Meet our Guests: John Brennan and Emily James

Emily James

Associate; Brennan, Jewett, & Associates

Colusa, CA

John Brennan

Founder/Owner; Brennan, Jewett, & Associates

Davis, CA

11/14/18

To most people, California is not the place for rice farming. Years of drought and groundwater pumping so extreme that the Central Valley is literally sinking are not generally conditions that are conducive to a water-intensive crop like rice. Emily James is an associate at John Brennan’s land management firm, Brennan, Jewett, & Associates, and work together to manage the historic Davis Ranch, near Colusa, CA. The ranch has been owned by the same family since 1857, so its water rights predate the damming and overallocation of the Sacramento River. Wielding the power of these rights, John and Emily are helping the farm find direction and stay relevant in a changing world.

That relevance initially came from restoring habitat for shore birds. By shifting the flooding of rice fields, the ranch was able to mimic the historical Central Valley floodplain and provide habitat for waterfowl. Today, the ranch works with the Audubon Society, Nature Conservancy, and Point Blue Observatory, and its fields are home to 230 species of wildlife in an area where wildlife has been pushed out by agriculture and urban sprawl since the nineteenth century.

Since, the ranch has also begun to plant hedgerows with native plants that provide corridors for animals like deer that are otherwise left without contiguous habitat. They have also begun a project to plant milkweed and other flowering plants to support monarch butterflies in their migration. Emily and John stressed how starkly these choices strayed from the pesticidal practices that farming in the United States has embraced since the 1970’s. These projects are not just benefitting habitat connectivity, they are serving Davis Ranch economically. Brennan’s push to commodify labels and certifications from partners like the Audubon Society on packaging help to sell and create a market for sustainable farming. Rather than work backward in an area where water is highly monitored and controlled by humans, through the help of John Brennan and Emily James, Davis Ranch and others like it are finding ways to create habitat for wild animals by working within the limits of human development.

By Darby Williams

Meet our Guests: Mary O'Brien

Mary O’Brien

Utah Forest Program Director, Grand Canyon Trust

Castle Valley, UT

9/28/18

Mary O’Brien, ecologist for the Grand Canyon Trust, sits with dusty, Chaco-clad feet outstretched under the shade of a pinon pine, explaining our assignment: an ecological assessment of a spring near Monroe Mountain in southern Utah. She’d like us to report on the spring’s habitat, its species and their relationships to each other and the spring. Simply stated, she wants us to observe. “I see science as a way to interview the world,” she explains. This sentiment represents Mary well. She possesses a curiosity and devotion to the natural world that is hard to come by. Melding biology with politics, activism, and passion, Mary understands the intersectional way that science merges with other disciplines.

Mary often wears a wide, eye-crinkled smile or an intensely serious frown. While showing us a dying aspen stand, she wears the latter. Leaning over a juvenile tree, she notes its buds have been browsed, explaining that its opportunity for growth this year has been stunted. It’s something most of us wouldn’t notice, but Mary is acutely aware of the destruction that ungulates, especially cattle, are inflicting upon our public lands. During our two weeks with her, she teaches us how to notice the signs of an ecosystem in trouble, from overgrazed bunchgrasses to murky brown creek water. But Mary doesn’t just immerse us in her world of ecology. On a crisp, sunny afternoon at the Koosharem Guard Station in the Fish Lake National Forest, she introduces us to two men she works with in a collaborative. The collaborative aims to bring people of different backgrounds together to decide how best to manage grazing on public lands. Mary is the only environmentalist and only woman in the group and uses her voice to “speak for the plants,” as she puts it. She is not intimidated to be in the minority: it fuels her fire.

One thing that’s clear about Mary is that she is tireless in her environmental efforts. For the past 35 years, she has worked sixty hours a week, pushing against the strong conservative forces that seek to destroy the land. After some wins, but many defeats, she still remains steadfast. Walking in an aspen grove, I asked Mary how she stays hopeful. “Well, if I feel defeated then they’ve won,” she replies, chuckling. Knowing Mary as I do now, I’m certain she won’t back down until she’s won.

By Abby Hill

Photo by Whitney Rich

Meet our Guests: Steve & Robin Boies

Steve & Robin Boies

Owners, Hubbard-Vineyard Ranch

Jackpot, NV

9/15/2018

Robin and Steve Boies smile down at us with welcoming eyes and lean back casually against the propane tank in their yard, the word “LOVE” graffitied on the side in big white and blue lettering. We gather on the residential portion of their Hubbard-Vineyard Ranch, located just outside of Jackpot, Nevada. The ranch has been passed down through four generations and is equally a profession, passion and lifestyle for the couple. As we watch their countless dogs roam free under the gentle late-summer sun, the Boies admit their only complaint is the constant whoosh of passing cars on Highway 93, which runs parallel to their property.

Steve and Robin own 13,000 acres of private land, and the rest of their 130,000 ranching acres are under control of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). At the center of competing interests between state and federal bureaucracy, mining companies, environmental groups, and fellow ranchers, the Hubbard-Vineyard ranch reveals the great complexities that arise for the modern-day rancher in Northeastern Nevada.

The Boies are major proponents of combining ranching with conservation. They practice an Allan Savory-esque holistic management style which supports grassland regrowth and requires two years of pasture rest for every year of use.

 As our conversation turns from crested wheatgrass re-emergence to the impact of the Paris Agreement withdrawal, it is clear that the Boies are well informed and deeply passionate about resolving the multipronged issues they face. While there are no obvious solutions, it is comforting to know there are people like the Boies willing and dedicated to push in the right direction.

By Amara Killen

Meet our Guests: Todd Wilkinson

Todd Wilkinson

Journalist & Founder, Mountain Journal

Bozeman, MT

9/12/18

Introducing ourselves under the glaring sun on Ted Turner’s Flying D Ranch in Southwest Montana, Todd Wilkinson posed a seemingly simple prompt that would become deceivingly complex: “Stand and state something that you believe to be true. Be confident in your conviction.”

 Throughout our week with Todd, a non-fiction writer, journalist, and creator of the online environmental publication, Mountain Journal, we became accustomed to his zeal for finding the truth and poking holes in people’s preconceived notions of wildlife in Greater Yellowstone. He pushed us to ask the “hard” questions and challenge our own beliefs as well as those of our speakers. This happened almost immediately, as many students disagreed with Ted Turner’s sole private ownership of the expansive Flying D, while Todd defended Turner’s domain, which is far from the public eye and the difficulties of federal management. Todd’s opinion was at first unpopular, but this encouraged him to show us the nuance within conservation, revealed further as we traveled through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. He introduced us to the concept of “loving a place to death” and the issues inherent to federal land management. Yellowstone is not necessarily “wilder” than the Flying D, even though the former is a preserved wilderness and the latter a working bison ranch.

 Todd is no stranger to controversy: among his guests were Turner Enterprises biologist, Carter Kruse, and Yellowstone Park superintendent Dan Wenk. Kruse, in order to reintroduce Westslope cutthroat trout to a creek on the Flying D, eradicated all fish in 70 miles of stream. Wenk is in the middle of a battle over his own legacy, as the Trump administration unexpectedly seeks to remove him from his post at Yellowstone. Todd wasn’t shy about sharing his thoughts on these complicated topics, but didn’t try to turn anyone to his point of view. His mission was to help us recognize our own biases, and always ask the hard questions, both of our guests and of ourselves.

By Lauren Ewell

Meet our Guests: Daniel Anderson and Louise Johns

Daniel Anderson

Rancher

Gardiner, MT

9/8/2018

Louise Johns

Photographer/Journalist

Gardiner, MT

Between two Cowboy Poetry posters in a restored historic barn, Daniel Anderson and Louise Johns shared their personal dogmas about ranching and journalism, respectively.  We listen intently to both speakers, necks craning to glimpse the horses corralled in the rainy Montana afternoon. Both of our hosts are no strangers to their fields; Daniel, in a straw hat with a hole on the brim and Louise in worn cowboy boots, camera slung around her neck. Anderson’s family began ranching in Tom Miner Basin in the 1950s when his grandfather, then suffering from the traumas of being a POW in Nazi Italy, purchased the family ranch in the Paradise Valley of Montana. Johns’s father, a highly respected photographer, was Editor in Chief of National Geographic.

Daniel’s father, Hannibal, was the first rancher in the area to support wolf and rancher coexistence and today the ranch is prime grizzly and wolf habitat. “Never take living here for granted,” Daniel urged us to think critically about how we share the land with the wildlife. Not only is the family sharing their ranch with predators, Daniel has created Common Ground, a retreat program on the ranch that fosters connections between people and encourages understanding of the land. He emphasizes that the land has a lot to teach about how we treat it and how we treat each other and that by bringing people together in Tom Miner Basin, he can share a little of his land ethic and inspire positive change. He asserts that the land is “far more valuable when it is shared” between both humans and wildlife.

            For most people, watching a grizzly bear mauling would end in distain for the animal and a desire to remove the species from the landscape. For Louise Johns, this experience was frightening but bred respect instead of fear. As a photo journalist who has studied the Anderson Ranch for many years, Louise understands the complexities that exist between humans and wildlife. She stresses “immersion in a place to make the pictures actually matter.” Just as the place and the people in it shape the photos, Louise’s photos are helping to redefine perceptions around ranching and the cowboy myth of the “Wild West”. The Anderson Ranch and the people within it challenge those they meet to be a part of the land rather than a force upon it.

By Darby Williams

Photos by Jessie Brandt and Darby Williams

Meet our Guests: Carter Kruse

Carter Kruse

Director of Conservation, Turner Enterprises

Bozeman, MT

9/7/2018

            Carter Kruse, the Director of Conservation and Coordinator of the Biodiversity Divisions of Turner Enterprises, sits with us in one of the few developed areas of the Flying D Ranch. The Flying D is the flagship ranch of Ted Turner, and an iconic part of Turner’s quest for ecological restoration and rewilding of the West. Kruse has played a critical role in the Turner vision for what this property could look like. As fisheries manager, he developed and put into action the restoration of 60 miles of Cherry Creek, which flows through the center of the ranch. Once brimming with native Westslope Cutthroat trout, they were outcompeted via the introduction of Brook and Brown trout, both fish invasive to the western states. Kruse’s plan involved poisoning the water, killing all fish in Cherry Creek, then reintroducing Westslope cutthroat trout to the river. This has proved one of the most ambitious river restoration projects to date. 

            The Biodiversity Divisions of Turner Enterprises, according to Kruse, represent “the largest private effort on behalf of endangered species preservation”. But he also refers to Turner Enterprises as a “reasonable illusion” concerning their efforts in conservation. He realizes that raising bison in a landscape with fences is not ‘natural’ and would probably be looked down upon by the public, especially the ranch’s use of feedlots to raise the bison to a correct weight. Kruse also looks down on trophy hunting, both because it is a form of bragging, but also because it is an ineffective way to manage an animal population if you only kill the largest, healthiest males. Yet he admits that it brings in a lot of money for Turner Enterprises and enables their conservation work to continue.

After lunch I ask Kruse what his favorite part of his job is. With little pause, he replies that his favorite part is being able to go out to a creek on Turners property and test for fish size and health, or more simply, just going fishing.

By David Dregallo

Meet our Guests: Todd Traucht

Todd Traucht

Bison Manager, Flying D Ranch

Gallatin Gateway, MT

9/6/2018

At first, Todd Traucht didn’t speak more than needed. He hid behind a beard and a cowboy hat and communicated as much in shrugs as in words. But as our time with him wore on, a gently self-effacing smile began to show, and he spoke about Ted Turner’s Flying D Ranch with increasing length and enthusiasm. Todd has been at the Flying D for 37 years, working his way up from mowing the lawn to managing the 5500 American Bison which generate the bulk of the ranch’s income.

The Flying D occupies the liminal between public wildlife preserve and private ranch; at 113,000 acres, its separate pastures are larger than most ranches. There, the bison roam and browse on grass until, in the last days of their lives, Todd and his staff corral them into a feedlot and finish the grass-fed meat on corn. To ranch is to live alongside death, especially on the Flying D. This tension has given Todd a darkly pragmatic humor. He rocked back on the heels of his boots, gesturing at his collie Agate, and told us of the time she leapt from the pickup to chase a wolf. “I thought, well, she was a good dog,” he said, but not even the beard could hide his smile of relief that Agate, who returned from her chase alive and unharmed, still curled at his feet.

By Noah Dunn

Meet our Guests: Zoë Hanley and Gabe Spence

Zoë Hanley

Institutional Researcher, Whitman College

Gabe Spence

Wolf Expert

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Methow Valley, WA

8/30/18

After winding our way through the charred spruce of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and up a rocky forest road above the Methow Valley, we began our day with wolf biologists Zoë Hanley and Gabe Spence, two strong-willed minds with sharp eyes and a weariness for ranchers. Crouching over tracks, we learned how to read a wolf’s gait, and discussed the complex family structure and specifics of wolf behavior regarding their predation on livestock. Along with sharing her “risk” maps—that is, a generated topography of where wolves are most likely to kill cattle—Zoë posed the idea that the rancher versus wolf debate is at its core a societal question: “Who gets the right of way?” A political more than a science-driven issue, both researchers admitted the undeniable bias on each side of the value-divide.

The rest of the afternoon we strode toward a pocket of forest frequented by the “Lookout” wolf pack, stopping along the way to examine scat and practice our tracking eye. Stepping quietly off the overgrown road and into a saddle, we searched our peripheral for movement and ached for a response as Gabe let out a long set of howls. In the evening, we listened below the Douglas Firs of camp as Zoë and Gabe grappled with questions that left my peers and me unsure of where we stand, talking into the night of sacrifice and who belongs: What, if not science, should be the facilitator between the opposition? How do we create a baseline of trust and respect? To what degree do we need wolves? Ultimately, what do we want?

By: Jessie Brandt

Photos by: David Dregallo

Meet our Guests: Todd Nash, Rod Childers, and John Williams

Todd Nash

Rancher, Wallowa County Commissioner

Rod Childers

Rancher

John Williams

OSU Extension Officer

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Wallowa County, Oregon

8/25/18

Todd Nash and Rod Childers are both cattle ranchers who have struggled to maintain their lifestyle after the reintroduction of wolves into Oregon, and Todd was elected in 2016 as a Wallowa County commissioner. John Williams is a recently retired Oregon State University Extension agent, and has conducted research on the impacts of wolves on cattle.

Todd and Rod have both experienced cattle losses due to wolf attacks, yet they remain committed to finding a civil and creative solution to the problem of wolf depredation on cattle. While the ranchers expressed their frustrations with the management of the species, they have accepted the wolves’ presence, but desire permission from the state and federal government to defend their own property. John’s research sheds light on how wolves impact cattle in ways other than plain depredation: an encounter between the two species can cause PTSD and create long-term behavior problems in cattle. John adds another dimension to the ranchers’ solution: he wants to normalize the killing of “problem wolves” by expanding wolf populations. This would allow ranchers like Todd and Rod to eliminate wolves that threaten their cattle and purge the wolf population of behaviors that bring them into conflict with humans.

By: Cindy Abrams

Photos by: Ethan Thomas and Mitch Cutter

Meet our Guests: Doug McDaniel

Doug McDaniel

Rancher

Wallowa County, OR

8/24/18

Standing with arms crossed over a shirt that faded seamlessly into the backdrop of blue Oregon sky while his border collie Hawk nuzzled his boots, octogenarian Doug McDaniel looked every part the rancher. Doug was born and raised in Wallowa County, and after a career in road construction, he now devotes his considerable passion and energy to a venture close to his heart: restoring the natural meanders of the Wallowa River where it flows through his ranch. As he walked us along its banks, we learned how Doug’s resources and vision enabled the rehabilitation of the riparian areas he recalls from his childhood, even if, while navigating a myriad of bureaucracies, that meant absorbing tens of thousands of dollars in losses to his own pocket. Said Doug while looking lovingly out over his river, “Everybody needs a-piece-uh land they can take care of . . . The only good belief is one you’ve got some conviction in.”

By Noah Dunn

Photo by James Baker