 Who Will Take Over the
Ranch?
As ranches change hands
and the economics of ranching and farming become
more difficult, vast acreages of prime western
lands are up for grabs. What happens next largely
depends on who buys the land, their philosophies,
and whether they can influence the economic
and regulatory overlays that touch this land. HCN's Who
Will Take Over the Ranch series examines the
West's private land trends as we move into the
new millennium.
Ranches
Changing Hands
Who
will take over the ranch?
As a real estate frenzy grips the West, conservationists
scramble to save a disappearing landscape.  Not
just a ranch: Bucks and acres
Carl Palmer hopes
to make his Adobe Ranch in California an economic
success to prove that open space can be financially
as well as environmentally valuable.
Biology:
The missing science
Studies by Montana’s
Andrew Hansen and Colorado’s Rick Knight offer
some of the first scientific evidence that preserving
ranch lands provides important benefits to surrounding
ecosystems.
Colorado couple turns healthy profit
from healthy beef
David and Kay James are doing a good
business raising "grass-finished" beef
on their ranch near Durango, Colo.
Conservation Easements
Write-off on the Range
Wielding conservation’s most powerful tool,
Reid Rosenthal walks a fine line between helping
the land and serving his wealthy clients.
Congress looks to reform a system with no steering
wheel
A proposal to overhaul the tax rules around conservation
easements has private-land conservationists worried,
but recent financial scandals show the need for some
reform.
Colorado tax credits make easements work for working
people
Conservation easements are considered the domain of
the wealthy, but in Colorado, tax credits are helping
farmers like Dorothy and Norman Kehmeier preserve their
family’s land.
Public Lands Grazing
The Big Buyout
Tough economics, drought, and increasing clashes
with other public-lands users are leading some ranchers
to consider taking the "golden saddle" – a
check from conservationists in exchange for their
grazing permits.
 One BLM district grabs the bull by the horns
On the Upper Deschutes area of Oregon, the Bureau
of Land Management is working to move cows off the
public land.
Public-lands ranchers: Should you trust this man?
Paul Larmer interviews longtime activist Andy Kerr,
director of the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign,
about grazing buyouts and the future of public-lands
ranching.
Buying ecological leverage
High Country News interviews Bill Hedden of the
Grand Canyon Trust about northern Arizona’s
Kane and Two Mile ranches, which the Trust and the
Conservation Fund have an exclusive option to purchase.
The Quivira Method - A New
Style of Ranching
Rangeland Revival
The Quivira Coalition wants to bring peace and
prosperity to the West’s
public grazing lands, but some critics question whether the collaboration-based
group can accomplish its goals.
The 'New Ranch' poster child hangs on by a thread
Rancher Jim Williams believes the Quivira Coalition
helped change his life, but restoring his arid rangeland
has proved difficult, and between drought and an
uncertain economy, the future of his ranch still
hangs in the balance.
Science: The chink in Quivira's armor
The Quivira Coalition
has a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting its claim
that its grazing methods work, but hard, independent
science on the topic is much harder to find.
 The Plains Ecosystems
The Greening of the Plains
A conservation movement is stirring
on the Great Plains, but local farmers are stuck with
a harsh
reality: It still pays to plow up virgin prairie.
You
can’t plant a prairie
Collaborative conservation may help revive both endangered
prairie ecosystems and the struggling farm communities
of the Great Plains.
Oil and Gas Development
Fighting for the Rocky Mountain Front
Montana rancher Karl Rappold is determined to save
his beloved Rocky Mountain Front from development
by the oil and gas industry .
Ranching Opinions from Writers
On the Range
Ranching the changing times
Bad economic times lead the writer to turn his ranching
career into a "sell-out" occupation: the
ranch-recreation business.
Have another pig-brain/beef-blood/chicken-spine
hamburger!
Now that mad cow disease is here, even carnivores have
to think twice before biting into a hamburger, because
the odds are that it’s not really a hamburger
after all
It's time for a radical change on the range
The writer signs on to a radical center attracting
ranchers and environmentalists in the West
Straight talk about Mad Cow from a mad rancher
The writer urges people to look for grassfed beef
raised locally to reduce the threat of Mad Cow disease
Saving ranchlands doesn't mean saving the rancher
The writer urges us to focus on saving the land,
not the rancher
Ruminating on cows
The writer ruminates on cows in Utah and finds them
more desirable than a boom economy built on "amenities."
A
Lesson in consensus from contentious Idaho
The writer says that once ranchers and environmentalists
found common ground, they started to cooperate to protect
the wild Owyhee
It takes a community to save a sage grouse
The writer says it’s up to locals to keep sage
grouse alive
One West
A rancher who founded the fast-growing Quivira Coalition
tells why collaboration is crucial to heal busted
lands and help wildlife
How not to fix conservation easements
The writers urge support for conservation easements
and their tax breaks as a way to protect private
land from development
Grazing buyouts help land and ranchers
The writer praises grazing buyouts as a way to help
land and ranchers
Home on a very small range
The writer considers the obligations of a backyard
rancher
Ego gates get my goat -- and that's just the beginning
The writer watches some of her neighbors puff up
their places with gigantic entrance gates
Can billionaire philanthropy save the earth?
The writer asks billionaires to step up and buy the
West
Real-estate lingo for the New Westerner
The writer reveals what real estate ads mean when
they say a former ranch is "pristine," "exclusive," or "scenic"
Why we need the ranch
The writer finds that New Westerners yearn for the
ranch
Mad cow threat opens the door to grassfed beef
The writer knows ranchers who want to market the
safest beef grown – grass fed – but who
can’t quite make it work.
The stories collected here
are funded by the generous donors
to the "Who Will Take
Over the Ranch?" project,
a series of stories on the plight
of the West's private lands.
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