Home Consider This Managed Cattle Grazing Can Save Trout

Managed Cattle Grazing Can Save Trout

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Biologist Mark Hereford (don't you just love his last name?) with Lahontan cutthroat trout prior to being released upstream. Photo courtesy of USGS.

The Lahontan Basin is an exceptional landscape that spans three western states: California, Oregon, and Nevada. Part of the Great Basin, this semi-arid region is rich in fish and wildlife and provides outstanding fishing, hunting and outdoor recreation opportunities. The Basin’s only native trout, the Lahontan cutthroat, embodies all that is exceptional about this rugged landscape: history, beauty, adaptability, and perseverance. As the largest subspecies of cutthroat trout, there is no other fish like it anywhere in the world. Ranchers and Trout Unlimited are working together to restore it throughout its native range. It turns out that cattle ranchers and fishermen can be friends. The way ranchers manage grazing makes a big difference to the quality of fishing available.

Tipping the Hat from Trout Unlimited on Vimeo.

We especially like this story for its connections to our own lives. On Earth Day this year (April 22), Rachel’s son will be releasing trout he and his classmates raised in their classroom as part of a Trout Unlimited project to restore trout to the stream next to the school. (Well, they were planning to, but the permitting got held up. Soon, though!) Kathy briefly worked in the area shown in the video and got to spend an afternoon on Maggie Creek Ranch with Jon Griggs as part of a “Cows Eat Weeds” workshop. Seeing the place again felt like a quick trip “home.”

To learn more about this project click here.

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Kathy Voth
I am the founder, editor and publisher of On Pasture, now retired. My career spanned 40 years of finding creative solutions to problems, and sharing ideas with people that encouraged them to work together and try new things. From figuring out how to teach livestock to eat weeds, to teaching range management to high schoolers, outdoor ed graduation camping trips with fifty 6th graders at a time, building firebreaks with a 130-goat herd, developing the signs and interpretation for the Storm King Fourteen Memorial trail, receiving the Conservation Service Award for my work building the 150-mile mountain bike trail from Grand Junction, Colorado to Moab, Utah...well, the list is long so I'll stop with, I've had a great time and I'm very grateful.

1 COMMENT

  1. Enjoyed the video on prescribed grazing management and trout in Nevada. Well done. More people (who eat beef & wear leather shoes) need to view this one!

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