Our Approach

Conserving landscapes through science, partnerships and volunteer stewardship

We believe that successful conservation-based public lands management requires strong science, broad public involvement, and active collaboration.  Using all of these tools, we have made tremendous progress towards our conservation goals on the Kane and Two Mile Ranches and hope that our partnerships may serve as an emerging example of inclusive, science-based land management that engages citizens, government agencies, and other stakeholders in long-term, landscape-scale restoration and conservation.

Strong Science

Rigorous science is a keystone element of our work on the Kane and Two Mile Ranches. We have developed significant institutional knowledge and capacity to move forward with our on-the-ground restoration work through working with our Science Advisory Council and collaborating with researchers from Northern Arizona and Colorado State Universities. With oversight from the Science Advisory Council, we have systematically evaluated ecological conditions across the ranches using a number of techniques, including on-the-ground assessment of current vegetation and soil conditions, cutting edge interpretation of satellite imagery, detailed assessments of water resource conditions, experimental restoration treatments, and are modeling characteristics of fire and patterns of invasion by non-native species. Information gleaned from these efforts will help us to determine the most ecologically appropriate approaches for restoring the landscape.

Active Collaboration

Active collaborations between public and private entities have become an essential tool for progressing toward conservation-based land management in this era of ever-declining land management budgets. By building strong, collaborative relationships with land management agencies, wildlife management agencies, and many others, we are able to leverage funding opportunities, personnel, and momentum to implement conservation-oriented, long-term solutions to land management challenges on the Kane and Two Mile ranches. Our Agency partners include:

• BLM - Arizona Strip District
• U.S. Forest Service - Kaibab National Forest
• Arizona Game and Fish Department
• Grand Canyon National Park

Strong Public Involvement

The Grand Canyon Trust Volunteer Program provides the core of our workforce on the Kane and Two Mile Ranches. Long-term, ambitious conservation progress requires a constituency of active, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable stewards and through their participation in research and on-the-ground restoration projects on the ranches, we are continuing to grow this constituency in the Colorado Plateau region and beyond. In all stages of project implementation, we focus significant energy on educating volunteers about the policy, science, and management issues that guide our work.  This experiential approach to public education focuses around on-the-ground work, providing volunteers with a strong connection to and awareness of public lands management and restoration needs, opportunities and challenges across the southern Colorado Plateau.  By building awareness and community cohesion, we intend to help build a foundation for community-centered public lands management that is complementary to current approaches and is vitally important for expanding land management capacities in the 21st century.