This study highlights one of the many successful and progressive ranching operations and the people on the land who are doing the work in Arizona. In 1993, Anita Waite and Sherwood Koehn moved from their alfalfa farm in the Central Valley of California to try their hands at ranching in northwestern Arizona. The Cane Springs Ranch, located on the eastern slopes of the Hualapai Mountains, encompasses about 70,000 acres with a checkerboard of Federal, State and private land. These two ranchers understand the importance of collaboration and sound natural resource management. Their collaboration with numerous Federal and State agencies, non-governmental organizations and The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension resulted in an invaluable cooperative management plan, a land exchange in order to keep this prime rangeland from being developed, and countless range improvements beneficial to the health of the land, wildlife and public land users. Despite long-term drought conditions since 1993, monitoring data suggest the plant community has improved. During this same time period, management changed from yearlong grazing to a deferred grazing system. This study explores and details historic and current grazing management practices, collaborative projects that have been completed since 1993, and plant community improvements as evidenced through repeat photography and long-term vegetative trend data. Looking forward, one of the foremost conservation challenges this ranch faces is the invasion of Lehman�s lovegrass.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.