2023 Year in Review Video

 

2023 Range Camp

Range Camp was held in July at the SUU Mountain Center near Cedar City. Our 13 participants spent a week learning about the fundamentals of rangeland management, including ecological sites, stocking rates, grazing rotations, soils, plant identification, and monitoring techniques. They also heard about pursuing higher education and careers from a few of our professionals. Congratulations to Brooklin Goble and Sydney Bosh, who had the highest overall scores and will be provided an expense-paid trip to the international SRM meeting in Sparks, NV this January! Click here to read the full range camp report.

2023 Summer Tour

The Utah Section SRM Summer Tour was a great success! This year we toured Anthro Mountain and the Book Cliffs. Special thanks to Terrell Thayne, our Northern Chapter President-elect, for organizing the tour, as well as all of our presenters!

Utah SRM at the National Meeting in Boise

The Utah Section was well-represented at the national SRM meeting in Boise this February. Professional members Taylor Payne, Kris Hulvey, and Megan Nasto gave presentations on their work involving grazing management and soil carbon on the Three Creeks project in Rich County, and student members Sam Knuth, Eliza Cash, Ethan Ostraff, and Becca Black from BYU presented their research.

Taylor Payne presenting on grazing management on the Three Creeks project in Rich County.

Kris Hulvey presenting her work on the Three Creeks project in Rich County.

Our students also did a great job! Below are the student competition results:

  • SRM Collegiate Trail Boss Award: BYU (this is the highest award presented to student teams at SRM)
    BYU is the first team to win this award back-to-back!

  • Undergraduate Range Management Exam (URME): BYU Team, 1st place

    • Individual awards for URME:
      Curtis Drake (BYU), 1st place
      Ethan Ostraff (BYU), 2nd place
      Eliza Cash (BYU), 3rd place

  • Plant Identification: BYU Team, 5th place

  • Combined URME/Plant ID:
     Ethan Ostraff (BYU), 3rd place
    Eliza Cash (BYU), 4th place

  • Extemporaneous Speaking: Jackson VerSteeg (BYU), 2nd place

  • Rangeland Cup Team: BYU (Cole Kempton, Autumn Gudmundsen, Samuel Leigh, and Aiselyn Krebs), 3rd place

  • MS Graduate Student Presentation: Amber Johnson (BYU), 2nd place

  • High School Youth Forum: Sage Johansen (Elsinor, UT), Masonic Rangeland Scholarship

BYU Range Team:
Back row (L-R):  Jackson VerSteeg, Curtis Drake, Ethan Ostraff, Becca Black, Cole Kempton, Sam Knuth, Maria Kanenwisher
Middle row (L-R):  Samuel Leigh, Raechel Hunsaker, Eliza Cash, Autumn Gudmundsen, Kalista Paladeni, Aiselyn Krebs, Eliana Willis, SRM President Karen Launchbaugh.
Bottom row (L-R):  Russell Torgersen, Anna Pugmire, Melissa Burrell

(L-R) High School Youth Forum participants Kade Wilson, Beth Robinson, and Kit Rindlisbacher with advisor Jeff Barnes.

Utah SRM Fall Meeting:
Managing Rangelands During Drought

Special thanks to everyone who helped make our annual meeting a success! We had a great turnout and listened to excellent presentations from rangeland managers throughout the state. The reins have officially been passed to our current president, Steve Petersen, and we’d like to thank Lara Kitchen for her service to the Society as president for the past year!

Past President Lara Kitchen passes the reins to President Steve Petersen.

Lara Kitchen receives her Past President award from Dallen Smith.

Photo Contest

Congratulations to the winners of our 2022 photo contest!

United Nations Declare 2026 the International Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists

(Washington, D.C.) — On Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly in New York unanimously declared 2026 the International Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists (IYRP).

The Society for Range Management (SRM) has been a part of this effort since 2015, with a simple proposal submitted to federal agency leaders. A group of partners working to designate an IYRP coalesced at the 2016 International Rangeland Congress in Saskatoon. Since then, more than 300 organizations and 68 countries have joined together to raise awareness for the world's largest ecosystem - rangelands.

The resolution passed on March 15 affirms that “healthy rangelands are vital for contributing to economic growth, resilient livelihoods and the sustainable development of pastoralism.” It also recognizes that “pastoralism is a dynamic and transformative livelihood linked to the diverse ecosystems, cultures, identities, traditional knowledge and historical experience of coexisting with nature”. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the agency tasked with facilitating the implementation of the IYRP in 2026.

The IYRP will promote a wide variety of activities focused on rangelands and grasslands, including awareness raising on key issues, assistance in targeting research assessments of critical knowledge gaps, and facilitation of partnerships that combine resources to promote sustainable resource use and improved livelihoods.

"Many individuals, groups, and governments deserve praise for bringing this designation of an international year to fruition and SRM is proud to be involved since the inception of the idea. The Society would like to especially thank the Government of Mongolia for submitting the resolution and serving as a key player throughout the process," said SRM President Dr. Karen Launchbaugh.

"With this final approval, SRM looks forward to working with its global partners to design and implement 12 impactful months to raise the profile and support for rangelands and pastoral issues, improve understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by the rangeland ecosystem and pastoralists, and direct increased attention and resources to rangelands and those who manage them.”

IYRP Website

Good Grazing Makes Cent$ Connects Ranchers to Range Science

Contact: Mary Jo Foley-Birrenkott
Director of Membership & Outreach, SRM
srmoutreach@rangelands.org

January 25, 2022 – In an effort to connect farmers, ranchers, and land managers to current, useful range management resources, the Society for Range Management (SRM) launched Good Grazing Makes Cent$ (GGMC). Through conversation and collaboration between range scientists and ranchers, GGMC aims to provide practical, applicable, and economically feasible range management practices which can ultimately improve productivity of the land and the bottom dollar of the ranch.

“Good Grazing Makes Cent$ offers me a chance to ask questions in an interactive forum that can connect me to people in the academic world and bring it into a situation where I can use it on my own landscape,” Dave Voth, a Nevada ranch manager and program participant, said. The multifaceted program provides numerous deliverables for ranchers to quickly and easily access information on topics ranging from how the history of your land impacts today’s management decisions to best determining grazing intensity, duration, and timing. Each month, a new subject will be dissected through an e-newsletter, YouTube videos with experts, a live, interactive Facebook group, and SRM journals and articles. All the resources and topics will be housed online at goodgrazing.org and accessible to GGMC members at any time. Most importantly, GGMC members will drive the content. To best meet the needs of the range stewards utilizing the information, there will be multiple avenues to submit questions and connect with range scientists with solutions or other ranchers with similar experiences. Particularly in the Facebook group, participants will have the ability to get answers to their toughest range management questions in real time. Each newsletter will have “submit a question” options that will then be directed to experts or even covered in depth in future editions. “I can speak to other producers who have tried unique and progressive treatments and see how I can use some of those things and what may or may not make sense on my place,” Voth added.

Those interested in becoming GGMC members should visit goodgrazing.org for more information.