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The Kiowa National Grasslands Integrated Resource Management Program
Location:
New Mexico
Case description (read more)
On the Kiowa National Grasslands of New Mexico, collaboration between the Forest Service, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and a handful of local ranchers has greatly improved the quality of the area's rangeland. Under this jointly-administered program, a rancher sits down with the two agencies together to develop a long-range plan for the entire area being utilized. According to Mike Delano of the Natural Resource Conservation Service, by managing all of one rancher's land as a "single operating unit," needs of wildlife, cattle, and environmental restoration can be addressed as a whole.
A typical plan almost always begins with the development of a comprehensive water program. Instead of the usual few large watering holes for cattle, water is piped in to create multiple small watering areas. By having many smaller watering areas spread out over the area being grazed, the rancher can then employ time-controlled grazing, a system that rotates the herd through a series of small parcels for short periods of time. Unlike many traditional ranching systems that apply lower, but constant pressure on a large parcel, it is believed that this system of short, but intense grazing followed by long periods of rest better facilitates natural re-vegetation; it was designed to better mimic the natural grazing pattern of pre-domesticated large browsers.
The local districts of both the Forest Service and the Natural Resource Conservation Service, by agreeing to cooperate ahead of time, have significantly simplified the bureaucracy that the average rancher encounters in soliciting information, assistance and funding. Before their agreement to jointly develop and administer integrated resource management plans, each agency had its own guidelines for their specific programs and operating policies for their lands. Not only does this cooperation benefit the individual ranchers, but also the agencies that are able to minimize overlap and, moreover, share resources and information.
Primary partners
U.S. Forest Service
National Resource Conservation Service
Local Ranchers |
Primary objectives
- To share information and resources between the Forest Service and the Natural Resource Conservation Service in order to create more holistic ranching management plans for private and public land.
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Year of initiation
1991 |
What is fostering progress? (read more)
- Frequent Contact: Frequent contact amongst the participants.
- Trust Built Amongst Players: Genuine interest and concern about the economic and ecological viability of local ranches has enabled both Forest Service and Soil Conservation Service staff to develop a relationship of trust and mutual problem-solving with the permittees.
- Inter-agency collaboration: Agency personnel have worked together to do their jobs because of the inter-mixing of federal, state, and private land in the area.
What challenges were faced and how were they overcome? (read more)
- Changing Traditional Methods: The hardest thing for one rancher to do was to alter his way of thinking about ranching. His family had been using the same techniques for five generations and to consider managing the resource in a fundamentally different way was both challenging and threatening. Although there was certainly an element of risk involved, this major challenge was mitigated by developing a person-to-person trust between the agency workers and the ranchers.
- Lack of Capital Investments: At times, the initial up-front financial investment for time-controlled can be a problem. Not every rancher has access to the capital required to devise this system. The Forest Service has helped finance some of the work through the Challenge Cost-Share program and has helped to arrange loans from the Farmers' Home Administration.
What lessons can be drawn? (read more)
- Maintain Positive Attitudes and Use a Proactive Approach: According to former Kiowa Grasslands District Ranger Bryant, a positive attitude and a proactive approach to addressing problems are the most important ingredients in making a program like this work: "You always hear about how harmful grazing is on the land and how agencies can't seem to coordinate their activities, but we know it doesn't have to be that way."
- Employ Demonstration Projects: A small, but significant success can encourage others to become active. They allow an agency to showcase a particularly success for other users, while at the same time not fall out of favor with a user population or the general public if the experiment is a failure. They are also relatively less expensive, easier to administer, monitor, and alter as natural or human components dictate.
- Find Opportunities for All Stakeholders to Contribute: Be aware that resource users on both public and private land care about the resource and want to treat it in a sustainable manner. Agency officials should not feel like they are shouldering this burden alone, but need to enlist the energies and dedication of this already human resource. An essential role for resource managers is to help these individuals contribute, whether it be through technical assistance as provided here, or in promoting volunteer work groups or citizen advisory councils as seen in other vignettes. If given the opportunity to contribute, that is precisely what these dedicated individuals will do. Brown noted, "The ranchers want many of the same things as the environmental people want, but people get stuck on their positions."
Learn more about related lessons from a broader set of partnerships
Contact information at the Forest Service
Related Links
This site was developed by the Ecosystem Management Initiative through a partnership with the US Forest Service and the US Department of Interior. Read more.
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