[SRM] Fw: [EXT]Rangeland Restoration Project + Internship for Your Students (Please Forward!)

[Larry Howery]

   ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Linnaea <linnaea at alderspring.com>To: "lhowery at ag.arizona.edu" <lhowery at ag.arizona.edu>Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2021, 11:02:11 AM MSTSubject: [EXT]Rangeland Restoration Project + Internship for Your Students (Please Forward!)
 
External Email

Dear Dr. Howery, 
I found you through the University of Arizona directory and believe that some of your interest areas (range management, climate change mitigation, and weed management) intersect well with a study we are doing on a rangeland here in Idaho. 

I'm contacting you in case the study might interest you, and also in hopes that you know of some students who may be interested in a unique summer opportunity to get hands-on experience in this field. 
We are performing this project at Alderspring Ranch. Alderspring has been producing certified organic 100% grass-fed beef for 27 years and comprises the largest certified organic contiguous area (46,000 acres) in the lower 48.

The ranch is run by its owners, Glenn (BS, Forest Ecology, University of Maine) and Caryl Elzinga (PhD, Environmental Science/Plant Ecology, University of Wisconsin), their daughters, and a small group of stellar employees.

We are now in the seventh year of our rangeland restoration project. As I am sure you are aware, cattle on public lands has become a contentious issue here in the West. We seek to find a solution.
The goals of the study are to evaluate the efficacy of full-time intensive herding to reduce rangeland resource impacts (specifically endangered fish and sage grouse, as well as riparian conditions and rare plant populations), allow coexistence with keystone predators (wolves, bear, and mountain lion), improve soils and capture carbon through increasing plant diversity and cover, and to eliminate livestock losses due to sickness and poisonous plants.
The method is quite simple. Our crew of conservation riders lives with the cattle 24/7 for the duration of the summer. The constant human presence deters wolves, while the constant management allows us to very precisely control where we graze and completely avoid common problems like overgrazing or riparian impacts. We have over 55 miles of riparian areas on our rangeland. In a single year, we can impact less than 200 feet of that area (primarily in carefully selected crossing zones with resilient banks and vegetation).

Early results suggest that increases in cattle performance and weight gain resulting from full-time herding may completely or partially offset the increased cost of management, and that resource improvements are comparable to total removal of cattle from public lands. The study involves both natural resource monitoring and financial monitoring to determine the feasibility of full-time conservation herding to address federal rangeland conflicts.

Each summer, we bring on a crew of interns to participate in this project with us. This is meant to be an educational position and is open to all applicants regardless of prior experience in these areas. Employees and interns will get hands-on experience in backcountry camping, horsemanship, animal behavior, low-stress herding techniques, resource monitoring, western rangeland ecology, and how to work with diverse people as part of a team.

We hope that you may know of some students who would benefit from this unique experience, and would so appreciate it if you would forward the flyer and video attached below to them. Additionally, if you know of any graduate students, researchers, or colleagues that you believe would take an interest in a project such as this, we would be grateful if you would share it with them. 
Additional information about the internship can be found at https://www.alderspring.com/about/employment-internships/
Formal report on the project from a 2016 SARE grant (in more recent years, we have entirely funded the project ourselves in order to prove its self-sufficiency and feasibility for other ranchers): https://www.alderspring.com/organic-beef-matters/2016-inherding-sare-report/

The video featuring last year’s riders sharing their experiences can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVfdclDF2XM

Thank-you so much for your time in reading this,

Linnaea Elzinga  
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