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Savanna Blog

The Real Thing Limiting the Spread of Low Stress Livestock Handling (or How I Stopped Caring if the Cattle were Stressed)

As time goes on, I find myself caring less and less about the stress of my livestock and more and more about my own stress. I’m sorry. That’s just how it goes. I think that means I have become a real rancher. Back when I was a blissful herder boy, a few years ago, I […]

All Grazing Methods are Wrong

There are a lot of people telling ranchers how to be more eco. I think they are almost all… not quite right. Often the people who want to change ranchers lose sight of the forest for the trees. As someone who is constantly running into trees because he is staring at the forest, let me […]

Tall Grass Biodiversity Depression Forever

Its easy to tell the world how it is and not listen when it tries to correct you. Science is a method for testing our ideas about reality and a system for accumulating and sharing that information. I think I was well into my twenties before I really understood this. I am not an accredited […]

Tall Grass Biodiversity Depression Part V

Short grass is preferred by all kinds of mega-fauna, big and small. Theories without facts are at best pointless self-pleasure. At worst they can be dangerous propaganda. Theories that lack supporting data are like dry skeletons. In our little world of eco-ranching, adhering to an idea that does not have a strong foundation of evidence […]

Tall Grass Biodiversity Depression Part IV

Ideas are powerful. Wow, good blog post, Nate. Other people might have thought of that before. But most of the time when we think of the power of ideas, we think about the power of good ideas. As humans, I think it is much more important for us to think about the power of bad […]

Tall Grass Biodiversity Depression Part III

Often times when we think of biodiversity conservation… wait, let me start over. Assuming that anyone thinks of biodiversity conservation at all, they might think of a captive breeding program to save the last blue bellied mongoose. Or a last ditch effort to protect the pond that holds the last population of the speckle-toed salamander. […]