Livestock Operation

	An Old Corral on the Kane Ranch at the Base of the Vermilion Cliffs

The Grand Canyon Trust and the Conservation Fund have created North Rim Ranch LLC to own and operate the Kane and Two Mile Ranches.  The Trust is the managing member of the partnership and it is responsible for ongoing management of the ranches.  To accomplish this task, Rick Moore, the Director for the Kane-Two Mile Project works with John Heyneman, the manager of North Rim Ranch.

John has always been interested in agriculture and environmentalism.  He grew up on a small cattle operation in Montana, studied agricultural politics in college, worked on agricultural operations in Brazil and Venezuela after college, and later completed a graduate degree examining impacts of grazing practices on soil properties.  He spent the last seven years in Wyoming working on one of the largest agricultural operations in the country, managing part of the operation that runs 4,000 cattle 250,000 acres.  John believes that as land in the west continues to change hands, conservation will become an ever higher priority.  Ranchers, especially those operating on public lands, will work under increased scrutiny and must better understand natural systems.  He says that the future of ranching depends on recognizing a new set of considerations and learning new criteria to guide management decisions.

His thoughts correlate well with the Trust’s science-based approach to grazing livestock in the most ecologically responsible way, which will be done by:

• Working with the agencies to establish stocking levels based on rigorous science-based monitoring data;
• Using rest and rotation of the pastures to not only allow for adequate forage growth, but also to allow improvement in the forage base;
• Ensure proper distribution of the cattle within the pastures by developing an aggressive herding regime; and
• Within stocking allocations, provide adequate forage for wildlife species.

The Forest Service and BLM have significantly different grazing mandates and operate under different regulations.  For instance, the Forest Service requires that a new permittee “validate” a permit by purchasing and placing 90 percent of the permitted livestock on the allotment during the first grazing season.  In contrast, the BLM can approve convenience non-use for up to three years and it is also possible to run cattle under a lease on BLM lands.  These quite distinctive differences provide significantly different opportunities and challenges across the different allotments.

We are discussing the pros and cons of whether we should graze yearlings, have a cow-calf operation, or possibly a mixture of the two.  There are many different ways we can graze cattle within the requirements of the agencies and our permits.  We will also work with the agencies to remove livestock from ecologically sensitive areas and fence areas with serious conflicts with recreationists and other land users, such as Coyote Buttes and some of the heavily visited North Rim viewpoints.

Whatever we ultimately decide to do, grazing in a responsible manner will be an enormous challenge given that the ranches have more than 275 miles of fences, 155 miles of pipelines, 102 troughs, 218 dirt tanks, 39 corrals, 10 buildings, and 8 water wells, some of which are 1,400 deep.

For More Information About Grazing on the Kane and Two Mile, Please Click Here (57kb PDF*)

Contact: John Heyneman