Ranchers live and work at the intersection of many pressing issues in the West, including a changing climate, ever-evolving land management policies and a fluctuating economy.
Researchers from the University of Wyoming (UW) Extension heard from ranchers in the Upper Wind River Basin about how they’re navigating that complex patchwork and synthesized those conversations into a newly published interview-based report.
Big picture takeaways
Extension Educator Callie Surber talked with nearly forty people around Riverton, Lander and the Wind River Reservation during the summer of 2024. She picked their brains about the interconnected changes shaping their day-to-day lives.
Surber co-authored the study with her advisor, Dr. Corrine Knapp, an associate professor at UW's Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources.
Surber said social issues, like the price of beef or allotment policy, came up a lot more in conversation than environmentally-related concerns, like water availability or weather.
“ One of the things that was really top of mind for people is this major inflation of ranch inputs that they have seen, especially since the pandemic,” she said. “People talked a lot about how bailing wire used to be x price and now it is three times higher than it was a few years ago.”
Ranchers also shared concerns about higher costs for equipment and heavy machinery, and how those price tags were outpacing their returns. The interviews took place before Pres. Trump introduced widespread tariffs that have since raised alarm bells about the future stability of agriculture in the U.S.
“ I'm sure that would've been a much, much more frequent theme if I had done these interviews last summer,” said Surber.
The majority of the folks who shared their perspectives for the study were multi-generational beef ranchers with larger-scale operations but there were also newer farmers with smaller herds of cattle or sheep.
Across the board, one big environmental worry came up over and over again.
“ People are pretty concerned about seeing this potential for total takeover of weeds and invasive grasses like cheatgrass on their allotments, and how quickly those changes can take place,” said Surber. “ That was something people were really trying to be on top of as much as possible.”
An unexpected takeaway from the research was the variability in concern about water resources, despite a shared acknowledgement of drought in the region.
“A lot of people didn't feel too much concern about any types of changes in water availability, especially due to most folks using irrigation for hay that they'll use for over wintering their herds,” said Surber. “But there were a handful of people who talked about [how] the glaciers in the Wind River range are receding and [were] really worried about that.”
Indigenous perspectives
Surber interviewed six ranchers enrolled in either the Eastern Shoshone or Northern Arapaho tribes for the project, a group she said has been historically excluded from this kind of research.
“Tribal folks are very important land managers in this region and beyond, so I really wanted to make sure and include those perspectives.”
But given the small sample size of people she was able to interview in the time constraints of the project, Surber wasn’t able to draw any big conclusions comparing enrolled and non-enrolled ranchers. However, she pointed to a separate in-the-works project that will focus on more interviews with tribal ranchers.
Other frustrations and a “take the change as it comes” approach
Some ranchers expressed discontent with long wait times to make changes on their public grazing allotments, but that frustration was directed more towards higher-up bureaucratic red tape rather than towards on-the-ground local range managers.
Ranchers also shared how turnover rates in federal agencies or conservation spaces could make it difficult to maintain relationships with other people working in the land management space.
Other big concerns centered around wild horse and wolf management, as well as fears of getting priced out by amenity ranchers and younger generations not wanting to, or not being able to, work in the ranching industry.
But even with all of that uncertainty, Surber said a common theme was a “take the change as it comes” mentality.
“They really have this attitude of taking it in stride and adapting as the time comes,” she said. “It can be pretty difficult for folks to look at a really long-term time horizon.”
Surber hopes the research can help people who work with ranchers better understand what’s going on in the area, and can inspire more informed policy-making moving forward.
