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Public lands ranchers make essential social and economic contributions to many rural communities across the United States. Numerous challenges face ranchers utilizing public lands potentially causing associated challenges in community settings. To meet these challenges, reliable social and economic data describing public lands ranchers is needed to help inform decision-making on public lands. Therefore, the focus of this survey is to determine how public lands ranchers contribute to the structure and function of their local communities. Survey data also will provide baseline social and economic information that can be used by decision makers. This study will use a mail survey, administered in January 2015, to obtain social and economic data needed for analyses. Approximately 2,000 public lands ranchers will be surveyed in order to obtain statistically valid data. Prior to receiving and analyzing survey results, it is challenging to predict what the survey outcomes will be. However, it is anticipated that public lands ranchers are important contributors; and potentially an essential part of the socio-economic structure of rural communities nationwide. The results of this survey will be published in peer-reviewed literature accessible to federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service for use in socio-economic sections of their decision documents. Other decision makers and public lands advocates will also be able to use the information to influence public land policies and management. All who value public lands are affected by decisions made regarding management. Therefore it is essential that we gather information on all public land resource aspects-social, economic, and ecological- if we are to make well-informed decisions on public land use. This survey is a start toward having statistically valid data to aid in the public lands management decision-making process.