![]() Fish & Wildlife, the Bureau of Land Management, the Nevada Department of Wildlife, and Trout Unlimited, but a lot of those partnerships centered around work that was done by the beaver. The biggest thing that led to us winning the 2015 Environmental Stewardship Award (awarded by the National Cattlemen’s Foundation and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association) was our relationship with partners like U.S. That was as big a problem for our watersheds as the poor grazing was-maybe even more so in some cases. But people need to recognize that in that same time period, we also trapped beaver nearly out of existence in Nevada. We get beat up for that, and we deserved it. In the Great Basin, we got grazing wrong when we started 150 years ago, and we kept at it wrong for quite a long time. Anytime we can have them do that work for free…that’s huge. #Ecotone inc maryland for free#You can shovel great gobs of money trying to do what beaver do for free and get it wrong, and all that money goes down the creek. That had value to me, and really changed my perspective on beaver. It flooded the whole floodplain, and an area that was once just bare gravel and sagebrush became sub-irrigated meadow. Soon, instead of a seasonal creek you could step across, we had a perennial creek you could swim across. Then, the beaver came, and that is when changes really started happening. To make a long story short, we changed some fencing to prevent cattle from accessing the creek year-round to avoid hot season grazing, and dramatic changes happened. ![]() I didn’t realize its potential.įortunately, a very sharp fisheries biologist from the Bureau of Land Management, Carol Evans, contacted my predecessor about making some changes on Suzie Creek that would benefit everybody. Back then, I just thought of Suzie Creek as a seasonal creek that was dry in the hot, summer months when we really needed it. They were cut down to bedrock, and pretty much just gravel and water. ![]() When I came to Maggie Creek Ranch as a cowboy in 1991, two of the major creeks that run though the ranch-Maggie Creek and Suzie Creek-were degraded. Now we’ve learned that while irrigation systems might not be the best place for beaver, we need to let go of some of that need to control them and instead partner with them. But when the beaver comes along and wants to change what our water is doing-and water is hugely important for us-we can control that, and we often did. We can’t control what the government does. We tend to be control freaks because there is so much we can’t control. We ranchers don’t have such a great history with beaver. We’re really starting to figure things out. ![]() Best management practices evolve, and what you do and know to be right evolves. When you think about grazing livestock historically, the grazing industry, especially in the Great Basin of Nevada, is fairly new. In recognition of its efforts to enhance the environment while improving production and profitability, Maggie Creek Ranch was awarded the 2015 National Environmental Stewardship Award from the National Cattlemen’s Foundation and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Based on his experience with these projects, Jon believes that the creation of diverse riparian and upland habitat also results in great cow habitat. Public lands in the West and the endangered species that inhabit them are hot button topics, but Jon and the folks at Maggie Creek Ranch have formed great working relationships with state and federal agencies and NGO user groups to collaborate on conservation projects. Jon Griggs is the Ranch Manager for Maggie Creek Ranch, a beef-cattle operation that runs on both public and private lands in the arid high desert of Northeastern Nevada. Jon Griggs, Ranch Manager, Maggie Creek Ranch (Elko, NV) ![]()
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