The Art of Range Podcast

Americans hear news of social conflict and small-scale warfare in Africa and we ignore the news because it's far away and doesn't affect us. It's also not possible to meaningfully engage emotionally with everything bad happening around the globe. But there are real people and animals in Cameroon whose lives are disrupted, and because pastoralists are often politically marginalized it's important to tell their stories. This interview touches on the geography of West-central Africa, the lifestyle of Shuwa pastoralists, and the ecology behind the transhumance grazing movements.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Thousands of pastoralists seek refuge in Waza National Park, Cameroon: https://pfbc-cbfp.org/news-partner/THECONVERSATION-PaulScholte-Waza.html

Other papers are referenced at the episode page listed below.

TRANSCRIPT at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-85-pastoralists-displaced-cameroon-africa-mark-moritz-paul-scholte.

Paul Bechtel is an almost-centenarian, born 1923, whose family was lured to Eastern Montana by hopes of homesteading good land still free for the taking. Reality wasn't quite so gentle in the northern Great Plains in the rainshadow of the Rocky Mountains. He lived in Ekelaka in harsh conditions through the Great Depression and until he joined the U.S. Army in 1941, but his best memories of his entire life are from this era. It was a good place to be a free range child. In this episode, co-hosted with Mark Teske, a wildlife biologist, Paul reminisces about eating sage grouse, measuring dirt tanks, and earning creative car payments in a remote agricultural local economy.

TRANSCRIPT AND PHOTO available at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-84-perspectives-memoirs-habitat-and-homesteading-eastern-montana-paul-bechtel.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

The book Paul refers to by an author who lived in Seattle for a time is "Bad Land: An American Romance", by Jonathan Raban, ISBN 0679759069.

Homestead Act originally offered 160 acres, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/homestead-act

https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/homestead-act

This episode is the second in a two-part series with the authors of a recent article in the journal Rangeland Ecology & Management telling the story behind their work on ranch sustainability: Clare Kazanski & Marissa Ahlering (The Nature Conservancy), Patrick Lendrum (World Wildlife Fund), and Sheri Spiegal (Jornada Experimental Range). Sheri was recently honored with the USDA ARS Early Career Scientist of the Year Award. The organizations represented by these and other contributing authors are all involved in evaluating environmental and social success in ranching. Quoting from the article: "There is a need for greater clarity on which indicators are most effective for assessing and monitoring sustainable management and continuous improvement of ranching operations. Our objective was to synthesize existing guidance on monitoring and assessing ranch-scale sustainability in the United States and to identify core ecological, social, and economic indicators that could identify well-managed ranching, support adaptive management, and demonstrate producers’ sustainability and continuous improvement to retailers and consumers. We evaluated 21 range and pastureland assessments from nongovernmental organizations, agencies, and academics that totaled 180 indicators. From this, we selected 20 commonly used “core” indicators (12 ecological and 8 socioeconomic)" that can be used to measure ranch sustainability.

Article link, REM issue 79, open access: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550742421001020

https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/provide-food-and-water-sustainably/food-and-water-stories/sustainable-grazing-lands/

Sustainable Southwest Beef Project--Tools for Ranch and Rangeland Resilience. https://southwestbeef.org/

Long-Term Agroecosystem Research program. https://www.ars.usda.gov/natural-resources-and-sustainable-agricultural-systems/water-availability-and-watershed-management/docs/long-term-agroecosystem-research-ltar-network/

TRANSCRIPT coming soon at the episode webpage: https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-83-synthesis-ranch-level-sustainability-indicators-land-managers-part-2

This episode has the authors of a recent article in the journal Rangeland Ecology & Management tell the story behind their work: Clare Kazanski & Marissa Ahlering (The Nature Conservancy), Patrick Lendrum (World Wildlife Fund), and Sheri Spiegal (Jornada Experimental Range). Sheri was recently honored with the USDA ARS Early Career Scientist of the Year Award. The organizations represented by these and other contributing authors are all involved in evaluating environmental and social success in ranching. Quoting from the article: "There is a need for greater clarity on which indicators are most effective for assessing and monitoring sustainable management and continuous improvement of ranching operations. Our objective was to synthesize existing guidance on monitoring and assessing ranch-scale sustainability in the United States and to identify core ecological, social, and economic indicators that could identify well-managed ranching, support adaptive management, and demonstrate producers’ sustainability and continuous improvement to retailers and consumers. We evaluated 21 range and pastureland assessments from nongovernmental organizations, agencies, and academics that totaled 180 indicators. From this, we selected 20 commonly used “core” indicators (12 ecological and 8 socioeconomic)" that can be used to measure ranch sustainability.

Article link, REM issue 79, open access: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550742421001020

https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/provide-food-and-water-sustainably/food-and-water-stories/sustainable-grazing-lands/

Sustainable Southwest Beef Project--Tools for Ranch and Rangeland Resilience. https://southwestbeef.org/

Long-Term Agroecosystem Research program. https://www.ars.usda.gov/natural-resources-and-sustainable-agricultural-systems/water-availability-and-watershed-management/docs/long-term-agroecosystem-research-ltar-network/

TRANSCRIPT at the episode webpage: https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-82-synthesis-ranch-level-sustainability-indicators-land-managers-part-1

Jim O'Rourke and Barbara Hutchinson have been part of the effort to have a United Nations International Year acknowledging the importance of rangelands and the people of rangelands for many years. On March 15, 2022, the UN General Assembly finally approved this proposal. Listen to Jim and Barbara describe why this matters for people who already know and care about rangelands and how you can heighten awareness of the social and ecological importance of rangelands worldwide.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE IYRP AT THESE LINKS

(Live links are on the episode website at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-81-welcome-2026-intl-year-rangelands-pastoralists)

Main IYRP website: https://iyrp.info/

Introduction to the IYRP (Video) - https://youtu.be/zToSadWebwc?list=PLgz33fsrwiVkGSJE-I84wsKL8nOfRPdyU

Pastoralism is the Future (Video) - https://youtu.be/DeqITzac9Ac

Who are pastoralists? (Word Cloud) - https://iyrp.info/who-are-pastoralists

What are rangelands? (Word Cloud) - https://iyrp.info/what-are-rangelands

North American section: https://iyrp.info/north-america

Facebook IYRP Global - https://www.facebook.com/IYRP2026

Facebook IYRP North America - https://www.facebook.com/IYRPNorthAmerica2026/

Twitter IYRP Global - https://twitter.com/IYRP2026

Twitter IYRP North America - https://twitter.com/IYRPNA2026

Instagram IYRP Global - https://www.instagram.com/iyrp2026/

Instagram IYRP North America - https://www.instagram.com/iyrpnorthamerica2026/

TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-81-welcome-2026-intl-year-rangelands-pastoralists

We're taking a break this week from the normal release schedule. Come back on April 14 for the first episode in a two-part series on ranch sustainability indicators. You can prepare for that episode by downloading the article at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2021.08.011. If that link gives you trouble, email me at [email protected].

Ranching for Profit is an organization started by Stan Parsons and recently run by Dave Pratt that has been helping ranchers work on the business instead of in the business for decades. Dallas Mount, former Univ. of Wyoming Extension economist and now co-owner of Ranch Management Consultants, talks with Tip about ranch finance competencies, common weaknesses in ranch financial planning, and fundamental steps livestock producers can take to understand costs and put assets to work for them. This episode introduces a new grant through Western Extension for Risk Management Education that will provide outreach on ranch finance and use of livestock insurance products. Tune in for a teaser on fixed assets and working capital . . .

Learn more about Ranching for Profit schools and Executive Link at https://ranchmanagement.com/.

TRANSCRIPT

Available at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-80-should-ranching-be-profitable-dallas-mount.

Forestry and range sciences are tied to each other in a long and complex social history, and many areas of the Western U.S. and semi-arid parts of the world host rangeland and forest plant communities in the same space and within the same management boundaries. So there is good reason to encourage range folk to given some attention to forestry, not necessarily 'board-feet' production forestry but the ecology of forests and their interactions with rangeland plant communities. This interview with Sean Alexander introduces a high-quality forest ecology-focused podcast with similar background philosophy to The Art of Range -- long interviews on a diversity of topics. Consider subscribing to The Forest Overstory Podcast if you live and work on rangeland with tall range weeds, I mean trees (the late Dr. Kendall Johnson's joke).

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

The Forest Overstory Podcast, start here: https://forestry.wsu.edu/forestoverstory/

Paul Hessburg's TEDx talk, Living in an Era of Megafires: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edDZNkm8Mas

WSU's forestry Extension website: https://forestry.wsu.edu/

Ann Stinson, The Ground At My Feet -- Sustaining a Family and a Forest: https://www.amazon.com/Ground-My-Feet-Sustaining-Family/dp/0870711466/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Transcript available at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-79-forest-overstory-podcast-sean-alexander

How do we build soil health? What is soil health? Is careful grazing helpful or hurtful? Can anything be done to meaningfully influence soil health? And how would we know? What can be measured that indicates progress? These are the questions Derek Scasta and Jeff Goodwin and their team intend to begin to answer through a recently funded national-scale project called Metrics, Management, and Monitoring: An Investigation of Pasture and Rangeland Soil Health and Its Drivers. This ambitious research and outreach effort, funded through a variety of public and private monies, will combine state-of-the-art experimental research with case studies documenting existing soil health effects on farms and ranches where consistent practices have been in place for years (and unlike investing, prior performance does predict future results). These results will inform policy and trade in carbon markets, enhance agricultural resilience to climate uncertainty, and advise land managers on how to increase profitability, land health, and animal health. This interview introduces the project's history, objectives, and timeline. Stay tuned for those future results.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Ecological Outcomes Verification, https://bit.ly/3sNy9GT

Journal article, "Usable Science: Soil Health", Rangelands, 2016.

Journal article, "Valuing and Rewarding Ecosystem Services From Rangelands", Rangelands, 2014.

Journal article, "Rangelands and Ecosystem Services: Economic Wealth From Land Health?", Rangelands, 2011

Article links at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-78-one-study-rule-them-all-3m-soil-health-research-jeff-goodwin-derek-scasta

TRANSCRIPT

Coming soon at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-78-one-study-rule-them-all-3m-soil-health-research-jeff-goodwin-derek-scasta

Seeding in extreme environments such as arid and semi-arid rangelands requires extra care in site preparation, species selection, seed selection, seed placement, planting timing, and care for emerging seedlings. Mel Asher and Jerry Benson have been successfully doing large-scale restoration on challenging rangeland settings for many years. Jerry owns BFI Native Seeds, specializing in locally-sourced native species for the Intermountain West; Mel is the new owner of Derby Canyon Natives, a company that provides live plant stock, mostly containerized. She and Jerry have been doing post-fire rehabilitation for long enough to speak with some authority and they literally wrote the book on it. This episode covers nearly multiple aspects of rangeland seedings, with a focus on plant materials.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

http://www.bfinativeseeds.com/

https://derbycanyonnatives.com/

Shrub-steppe and grassland restoration manual for the Columbia River Basin, https://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/01330

Transcript at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-77-local-seed-genetics-range-seeding-methods-mel-asher-jerry-benson.