The Art of Range Podcast

Parker Ranch is the oldest and biggest ranch on the island of Hawai'i and one of the top cow-calf operations in the country. Keoki Wood traces the ranch's history from John Palmer Parker's founding in 1847 and the arrival of the Mexican vaqueros who gave rise to the paniolo tradition to its current role as a national industry leader and local community supporter. The ranch team culture, which Keoki has been instrumental in shaping for 22 years, values low-stress animal handling and strong people relationships. This tradition led to Parker Ranch receiving the 2025 National Beef Quality Assurance Award from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Keoki describes lessons learned from a 40,000-acre wildfire, and tells why using grazing to reduce fuel loads needs to be treated as a public good. Listen to hear more about the challenges of managing lands from sea level to 8000 feet elevation, cycles of drought and abundant grass, and keeping calves healthy shipping halfway across the Pacific Ocean.

"Ponoholo" comes from Hawaiian wayfinding: when the canoe was on the right path — reading stars, currents, and waves — you were pono holo, going the good way. Pono Von Holt runs Ponoholo Ranch on Kohala Mountain at the north end of the Big Island, the birthplace of King Kamehameha, and where his family has raised cattle since 1928. Annual precipitation on the ranch ranges from 10 inches of rain at the coast to 110 inches in the cloud forest on top of the mountain. In this conversation, Pono traces the arrival of Mexican vaqueros in the 1830s and the birth of the paniolo, explains how adopting intensive planned grazing in the mid-1980s allowed them to increase their stocking rate, and how dry cows do brush control in a way that chains and caterpillars never could, and makes the case for why an island ranch 2,500 miles from a feedyard decided its comparative advantage was a 450-pound calf.

Lani Cran-Petrie runs Kapapala Ranch on the south flank of the Big Island of Hawai'i with her husband, Bill. This episode with Lani begins a series on ranching in Hawai'i. Lani describes the improbable history of cattle in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, from a king's gift of livestock to the hide-and-tallow trade through the sugar plantations that shaped which lands ranches kept, the collapse of in-state slaughter in 1992, the shipping containers and airplane crates that now move Hawaiian calves to mainland grass, and a long relationship with Ellensburg, Washington. She also tells the personal story of ranching for 17 years on thirty-day permits on state land, thirteen years of fighting at the state capitol to keep the ranch, ten million gallons of water storage built on faith, and the herd-breaking of "inexperienced" cattle with dogs, exclosures, and an air horn.

In 1956, a group of Texas ranchers decided the training their kids needed didn't exist yet—so they built it themselves, and it's still running. Lee Knox, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Professor in Ranch Management at Texas Christian University, describes TCU's nine-month, 35-credit certificate program that packs soil and forage management, animal husbandry, business, and marketing into a single intense year, backed by 1,200-plus alumni who host field trips, mentor students, and post job openings. Lee also reflects on a career spanning extension work, two decades with NRCS, and a lifetime of running cattle on leased ground—including why the return of fire to the Southern Plains is a backhanded compliment to better grazing management, and how hunting revenue brought Texas landowners and wildlife groups to the same side of the table.

The Art of Range is supported by RanchBot and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Visit the episode page at artofrange.com for the transcript of this interview and links to other resources mentioned in this episode.

Doug Tolleson is the longtime Chief Scientist at the Texas A&M AgriLife Sonora Research Station and recently retired director of the Grazing Animal Nutrition (GAN) Lab. In this episode, Tip visits with Doug about a career spent connecting animal nutrition to grazing management—from fecal near-infrared spectroscopy that lets managers "read" diet quality of rangeland forage, to prenatal programming that affects animals all the way to finished meat. Doug reflects on the enduring principles beneath every buzzword—holistic, sustainable, regenerative—and on managing for a moving target in a climate of rising variability, where six years in ten are dry and the Sonora "Flex" experiment builds adaptability by managing for drought and swinging for home runs in the wet years. The conversation closes on the value of long-term research stations, some celebrating their second century, and Doug's advice to young range professionals: stay a "specialized generalist," never be afraid to learn something, and let the land, the animals, and the weather keep humbling you.

Support for The Art of Range Podcast comes from RanchBot, Western SARE, and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.

Visit the episode page at artofrange.com for the transcript of this interview and links to resources mentioned during the conversation.

Music by Lewis Roise.

From fighter pilot instructor to rangeland science legend, Rod Heitschmidt has done it all. In this Sages of Rangelands conversation, Tip Hudson sits down with Rod at his home to trace his path from flying supersonic T-38s to studying livestock grazing at the Texas Experimental Ranch and USDA's Fort Keogh lab. Rod recounts his spirited clashes with Allan Savory over rotational grazing and stocking rates, the research on drought management, early weaning, prairie dogs, and mesquite that shaped his career, and the story behind his enduring textbook Grazing Management: An Ecological Perspective. Rod shares hard-won wisdom on economics as "a measure of one's beliefs," the real progress rangeland stewardship has made, and why anyone entering natural resources has to genuinely care about the land.

Rodney Heitschmidt received the Society for Range Management's Outstanding Achievement Award in 1991 and the SRM Fellow Award in 2004. He was honored with the Frederic G. Renner Award in 2013, which is the Society's premier award for sustained accomplishments in range management. Rod served as the SRM President in 2002.

Visit the episode page at https://artofrange.extension.wsu.edu/episodes/aor-185-rod-heitschmidt-on-a-lifetime-of-integrating-rangeland-science-and-application/ for the transcript of this interview and links to resources mentioned on the show.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Dr. Tom Bartlett has spent a lifetime proving that rangeland is worth a lot more than meets the eye. Tip sits down with this Colorado State University rangeland economist to discuss career that shifted from mathematical modeling to applied on-the-ground economics — and why Bartlett thinks the real value of public grazing lands is almost always misunderstood by policymakers. Along the way, they reflect on 60 years of Society for Range Management membership, the people who shaped the profession.

Support for The Art of Range comes from the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center and RanchBot.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Visit the episode page at https://artofrange.extension.wsu.edu/episodes/aor-184-tom-bartlett-on-valuing-cows-grass-and-everything-else/ for a transcript of the interview and links to resources mentioned in this episode.

What if the key to making people care about rangelands wasn't a fact sheet, a policy brief, or even a podcast — but interactive art that people can view, hear, touch, and smell? WSU Extension's Stephen Bramwell joins the show to talk about a first-of-its-kind public art project that's deploying multisensory exhibits across 18 states to reach audiences who've never thought twice about grasslands or the people who steward them. From tactile fiber samples and scent jars to life-size 3D sheep cutouts, this is rangeland outreach like you've never heard of — and you can host an exhibit or submit your own art at grasslandsproject.org.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Support for The Art of Range comes from RanchBot and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.

The transcript of this episode and links to resources mentioned in the interview are available at https://artofrange.extension.wsu.edu/episodes/aor-183-rangelands-on-display-using-public-art-to-reach-beyond-the-choir-with-stephen-bramwell/.

Allen Miller of Tower Rock Ranch in Mansfield, Washington was the 2023 NCBA Environmental Stewardship Award regional winner. His family has run cattle on the same Douglas County ground since 1883. Allen joins Tip to talk about blending the art and science of range management on a 15,000-acre operation reshaped by five major wildfires in just 14 years. Allen shares hard-earned lessons on rotational grazing, post-fire rest and deferment, the payoff of 125 miles of new fence, and how Sage Grouse Initiative water infrastructure and remote tank monitors have transformed cattle distribution across rocky, water-scarce country. The conversation closes with candid thoughts on riparian fencing, CRP's unintended consequences, the promise of virtual fence and GPS ear tags, and Allen's advice to the next generation of agency professionals: come in humbly, listen first, and learn alongside the ranchers you're trying to help.

Music by Lewis Roise. Support for The Art of Range comes from RanchBot and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.

Visit the episode page at artofrange.com for the transcript and links to resources mentioned in this interview.

Jim Strickland is managing partner at Blackbeard's Ranch in southwest Florida, co-founder of the Florida Conservation Group, and vice chair of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association Environmental Stewardship Award Program. Over a seventy-year career in cattle, Jim watched nearly 100,000 acres of leased pasture disappear to development around Sarasota, and in response he helped build a coalition of ranchers, scientists, and conservation groups that has now facilitated roughly 160,000 acres of easements and pushed the Florida legislature toward a $300 million appropriation for easement funding. In this conversation, Jim and Tip discuss the mechanics and politics of conservation easements, the emerging market for paying ranchers for ecosystem services like Florida Panther habitat and aquifer recharge, prescribed fire on pyrogenic Florida rangelands, and Jim's experience as reportedly the first rancher to deploy virtual fence at scale east of the Mississippi — now covering 7,000 acres. Florida's ranchers are only one-half of one percent of the state's population, but they steward the water, wildlife corridors, and working open space that 22 million Floridians depend on, and Jim makes a compelling case for why telling that story well may be the most important conservation work of all.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Go to https://artofrange.extension.wsu.edu/ for the transcript and links to resources mentioned in this episode.