The Art of Range Podcast

Jim Strickland is managing partner at Blackbeard's Ranch in southwest Florida, co-founder of the Florida Conservation Group, and vice chair of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association Environmental Stewardship Award Program. Over a seventy-year career in cattle, Jim watched nearly 100,000 acres of leased pasture disappear to development around Sarasota, and in response he helped build a coalition of ranchers, scientists, and conservation groups that has now facilitated roughly 160,000 acres of easements and pushed the Florida legislature toward a $300 million appropriation for easement funding. In this conversation, Jim and Tip discuss the mechanics and politics of conservation easements, the emerging market for paying ranchers for ecosystem services like Florida Panther habitat and aquifer recharge, prescribed fire on pyrogenic Florida rangelands, and Jim's experience as reportedly the first rancher to deploy virtual fence at scale east of the Mississippi — now covering 7,000 acres. Florida's ranchers are only one-half of one percent of the state's population, but they steward the water, wildlife corridors, and working open space that 22 million Floridians depend on, and Jim makes a compelling case for why telling that story well may be the most important conservation work of all.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Go to https://artofrange.extension.wsu.edu/ for the transcript and links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Maryam Niamir-Fuller's career spans decades of work with pastoralist communities from all over the world. She is a special advisor to the Secretariat of the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists Global Alliance. Maryam shares how her journey began among the Dinka people of Southern Sudan and grew into a lifelong commitment to elevating the voices and improving the livelihoods of pastoral communities worldwide. From the economics of livestock as living wealth, to the global conversation around meat, land conversion, and unbalanced subsidies, this episode provides a good overview on the social and economic services provided by rangelands and people of rangelands.

The Art of Range Podcast is supported by the Idaho Rangeland Resources Commission and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Go to the episode page at artofrange.com for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

In this episode, host Tip Hudson speaks with Doug Poole, a third-generation dryland farmer in Eastern Washington's arid Columbia Basin, about his decade-long effort to reintegrate livestock into a cropping system that had largely abandoned them. Doug farms on just 8–10 inches of annual rainfall, and the conversation digs into how industrial row-crop agriculture — heavy tillage, anhydrous ammonia, and monoculture wheat — degraded soils that were once native rangeland, and why Doug believes biology and cattle are the fastest path to reversing that damage. He explains how he uses cattle to harvest diverse cover crop mixes, reduce input costs, and rebuild soil structure, while tackling the real-world barriers to crop-livestock integration: water infrastructure, cattle supply logistics, and cultural resistance among so-called "dirt farmers". Doug speaks candidly about the economics of the transition, the promise of virtual fence technology, and why he has no plans to stop.

The Art of Range Podcast is supported by the Idaho Rangeland Resources Commission and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Visit the episode page at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-180-doug-poole-integrating-grazing-cropping-systems-rangeland-soil-health for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Storytelling, direct-to-consumer beef sales, animal behavior, grass taxonomy, beavers, water, and wolves. Glenn Elzinga has tried to tackle it all raising cattle in the Pahsimeroi Valley and nearby mountains of south-central Idaho. Alderspring is a 100% grass-fed and certified organic ranch that’s been raising cattle on wild rangelands for over 30 years. Glenn, Caryl, and their seven daughters use herding movements they call 'in-herding' to optimize grazing effects as part of a healthy ecosystem. Glenn maintains a colorful ranch blog where he tells many of these stories.

The Art of Range Podcast is supported by the Idaho Rangeland Resources Commission and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.

Visit the episode page at https://artofrange.extension.wsu.edu/episodes/aor-179-glenn-elzinga-alderspring-ranch-grassfed-beef-in-wild-open-spaces/ for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Just when you thought you'd heard everything about virtual fence, another podcast episode comes along. But Dr. Flavie Audoin, University of Arizona Cooperative Extension rangeland specialist, may be one of the most importance "voices" to listen to on the strengths and weaknesses of virtual fence and animal geolocation technologies. She has been in the middle of much of the early vendor comparison work as well as experimental research on animal physiology considerations and environmental applications for remote animal location detection and control. Listen to this interview to learn about the mechanisms of virtual fence options, a comparison and contrast of features on offer, and current research on graziers can better manage wild, open spaces with a back-to-the-future approach to modern herding.

The Art of Range Podcast is supported by the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center, Vence (a subsidiary of Merck), and the Idaho Rangeland Resources Commission.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Visit the episode page at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-178-flavie-audoin-animal-geolocation-and-virtual-fence-technologies for the transcript of this interview and links to resources mentioned in this episode.