Meet Our Speakers: Ed Grumbine

At the edge of a hundred miles of rifted steppe sits Kane Ranch, an unassuming brick building just south of the Arizona-Utah border. Within a chair circle out front, Ed Grumbine thrums with energy as the dynamic focal point for 48 eyes. A veteran university professor, he’s recently found tenure outside academia with the Grand Canyon Trust, a conservation non-profit which owns the historic ranch structure and, since 2008, the grazing permits to 830,000 surrounding acres of public land. Ed oversees the business aspects of those allotments, partnering with a veteran rancher to keep the organization’s 600 cattle in line.

            The former teacher spends equal time asking questions as answering them, and his main line of rhetorical inquiry, “why the hell is an environmental group running cattle?” sparks animated discussion. Our eventual consensus—building relationships with neighboring ranchers and influencing their practices for the land’s benefit—proves correct, and Ed confirms that the strategy has paid dividends. However, putting environmental sensitivity first has the ranch in the red financially, complicating the endeavor’s long-term prospects.

            Asked if he personally would banish cattle from public land, Ed responds affirmatively, but appends two caveats. First, that people still depend on grazing permits to make their living, and second, that the economic and political leverage necessary for a systemic shift towards more sustainable meats simply doesn’t exist. A pragmatist, Ed works to change the system from within, and he leaves us with the mantra “embrace the complexity”, a prominent feature of public lands grazing.

            By: Hunter Dun

Meet Our Speakers: Travis Bruner

As the executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, it was Travis Bruner’s job to close grazing allotments through litigation in federal court. From an ecological standpoint, western states should not be grazed, however the delay in seeing the change he fought for on the ground left him unsatisfied with his work. Leaving his job to become the Arizona Forest Program Director for the Grand Canyon Trust forced him to alter his political mission while maintaining his own ecological goals. Bruner is now tasked with fostering consensus in collaborations with the Forest Service. Consensus collaborations, which require unanimous agreement, arise from issues including fire, uranium, and grazing. As Bruner sees it, grazing on public land is driven at an enormous loss to tax payers and the environment. His goal of changing the grazing culture is now realized not through federal courts but through collaborations that generate changing mindsets in diverse stakeholders.

By: Griffin Cronk

Better Know an Educator: Roger Clark

“Hello Mr. Raven,” Roger Clark, of the Grand Canyon Trust, interrupts himself to greet a raven whirling above him on the west rim of Marble Canyon in Arizona. Roger has poised himself here because of his belief that a person should intimately know the places they work for. As the Grand Canyon Program Director this is the landscape he has dedicated his work, and impressive education, towards. Roger received his Master’s degree and PhD from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and quickly took up a position at Berkley as an assistant professor of Forest Sociology. His love of academia and his students kept him in the job until he was convinced, at the suggestion of one of his students, to become a river guide at 30 years old. For the next ten years Roger’s love of the natural world and education blended together on western rivers. His work for the Grand Canyon Trust, which began in 1989, consists of the promotion of renewable energy, the fight against uranium mining around the Grand Canyon, and work to stop a proposed tramway that would run into the bottom of the canyon. Meeting Roger, it is clear why his classes at Berkley were stock full of 300 students. Everything he says is wrapped in a laugh and it is as easy to ask questions of him as it is to joke with him. Roger Clark’s devotion, humor and knowledge stand as a powerful force in his Northern Arizonan community.

By: Grace Butler

Better Know an Educator: Mary O'Brien

We met Mary O’Brien at a small park on a bright Sunday afternoon in Richfield, Utah. A renowned ecologist working for the Grand Canyon Trust, Mary has degrees in sociology, elementary education, and a Ph.D. in botany. Mary and her husband have lived and worked in a number of places from Southern California to Eugene, Oregon, finally settling in Castle Valley, Utah. Mary has a storied career in toxics policy, social work, and was even considered for the directorship of Greenpeace. Small rocks, fossils, and bones cover the space not taken by stacks of papers, maps, and botany books in her charming mud-covered hay-bale construction home fronted by large windows facing south. Whether on the aspen-covered slopes of Monroe Mountain or the Gambel Oak foothills of the La Sal range, Mary’s enduring passion for science-based conservation and advocacy comes to the forefront in conversations about public lands grazing and the importance of protecting springs on national forests. Mary’s unstoppable drive comes from her perspective that it is “harder to watch things fall apart than trying to do something about it.” For over thirteen years with the Trust, Mary has been effecting conservation through tireless field work and persistence with federal land management agencies. Through two weeks of performing aspen transects and forest service spring assessments, Mary’s ecological knowledge impressed and inspired. As for being a career scientist, for Mary, “it doesn’t get better than being paid to tell the truth.”

By: Gardner Dee