Steve and Robin Boies

Owners, Ranchers, Boies Ranch

Jackpot, NV

9/15/2022

Sunken into plush couches in a warm living room brimming with books and artwork, twenty college students get a glimpse into the lives of the ranchers who live there. Steve and Robin Boies have been immersed in the world of ranching their whole lives. In the 1950s, Robin's family moved to this ranch; a piece of land made up of both BLM and private land, in Jackpot Nevada. Between mouthfuls of Robin’s homemade coffee cake we ask them about how they sustainably manage their cattle who roam as far as the mountain ranges that distantly line the horizon. We eat up their responses almost as eagerly as we do the cake. Steve tells us that he sees the climate change through his cattle, who have suffered in increasingly dry years. He expresses that range practices such as frequently rotating cattle, fencing off springs, and actively restoring sage grouse habitat are both beneficial to the land and his cattle operation. While their environmental efforts are rooted in their own ideological backings, their restorative work is enforced by regulations from the Bureau of Land Management. Witnessing the frustrations these regulations incite for their fellow ranchers, the couple pioneered the Shoesole Resource Management Group, a collective ranching effort that established collaboration between ranchers and BLM, repairing previously antagonistic relationships notorious between the two groups. Before we set off through the tall, bright-green grass behind their house, Robin imparts her hope that militant, anti-government ranchers like Cliven Bundy will not be seen as the face of rural ranching. The Boies couple works to model an alternative to this representation, taking part in an openly communicative, if not amiable, “interrelationship and interdependence” between private ranchers and the BLM.

By Tali Hastings