Range Program
The Range Program provides technical assistance to private landowners and land management agencies (both federal and state) throughout the year. Team members strive to meet the needs of a community which relies on a multiple use and a predominantly federally managed landscape, while also promoting private property rights. Range staff strive to create positive, long term, cooperative relationships between the Conservation District, Sublette County landowners, and land management agency personnel.
The staff consists of a team whose expertise is natural resource based, but with broad enough experience to create a program capable of assisting with a variety of projects in an area where a “one size fits all” approach does not work. This allows the program to be flexible enough to assist with constantly shifting priorities of policy and land management agencies (i.e. permit renewals, energy development, wildlife habitat, etc.), while endorsing overlapping opportunities and goals that benefit community members and multiple resource demands.
Current Range Projects:
Cooperative Monitoring
SCCD assists with the development and implementation of cooperative monitoring throughout Sublette County. Currently, over ⅓ of Sublette County’s acres are under a cooperative monitoring plan (see map). Cooperative monitoring takes place when the permittee requests vegetation monitoring on their public land allotment. At a minimum, SCCD then gathers the partners- at a minimum, the permittee and BLM or USFS Range Specialist to determine goals and objectives, terms and conditions of the permit, and if there are any other needs on the allotment such as water or fence infrastructure. Cooperative monitoring results in a cooperative monitoring plan and an annual monitoring report for both the permittee and the allotment file. These documents help to inform monitoring each year, gets folks on the same page, and helps to troubleshoot management issues as they arise through annual monitoring.
Above: A map of current public lands cooperative monitoring sites.
Left: A diagram of the workflow of a cooperative monitoring plan.
Small Water Development
Water dots the Sublette County landscape, both as natural streams and springs as well as developed water such as irrigation, wells, reservoirs, and pits. In any case, SCCD partners with landowners and agencies to ensure that water resources are sustainably developed and maintained to mitigate risk of resource damage on the landscape. Water developments include, but are not limited to:
Conversion of wells to solar
Rehabilitation of any water development
Stock Water Wells
Marina Break Water
Streambank Stability Projects
Irrigation Infrastructure
Springs, Pipelines, Reservoirs, etc.
If you have a water project in mind, SCCD has developed a process so you know what you are getting into!
Above: A map of current SCCD water development sites.
Left: A diagram of the workflow of a water development plan.
Applying the Science:
ESD Development
SCCD Range Specialists sit on local workgroups that develop ecological site descriptions (ESD) in Major Land Resource Areas 34A, 46X and 43B. ESD’s include information about soils, productivity and stocking rates, plant community composition, how management impacts the transition from one plant community to another, among many other tidbits of information. These ecological site descriptions are intended to help land managers understand the potential of the plant communities they manage and how to steward those lands the best possible way.
ESD’s are published online here. Click here for an ESD example.
Grazing Plan DEVELOPMENT
To promote grazing stewardship, SCCD Range Specialists help producers determine a grazing plan that benefits both the landscape and the operation. SCCD helps the producer determine the goals they want to achieve, gather all the pertinent vegetation data, request help from all the right partners, prescribe management options, create a monitoring plan that will measure landscape response (pre-and post- management changes), and can even help weigh the costs of added infrastructure to help make a grazing plan happen.
Range Management Decisions
SCCD Range Specialists have helped our local federal agencies develop NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) documents, where any proposed changes in management are required to have an Environmental Assessment (EA) completed to inform decisions made on public land. Because of SCCD’s partnerships with our federal agencies, SCCD has been able to assist with the development of projects, provide feedback on proposed projects, and in some cases, has helped author these documents.
Temporary Non Renewable 2017 (DOI-BLM-WY-D010-2017-0085)
Basin Well Environmental Assessment (DOI-BLM-WY-D010-2022-0009-EA)
Elk Ridge Complex Rangeland Supplementation Project
Grazing Authorization for Sweetwater, Blucher Creek and East Squaw Creek Cattle and Horse Allotments
