Balanced Stewardship of the Land to Save the Prairie

The Nature Conservancy has run Fox Ranch in eastern Colorado since 2000 as an experiment in using cattle grazing to preserve prairie ecosystem rather than convert it to commodity farmland. The ranch rotates 350 calf/cow pairs across 14,700 acres, never grazing the same spot twice in a year, and has seen native sand bluestem grass rebound alongside efforts to remove encroaching eastern red cedar.

Conservationist Tyler Smith argues grasslands are among the most endangered terrestrial ecosystems precisely because their flatness makes them easy to convert to agriculture, though the Fox's canyon-and-dune terrain made it an unlikely candidate for plowing regardless. The ranch's Arickaree River frontage now hosts eight fish species, and staff credit managed grazing — echoing bison-era grassland dynamics — for the ecological gains.

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