Rangeland Monitoring: Making your data work for you.

Join the Public Lands Council for a rangeland monitoring webinar on May 4, 2021, at 7:30 p.m. EDT!

REGISTER HERE!

Monitoring range conditions is an important part of your operation’s productivity. Not only does it optimize your allotment utilization and pasture health, but it also assists you with your permit renewals and staving off challenges to allotments. During this webinar, the Public Lands Council will discuss monitoring, various tools, how to improve coordination with federal agencies, and how to make your monitoring work for you. In this webinar we will cover the following objectives:

  1. Underscore the need to do range monitoring for:
    • Permit renewals
    • Optimizing allotment and pasture productivity
    • Staving off challenges to allotments
  2. How to do monitoring
    • Various technologies
    • How to do monitoring in conjunction with your federal agencies
    • How to improve Rangeland Health Assessments
  3. How to improve monitoring coordination with agencies
      • Identify existing issues from places where it’s not going well – speak to those producer concerns
      • Feedback from agencies – what do they need from you to make the permitting/adjustment/evaluation process easier?

Have you registered yet? Click here!

Guest Panelists:

Niels Hansen – Niels is a third-generation rancher from Rawlins, WY, the family ranch is a cow/calf/ yearling operation operating on the high desert of Wyoming. Working cooperatively with the University of Wyoming and the BLM, the ranch has collected over 20 years of monitoring data that supports the benefits of good land and livestock management for the livestock, the wildlife and the community. Niels served as Chairman of the Wyoming State Grazing Board and President of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. In 2000, the ranch received the BLM Rangeland Management Stewardship Award and in 2004 was co-winner of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association Stewardship Award.

Scott Sims – Scott Sims and his family are ranchers at McFadden, in southeastern Wyoming. They are practitioners of holistic management and low cost production. The family has implemented practices such as windrow grazing, high intensity short term grazing, May calving, and selecting cows with lower body weight. The ranch is located in rough
country with elevations that rise between 7000 and 8000 feet. They have worked out a plan to fit the cows to the environment. Sims currently serves as president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and also serves on the Wyoming Stock Growers Land Trust Board of Directors.

Shannon Sims – Shanon Sims grew up on the family ranch near McFadden, WY.  After completing a BS in Animal Science from the University of Wyoming, he returned to the ranch with wife Melinda.  After seven years of working as an employee, he was made a partner in Sims Cattle Company, LLC in 2007. He now operates the business with his parents, Scott and April, sister Kendra, wife Melinda, and kids Kagan and Jentry. Shanon planned to use his Animal Science degree to develop beef genetics, but soon discovered that resource management and a sharp pencil were key to operating a profitable beef operation and has pursued information supporting that discovery ever since.

Cheryl Newberry – Newberry resides in Rawlins, WY, and serves as the Rangeland Management Specialist for the Rawlins BLM field office. Cheryl was born and raised in the mountains of Colorado and went to college in agriculture in Texas. She received my B.S. in Animal Science from Angelo State University in 1988, and her M.S. in Range Science from Texas A&M University in 1990. Newberry started working for the BLM in 1990 as a Rangeland Management Specialist and has been working at the Rawlins Field Office for more than 30 years. She says it is an incredibly rewarding job working with ranchers improving the ground. When she is not working, Newberry and her husband raise a few cattle west of Rawlins.