Conservation at Chico Basin Ranch

The health of the land and its systems is critical to both our business and our lifestyle on the Chico Basin Ranch.  Every single plant and animal on the ranch is precious to the ranch and our lives.

Even though cattle are the primary income producers for the business, they are also used as an important tool for manipulating the surface of the ground to achieve conservation goals.  We use cattle for prescriptive grazing programs in areas that we determine need more intensive management; this can mean grazing 900 head in 2-3 acre areas, moved multiple times daily.  Or, it may mean that we rest a pasture for 10 months to establish more plant vigor.  We look at land as a whole to make sure all the natural processes are healthy and moving ahead, and then, and only then, identify species that need more attention than others and try to balance their needs with the rest.

Careful grazing planning is done before the growing and dormant seasons, sometimes bringing in outside managers or professionals as sounding boards for our ideas, and for new ideas or different ways of looking at things.  This process can take up to a week and is plotted on a chart that shows where all the cattle on the ranch are going to be every single day of the year. It also takes into account the nutritional needs of livestock, wildlife, nesting sites, specific needs of particular species such as Mountain Plover or the Arkansas Darter, both threatened and endangered species.  It carefully plans contingencies for dry times, erarnotching time frames for shipping cattle off the ranch before forage is completely depleted.  This planning process is looked upon as one of the most important events of the year, even though it changes almost before the last part of it is completed.

Montioring is also an important tool that is used to analyze the effects of grazing programs.  Land EKG is the method that is used predominately for ananlyzing plant and animal communities, and the ecosystem processes: water and mineral cycle, energy flow and succession.  The ranch also  has a banding station in the spring and fall that gathers data from song birds migrating through the ranch.  Black Squirrel Creek is also monitored as a songbird nesting habitat site.

To help us keep up with current developments in thinking and technology, Chico Basin Ranch has sponsored workshops in Holistic Management, Land EKG monitoring, and grazing planning. Experts in ornithology, mammalogy, entomology, and botany all regularly visit the ranch to help us monitor wildlife populations. We are fortunate to enjoy working partnerships with such respected organizations and individuals as the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Colorado Natural Heritage Program, the Colorado Native Plant Society, Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory, The Nature Conservancy, Colorado Division of Wildlife, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Colorado State University Extension, Land EKG, and Holistic Management International. Links to some of these organizations can be found on our Partners page.

Above left: A Swainson's Thrush in the hand during banding efforts by Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory staff. -- Chris Wood photo.
Above right: Charley Orchard of Land EKG leads a workshop in ecosystem process monitoring for local ranchers and agency staff. -- Duke Phillips photo.
Left: Testing grasses for moisture content, land managers discuss monitoring strategies at a workshop on Chico Basin Ranch. -- Duke Phillips photo.