The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) recently presented a national award to the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service (UW CES) for its work to implement a cooperative range monitoring program.
The USFS presented its National Rangeland Management Award to the
Sublette County UW CES cooperative permittee monitoring program at the
annual international meeting of the Society for Range Management (SRM)
in Louisville, Ky.The monitoring program was started by the Sublette
County UW CES office in 1996, and it has since expanded across Wyoming
and the West.
Cooperative range monitoring voluntarily brings together ranchers
holding permits to graze livestock on public lands with public land
management personnel from the USFS, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and
other agencies, said Eric Peterson, the UW CES educator who started the
program in Sublette County.
"This has provided an opportunity for agency specialists to teach
permittees about rangeland ecology, and it's an opportunity for range
specialists to have a better understanding of the interests and demands
producers must respond to in order to graze livestock on public lands,"
Peterson said.
Since the program was initiated, Peterson said, relations have improved
between permittees and federal land management agencies, and range
resources have also improved.
Accepting the national award were Peterson; Silver Creek Grazing
Association representative Joel Bousman, a Boulder-area cattle producer
who has actively been involved in the cooperative program since its
start; and Chad Hayward, a USFS range specialist on the Bridger-Teton
National Forest's Pinedale Ranger District.
Others key personnel in the program were Albert Sommers and other
grazing permittees in the Upper Green River area; other members of the
Silver Creek Grazing Association; USFS employees in Sublette County
including Barb Franklin and Jeff Hatch; and BLM employees including
Steve Laster.
Actively involved from UW CES, in addition to Peterson, were range
management specialist Mike Smith, watershed management specialist
Quentin Skinner, and former extension rangeland specialists Kelly Crane
and Paul Meiman.
The USFS award committee was "very impressed" by the group's efforts to
incorporate scientific principles into successful and sustainable range
management, said Cynthia McArthur, the USFS's liaison to the SRM. She is
based in Washington, D.C.
Peterson said, "An important part of the Sublette County program was the
educational programs we were able to create after receiving grant
funding from the BLM and Sublette County. That has helped lead to an
effort across Wyoming and the West to start voluntary range permittee
programs."
More than 2,000 copies of the bulletin, B-1169, Implementing a
Cooperative Permittee Monitoring Program, and 600 DVDs have been
distributed throughout the western United States.
The bulletin is available for free download at www.uwyo.edu/CES/PUBS/B1169.pdf.
Copies of B-1169 and/or the DVD can also be ordered free of charge from Peterson at (307) 367-4380 or eric@uwyo.edu.
In Sublette County, there is now joint monitoring of approximately
300,000 acres of federal lands involving nearly 15,000 cattle and 3,800
sheep.
