Conservation and cattle mix
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune, by Mark Havnes
August 14, 2007
Where the grass is greener
Environmentalists run a real Western ranch, and help heal the land
JACOB LAKE, Ariz. - John Heyneman wants everyone to know at least this much about the ranches he's running north of the Grand Canyon for a pair of conservation groups:
"We're real ranchers, not a bunch of cowboys out here reading [poetry] or singing to the animals," says Heyneman, who is raising and grazing more than 1,000 head of cattle on the picturesque Kaibab Plateau and the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument just south of the Utah-Arizona line. "The cowboying we do is as real as anywhere in the country."
And, to Heyneman, any talk otherwise is just so much bull. After all, cattle are cattle - even if they are "green cows."
The Conservation Fund and Grand Canyon Trust bought the Kane and Two-Mile ranches - and the accompanying 860,000 acres of federal grazing permits - in September 2005 for $4.5 million. The price tag included 1,000 acres of deeded property and a ranch house, where Theodore Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill once stayed.
Donations and grants, including $1 million from Wal-Mart through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, helped pay the tab.
The two ranches - now combined under the moniker North Rim Ranch - aim to blend multiple-land use, including livestock grazing, with land-restoration efforts.
When the "green cows" first were released onto the allotments last year, traditional ranchers were skeptical.
Conservationists grazing cattle? they asked.
"There were a lot of misconceptions by the public when we bought the [permits] about what we can and can't do," recalls Heyneman, who was reared on a Wyoming ranch and earned a master's degree in soil science. "But as we began operating on the permits, they could see we were actually doing ranching."
Bas Aja, director of governmental affairs for the Arizona Cattlemen's Association in Phoenix, says he doesn't have any big beefs with how the conservation groups are running their range.
That doesn't mean the "green" ranchers don't have room to improve, he says.
"To have a Ph.D. in ranching is something you can't get with two years of college. It only comes from 40 years of working on the land every day."
Since Heyneman took over the northern Arizona grazing ventures in May 2006, he has endured his share of Excedrin moments: fires chewing up pastureland, cows wandering into the national park, too much rain sometimes and not enough water other times.
In short, typical rancher headaches.
And some not so typical.
"Last year, as we were gathering the cattle," Heyneman says, "there was a horse-endurance race we found ourselves in the middle of."
This year the conservation groups are running about 450 cattle on the Kane Ranch permits and 600 on the Two-Mile. Those numbers are regulated by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
"They call the shots," he says.
The Kane Ranch is functioning at about 60 percent of the allotted cattle because a huge wildfire last year destroyed one of two primary pastures.
On Two-Mile, permitted cattle are limited by a deer-habitat-restoration project from a fire 10 years ago.
Heyneman said the conservation coalition readily agreed to keep off the cattle.
"A different permittee might have raised hell," he says.
Balancing grazing intensity with ecological integrity is a growing trend in the Rocky Mountains, including at an Idaho ranch that manages 800,000 acres.
"There are also a lot of smaller ranches owned by conservation-minded folks," Heyneman says.
Bill Hedden, executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust, sees the northern Arizona ranch as a long-term effort that will benefit public-land restoration.
"The [permits] had deteriorated to almost nothing," he says of the land's condition when the green groups took over. "Now we're creating a research center for restoration programs."
Soon after the ranchlands were acquired, Hedden notes, scientists and volunteers set up 650 study sites to collect information about the land and took inventories of plants, animals and archaeological sites.
"We tried to follow a rigorous protocol for gaining valid [data] to form a basis for future research," Hedden says.
That information will be analyzed in conjunction with research from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff to help guide management and restoration efforts.
Hedden says this operation does not have the problems the trust faces with permits it holds on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.
Since 2000, Hedden says, the trust has been approached by ranchers willing to relinquish their permits while the BLM, which manages the 1.9 million-acre monument, conducted environmental assessments on whether grazing should continue in the rugged, dry region.
Of the three permits the trust holds, one no longer is open to grazing, another can take cattle only part of the time, and the final allotment supports only a fraction of the cows that once grazed it.
In addition, ranchers opposed to a conservation group owning grazing permits and using public funds, sued the trust.
"They [ranchers] have lost every round, at every level, in every court," Hedden says. "They are appealing the latest ruling, so everything is no closer to resolution."
Mike Ford, the Nevada and southwest director of the Arlington, Va.-based Conservation Fund, points to the Arizona ranch as one of many of his group's projects.
"This operation [ranch] was like a doughnut hole in an environmentally sensitive area," he says. "We were familiar with the area before, so when we had an opportunity to expand our brand of conservation and partner with government agencies and public and private landowners on a large-scale rehabilitation project, we took it."
He says all profits from the ranch go back into its operation.
The group has been successful in working with once-skeptical neighbors, Ford says, including cattle associations.
"Our goal is not to run anybody off, but work for the common good in all things," he says. "We're knowledgeable in range science and in ranching - not a bunch of Birkenstock-wearing hippies."
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