Private Lands are a Lifeline for Wildlife
A 2022 New Mexico Supreme Court decision opening streams on private land to the public has fishermen cheering, but not so much the fish. After all, the decision converted thousands
Making the bottom line work for nature
In May, during the 150th anniversary of Yellowstone National Park, U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Robert Bonnie delivered a landmark speech signaling a major turning point in United States conservation
Can the center hold? Collaborative conservation is the way out West
This issue of On Land takes a look into the rise of landowner-led, collaborative conservation. Pioneered by ranchers from the U.S.-Mexico border to Montana’s Blackfoot Valley, it is a movement
Landowners and sportsmen: Allies or adversaries?
It was just around 8:30 a.m. on a clear morning in mid-September in the southern Colorado Rockies. Turning aspen fluttered lightly in the soft breeze as Dennis, a neighboring ranch
Redefining conservation for a new era
On January 27, President Biden issued a sweeping executive order designed to address climate change and conserve biodiversity. Among its goals is conserving thirty percent of land and water by
What would make 30 by 30 work for the West?
In this post we lay out a dozen ways in which the Biden administration could meaningfully recognize and support landowners and rural communities for their role in sustaining biodiversity.
Managing livestock through extended drought
Unless you are actually standing there, boots on the ground, in the dust of a vast, arid landscape, it is impossible to imagine the scale of the challenge. How do
A Long Dry Time
It's getting harder and harder to care for land as the West's megadrought worsens, while population growth speeds on unabated.
Working lands are the future of conservation
In coming decades, conservation will inevitably focus on working lands. Distinct from wilderness, working lands are commonly understood to be those lands tended by human hands. In the West, working
Livestock Grazing and Hunting to Change Elk Behavior
Deseret Land & Livestock (DLL) provides an example of the use of positive and negative pressure, a carrot-and-stick approach, to significantly reduce reliance by elk on managed feeding ground.
Time to talk about regenerative recreation
As a child, I used to sit on lazy summer afternoons by a little pond on national forest land near my family’s home. Save for the buzzing of an occasional
New Mexico wades into troubled waters
This post was originally published in August 2020. With the NM Game & Fish Commission set to meet Friday, June 18th, 2021 to rule on five outstanding non-navigable certification requests,