirable." He said that low recent rainfall figures would have made a short analysis of the creek water useless.

"We will work on this study for a decade. For the past two years there has been zero-percent pollution [coming down the creek] because there has been zero runoff."

Larson demonstrated how he and colleagues are automatically monitoring the quality of water in the stream every 15 minutes.

"This eventually will give us a pretty clear picture of what is going on," he said. "We don’t know what to fix until we know what is wrong."

One rancher in the gathering said he thought it was important for other ranchers and farmers with a sense of business to understand that caring for their land results in economic benefits.

"How about benefits for society, for people?" grumbled a woman standing nearby, her question suggesting that the rift between ranchers and environmentalists is yet to be healed.

Anne McMahon, field representative for the Nature Conservancy in San Luis Obispo, called the symposium "inspirational."

"It was so hopeful," she said. "It brought together progressive thinkers who have been directly involved in ranching operations that honor the belief that enhancement of habitat for wildlife is not so different from running a livestock operation. It was a great opportunity to hear from people on the cutting edge of this kind of management."

McMahon said she is encouraged that "more and more people are recognizing that we can achieve improved environmental health and still see people who are in the cattle industry stay solvent."

Facing challenges of market forces "means finding more creative ways to keep ranchers on the land," she added. "That is in keeping with the goals of the Nature Conservancy."

Author Dagget agreed, saying that a collaborative approach to ranching is no guarantee that problems and disagreements won’t crop up in the future.

The good news, he said, is that ranchers who adopt the holistic approach to land management have a leg up on the competition.

"Ranches that employ the techniques seem to be weathering the storm best–the droughts, floods, personal passages and family crises, roller-coaster cattle prices, and the barrage of litigation and regulation pressed by groups dedicated to ending livestock grazing of public lands of the West," he said. "Collaboration and teamwork can’t make us immune to crisis or even failure."

But for Carissa Plains rancher Pritchard, human interaction is going a long way toward solving many of a rancher’s usual problems.

"We get these people together to talk, and they end up talking to other people," said Pritchard. "Sooner or later, everyone learns that we all have a common goal in mind. And that is good stewardship of the land."

He kicked at a dirt clod and walked on, moving his latest group of converts along a trail like any other herd.

"We need to talk more about the interaction between animals and land," he said. "Grazing is not the issue. The issues are how long, when, and where?"

And only conversation, he added, will answer those questions. Æ

News Editor Daniel Blackburn can be reached at [email protected]