Shining Horizons: Ranching for Resilience on Rocky Mountain Rangelands

A photography exhibit at Off the Beaten Path, Steamboat Springs, Colorado

May 2011

By Matt Barnes

Director, Colorado Section SRM

Photo by Matt Barnes

As a rangeland conservationist and ranch manager in western Colorado, I have the opportunity to live and work in a land of great beauty.  Indeed, the western landscape is what drew me to the rangeland profession in the first place.  Over the years, I’ve tried to capture a little bit of that beauty with my digital camera.  In the last year or so I’ve been doing a lot of ranch work, and since the ranching world tends to require long hours, I’ve often found myself working in photogenic places during the low-angle amber light of dawn and dusk, and many times I’ve realized that I was standing in a photograph, I just had to pull out my pocket digital, compose the shot, press the shutter button, and a great image was transferred from reality to pixels.

My photography has progressed from a pursuit of perfect, pristine landscapes to a documentation of living and working on the land.  What really excites me, as a land steward, as a writer and artist, and as a citizen, is harmony of humans with the rest of nature—not standing apart, either as directors or as leading actors in front of a static backdrop, but as an integral part of the greater whole:  a complex, self-organizing, adaptive system.

Photo by Matt Barnes

The American West is primarily a rangeland landscape, along with forested mountains and, in those few places that can be irrigated, grass meadows or small tracts of farmland.  But most of it is still rangeland, because it doesn’t make sense as farmland, ecologically or economically.  So, living on the land in most of the West means hunting and gathering, or the natural extensions of those life-ways: herding and gardening.  These activities, in and of themselves, are neither beneficial nor detrimental; their impact on the greater whole depends on how they are managed.  While in some places we are living with the legacy of poorly managed livestock grazing, there are many examples of livestock grazing where the health of the land is stable or improving. 

These examples of land stewardship for resilience are the heart of the next West, the agrarian West, and a few of them are featured in an exhibit of my best photographs, on display this month at Off the Beaten Path in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Photo by Matt Barnes

The exhibit is subtitled “ranching for resilience” because the best stewards recognize that they are part of a greater whole, and they manage for its resilience: the capacity of the system to withstand disturbance and retain or resume its essential structure and function.  Resilience goes beyond equilibrium concepts of sustainable yield of any product or even optimization of competing land uses, to embrace a non-equilibrium world.  In the long run, nothing can be sustained in perpetuity because the system is always evolving; the ultimate unforeseen consequence of our success is that we create a new reality to which we must then adapt, or be replaced.  To surpass sustainability, the goal of land management should be to maintain or enhance the resilience of systems in desirable states, and to find and capitalize on opportunities to improve the functioning of systems in undesirable states. In so doing, stewards strive to create harmony in landscapes of great beauty.

My photographs are an attempt to capture a little bit of this dynamic world of rangeland stewardship.  This exhibit is an opportunity to share a glimpse of this land of beauty with others, especially those who do not have the opportunity to live it every day.  If you are in Steamboat Springs this month, I hope you will stop by Off the Beaten Path and have a look.

Photo by Matt Barnes

Editor’s note:  Matt Barnes, CPRM, is Director (2010-2011) of the Colorado Section SRM, and serves the SRM on the Rangelands Editorial Board and the Applied Science Task Force.  He is owner of Shining Horizons Land Management, and manages the Howell Ranch near Cimarron, Colorado, from May-October.  You can follow his blog and see more of his photographs at www.ShiningHorizons.com.

 

Colorado Section Meeting

By Julia Workman, SRM Outreach Intern

I recently received a heartfelt Colorado welcome during my first trip to the Western Slope portion of the state for the Colorado Section SRM’s Winter Meeting in Grand Junction. Held jointly with the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s Habitat Partnership Program (HPP) on November 30-December 2, this event was a great opportunity to meet many of the active members from another section.

The same section that organized a great international Annual Meeting last February didn’t disappoint this winter. The organizers pulled a great set of speakers together to support their theme, Wildlife Habitat Management.

Officer installation occurred at the business meeting early Wednesday morning, as well as updates on this involved section’s various happenings, the Billings meeting latest, and outreach news. After Director of Outreach and Leadership Development Aleta Rudeen brought members up-to-date on the current changes in SRM, I gave a talk on what I have learned throughout the course of my Outreach Internship position with SRM and the interviews I have conducted as part of that program. Stay tuned later this month for a summary blog post focusing on my internship experience and what I have learned from talking with SRM members this semester.

After the business meeting, CSSRM and HPP reconvened together for the day’s symposia. Talks during the meeting covered a broad range of topics, from defining habitat to the effects of pine beetles on Colorado’s forests, and from riparian area habitat management to the effects of CRP on wildlife habitat.

One of my favorite talks was “The Wisdom Body: Nutrition, Health, and Nature’s Pharmacoepia.” Dr. Fred Provenza focused on the ways that animals—and people, too—learn to eat various foods based on their culture and the primary and secondary compounds found in them. It was an interesting and unique talk in defense of his assertion that natural landscapes serve as nutrition centers and pharmacies for both herbivores and those who eat them.

Another great talk, "Ranching for Wildlife, or What's Good for Livestock is Good for Wildlife" was given by rancher Kelley Bater. In it, he focused on the livestock improvements he has made on his own ranch and how developing for livestock helps wildlife, as well. It was an interesting perspective on an important topic!

The award presentations at the Wednesday night banquet recognized some outstanding people such as the recipients of the Excellence in Rangeland Conservation award, the LeValley family of Hotchkiss. See some of the management practices being implemented on LeValley ranch here.

The highlight of the evening for many was John Fielder’s visually striking presentation of his new photography book, Ranches of Colorado. For the book, John traveled all over the state of Colorado, photographing fifty ranches in order to capture the open space and habitat that ranches provide.

Overall, the Colorado Section helped host an excellent section meeting. I gained a great deal from both the meeting content and the chance to speak with many of the section members. Thank you, Colorado Section, for this introduction to another portion of your beautiful state! I can’t wait to visit again soon!