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Episode 7: San Juan Ranch

This Western Landowners Alliance film by filmmaker Jason Roehrig features Colorado cattle ranchers George Whitten and Julie Sullivan, whose stewardship has restored and increased healthy biological processes while providing for a sustainable ranching model. While continually seeking balance between social, environmental and economic values, George and Julie have succeeded in reducing aquifer depletion while increasing the diversity and vigor of irrigated meadows and uplands. Decades of careful attention to soil porosity, plant composition and soil cover has resulted in healthy land yielding a consistent level of productivity even in times of severe drought.


Stewardship with Vision films are produced in partnership with Montana State University’s graduate program in Science & Natural History Filmmaking. Student film-makers in this program are required to have an undergraduate degree in the sciences. They are selected through an application process each semester, and promptly sent out by WLA on a ranch filming adventure unlike anything they’re ever experienced.

Louis Wertz is editor-in-chief of On Land and communications director at the Western Landowners Alliance. He lives in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, with his wife and two young children.