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Restoration and Ranching on Witcher Creek Ranch
Article and photos by Glenn Nader, Witcher Creek Ranch, Canby, California Editor’s Note: Water 4 supports partnership-based conservation tailored to the unique opportunities and needs within landscapes, including conservation easements, agricultural flood irrigation infrastructure enhancements, fish and big game habitat improvement, and water management planning timed to habitat needs. This series of projects on a…
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Of Ducks and Ditches: Infrastructure and Habitat in Colorado’s North Park
Article by Casey Setash Come springtime in the West, ducklings motor around the irrigation ditches of ranching country like cars on a highway. In Colorado’s North Platte Basin, these ditch-driving ducklings depend on the infrastructure provided by the ditches as much as the ranchers who use them to irrigate their fields. The ducklings cannot fly…
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SONEC: Dynamic Wetland Resources
The availability of surface water and wetland resources are highly dynamic in the western US. Until recently, broad-scale efforts to conserve wetland habitats for migratory birds have been unable to account for patterns of seasonal wetland dynamics that link the timing of wetland availability (i.e. flooding) to the chronology of bird migrations through landscapes. To…
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Effects of Irrigation Efficiency Improvements at Multiple Scales
The Intermountain West is mostly publicly owned but approximately 70% of its emergent wetlands occur on private land. These privately-owned habitats are typically associated with irrigated agriculture on working ranches and farms in landscapes important to wildlife, native fish, and people. Webinar: Effects of Irrigation Efficiency Improvements at Multiple Scales
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Partnership Shines in Bear River RCPP
An abundance of cold, clean water has drawn people to the banks of the Bear River for millennia. It’s this same cold, clean water that makes the Bear River perfect habitat for native trout like the Bonneville Cutthroat Trout, as well as multiple species of wildlife and migratory birds. This watershed stretches from snowmelt on…
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Working Lands and Habitat Get Boost from RCPP
After the crew at the Holiday Ranch heard about the opportunity to increase irrigation efficiency through the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) from others in California’s ranching community, they were interested in getting involved. Even though the ranch is based in Cottonwood, California, ranch crew member Justin Zacharias said it…
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Intermountain Insights: Working Science for Working Landscapes
Agriculture and human settlement have long been tied to ecologically important wetland and riparian resources and the water they provide. For over one hundred years, this pattern has concentrated private land ownership in the West’s river bottoms and valleys, areas that are surrounded by publicly-owned sagebrush rangelands and forests. Those private lands account for only…
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Beyond the Banks: Collaborative Conservation in Montana’s Big Hole Valley
Ranchers don’t really raise cattle, according to John Richardson. They raise grass. Richardson, who owns the Hat Creek Ranch in Montana’s Big Hole Valley, said he knows that healthy grass means healthy cattle, and healthy grass, of course, comes from healthy soil and water. Richardson said he keeps soil and water health at the forefront…
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Added NRCS Capacity Helps San Luis Valley Partners and Farmers
For farmers and ranchers along the Rio Grande in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, sometimes the only thing that stands between the river and getting water to their fields is an outdated and faulty headgate. The problem comes when their headgate project is in the middle – or at the bottom – of a lengthy list…
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Intermountain Insights: Digging Deeper into Flood Irrigation
Western ranchers’ perspectives on enablers and constraints to flood irrigation (journal article) Flood irrigation on private rangelands maintains many wetland systems, which were historically dependent on natural flooding. It also sustains valuable wildlife resources such as foraging habitat for migrating and breeding waterbirds and late summer brood-rearing habitat for sage grouse. In the Intermountain West,…
