This is an interesting concept. Imagine the wildlife folks actually working with landowners to find out about the wildlife we raise for them. Know anything about this, Oldtimer?
Ranchers as biologists
By JEFF GEARINO
Southwest Wyoming bureau
Monday, March 06, 2006
GREEN RIVER -- Longtime Sublette County rancher John Andrikopoulos knows he has an awful lot of sage grouse on the more than 15,000 acres of private and leased land used by his cattle operation. And there are neighboring ranches with good sage grouse habitat as well.
But unfortunately -- when it comes to the big decisions made by government agencies about how best to manage species such as sage grouse considered for special protection under the Endangered Species Act -- just knowing you have sage grouse on your land doesn't really count for much. Not without hard data to back it up.
Andrikopoulos and other western Wyoming ranchers are going after that hard data through a four-year project developed under the auspices of the Wyoming Wildlife Heritage Foundation.
The pilot project aims to develop programs and methods to help ranchers compile much-needed data about wildlife and wildlife habitat on their land. With that data, ranchers could then integrate agricultural land use with wildlife habitat management planning -- and maybe get a bigger say in federal decisions that affect wildlife on private lands in Wyoming.
"We see what's going on out there every day on the ground, but so often the rancher defers ... to the Game and Fish (Department) or (U.S. Fish and Wildlife) Service and the expertise of others. And while he's kind of not ignored, he's not a player," Andrikopoulos said. "Hopefully, this process is going to get us to the point where the rancher can become a player in all this data that's out there."
A contribution from EnCana Oil and Gas USA Inc. to the Wildlife Heritage Foundation included a donation of about $180,000 to help fund part of the unique ranching/wildlife planning project.
A consultant is working to design the system that will combine agricultural land management with wildlife and wildlife habitat management, officials involved in the project said.
The end result in 2008 will be a computer model that can be used by any ranch owner in Wyoming to increase, enhance and maintain wildlife habitat, said consultant Dave Lockman with Wildlife Management Services of the Rockies LLC.
"This basically gives ag producers the opportunity to make some contributions to an active management program to help prevent the listing (under the Endangered Species Act) of species like the sage grouse," Lockman said in a phone interview.
"Ranchers want to make a contribution to wildlife, and I think this is another forum for them to do so," Lockman said.
Three pilot ranches
Lockman said the project involves the development of multidisciplinary planning for three different ranches in Wyoming. The participating ranches are similar in their livestock operations, but have different kinds of wildlife habitat.
As part of the project, inventory work began in early 2005 on Andrikopoulos's 15,000-acre ranching operation in Sublette County. Inventory collection will begin in March on an approximately 45,000-acre ranch in Fremont County, according to plans.
Lockman said officials were in the process of selecting the third ranch, which most likely will be located in Carbon County. A second oil and gas company is being considered to fund the third pilot test ranch.
"Basically, the process we go through is to first identify what (wildlife) is out there now, what the wildlife habitat is, what the habitat relationships are and how the rancher is using that habitat," Lockman said.
Under the project, each rancher will set livestock, cropland and wildlife habitat management goals and objectives. From that, an agriculture/wildlife management plan will be developed for each ranch. The plans will include site-specific habitat improvement plans.
"From what we learn in applying a process tailored to each of the three ranches ... a model will be developed for integrated agriculture/wildlife planning and management that will have the capabilities of application on any Wyoming ranch," Lockman said.
"We're going to be designing a system that is feasible for the rancher to do, including the monitoring and the gathering of that baseline information he'll need," he said. "Plus maybe we can show them where they can go for some funding to get this stuff done."
Sublette project
Andrikopoulos's ranch is about 10 miles outside of Daniel. The most important part of the project is the gathering of baseline data on habitat and wildlife that can then be used later to plan management goals and objectives, he said.
"This project is one that comes from a need for ranchers and agriculturalists to go beyond their anecdotal understanding of their interaction between livestock and wildlife and how all of that can be better served by creating a good, solid baseline inventory of what's on the land," he said in a phone interview.
"We cover the ground on our ranches -- if not by foot, then on horseback or in pickups or four-wheelers," he said.
"We see what's out there every day on the ground ... It would take multitudes of people to do what a rancher can do simply by jotting down a few diary notes about where he sees various species and what they're doing," he said. "When those notations become part of a collective survey like we're doing now, they can yield a huge amount of information about what the animals are doing out there."
Andrikopoulos said with all the outside pressures Wyoming's ranching industry is facing, that baseline information can be a powerful tool.
"The rancher needs to have enough information about his land and the federal or state land he runs on and his own private land ... so that he can demonstrate what's there, how his cattle interact with it and how he can, in fact, be a part of that whole biological setting," Andrikopoulos said.
Southwest Wyoming bureau reporter Jeff Gearino can be reached at 307-875-5359 or at
[email protected].
http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2006/03/06/news/wyoming/7de8eaf4015813c787257128002882d6.txt
