Cowboys and Scientists
Subscribe Now!At Canyonlands Research Center, ranchers and researchers team up to find better ways to use the land
Stuart Ruckman/The Nature Conservancy
On a wintery November afternoon at the Dugout Ranch in southeast Utah’s Indian Creek Valley, the sky wasn’t sure whether it wanted to rain or snow. The moisture accentuated the fall colors: the bright yellow of leaves still covering the cottonwood trees; the minty green of sage and salt brush; the red-brown of the surrounding cliffs and buttes.
Despite the weather, Matt Redd was getting ready to move the cattle to the next grazing area. It’s an unusual herd: a combination of Red Angus, a breed commonly raised for beef, and Rarámuri Criollo, a breed from Mexico that researchers think might be key to more sustainable ranching in a changing climate.
Dugout Ranch is unusual, too. It’s owned by conservation organization The Nature Conservancy: The cows belong to TNC, and Matt and his wife, Kristen Redd, are TNC employees – not only ranchers, but managers of the Canyonlands Research Center, a facility that shares a campus with the ranch. Students and scientists use the center as a hub to conduct research on ecology.
The scientists of the Canyonlands Research Center team up with the cowboys of Dugout Ranch to look for ways humans can use Utah land without using it up. One research project studies how Criollo cattle interact with the land differently from traditional breeds like Angus.
Matt Redd and ranch foreman Cody Butler, wearing warm coats and brimmed hats, got on horseback to round up the cattle. Butler gathered up four that had strayed from the group, while Matt drove the main herd. Mother cows mooed for their calves as the group trotted across the rocky shrubland.
Criollos are descendants of the first cattle brought to the Americas by Spanish explorers as early as Columbus’ second voyage in 1493. Isolated for hundreds of years in remote regions of Mexico, they evolved unique characteristics that make them a viable alternative to conventional breeds. They’re lighter, meaning they have less impact on the landscape; they eat a greater variety of plants; they’re nimbler and wider ranging; and they will travel farther for water. All these things make them well suited to living in a dry region that is getting drier.
The Criollos at Dugout Ranch wear radio tracking collars so researchers can learn more about how far they walk in a day and where they go. In another study, scientists are analyzing the cows’ fecal matter – cow-patties – to find out what plants they’re eating. “We want to make sure that what we’re being told about these animals is actually the truth,” Kristen said.
Researchers hope Criollos will turn out to be both lighter on the landscape and marketable in the existing commercial chain. If they are, the breed could help ranchers in the region adapt to a changing climate.
Matt Redd has lived at the Dugout Ranch for most of his life, and he is the third generation in his family to run cattle in Indian Creek. He remembers his childhood as idyllic in some ways, with a “backyard” full of stunning buttes and mysterious canyons – but it was also lonely. The family was 35 miles from the nearest town, Monticello. They didn’t have TV or even FM radio.
He first met Kristen while attending a boarding school in Salt Lake City, which is where she grew up. Though she lived in the city, the outdoors were part of her upbringing – she was raised skiing, hiking and camping.
Matt and Kristen were friendly but didn’t date. After graduation, Kristen took a trip to Indian Creek with some friends and stopped in at the ranch to say hello. She made a connection with Heidi Redd, Matt’s mom, who offered her a summer job moving irrigation wheels at the ranch. She accepted, and that’s when she and Matt started spending more time together. The joke, she said, is that she eventually got “promoted” from employee to family member.
In the 1990s, the Redd family still owned the ranch, but Heidi needed an investment partner to stay in business. However, every potential partner she met had development in mind. Heidi didn’t want to see the ranch turned into housing or golf courses; she found the solution with The Nature Conservancy, which bought the property in 1997. TNC’s mission is to conserve the lands and waters that sustain life.
Heidi continued ranching on the property for more than 15 additional years, and TNC added the research center in 2009. When Heidi retired in 2015, TNC hired Matt and Kristen as the new director and station manager of the Dugout Ranch and the research center.
When she’s not doing ranch work, Kristen takes care of the administrative side of the center. For Matt, every day is different, but it usually revolves around the cattle. He gets up between 4 and 6 a.m., depending on the day’s tasks, and might be using a pickup truck, a tractor, a horse or a motorcycle. The ranch comprises 5,507 private acres and 350,000 acres of adjacent public grazing allotments, so there’s a lot of ground to cover.
Over the decades, the Redds have noticed conditions in the area change. Matt described longer and warmer summers. Cool-season native grasses are getting replaced by shrubs, which are more drought tolerant because they have deeper roots. After long periods of drought, dry soils become hydrophobic, meaning that instead of absorbing water they repel it. In turn, vegetation dies, and the soil is more vulnerable to washouts and erosion. When rain does come – and Matt said precipitation events have become more severe and erratic than they once were – floods can incise creeks and scour swaths of land.
Raising Criollos may be one way for ranchers to adapt to these new conditions, but Matt and Kristen pointed out that ranching practices still have to fit within the parameters of the market.
Since Criollos are smaller than conventional breeds – topping out at 900 pounds compared to 1,300 pounds for Angus – they’re unlikely to meet the demand of large-scale meat processors, which, Matt said, control the prices of both live animals and processed beef.
So the Redds breed their Criollo cows with Red Angus bulls. The calves are sent to feedlots, where they’re “finished,” or fattened up, before being slaughtered and processed. The calves grow to be of similar size to Angus cattle. The supply chain is satisfied, while the rangeland still sees the benefit of smaller livestock.
The Nature Conservancy
The Criollo study is just one of dozens of projects going on at the Canyonlands Research Center. Projects there examine a host of subjects: fungus, biocrust, cottonwood trees, flooding, restoration techniques, birds, bugs and more.
Nichole Barger was until recently the research director at the Canyonlands Research Center. She said the location is perfect for the purpose. The property borders the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, which was used as grazing land before it became a national park in the 1960s. This gives researchers an easy way to study how land responds to the removal of livestock compared to land that’s still being grazed.
One project both Barger and the Redds are excited about is a summer educational program called NATURE, or Native American Tribes Upholding Restoration and Education. The seven-week program invites Indigenous college students to learn about ecology and land management both in the classroom and in the field at the research center.
Barger began doing research in the Four Corners region in 1998. At the time, she and other researchers in the area didn’t have a home base. She remembers that sometimes they would use facilities in the Needles District of the national park – early mornings would dawn on a bunch of scientists in sleeping bags scattered in the rocks outside the residence. “The rangers would get annoyed with us,” she remembered.
Canyonlands Research Center gave them a home. There are fabric tents on wooden platforms, furnished with cots, where scientists and technicians can stay while they’re working in the field. There’s a kitchen, showers and internet. The campus bustles in the mornings and evenings with researchers leaving for and returning from their field projects.
It’s not just the location that makes the Canyonlands Research Center unique, Barger said. TNC’s partnership with the Redd family enriches scientists’ work. Heidi Redd, who still lives on the ranch, has a keen interest in science, and she often comes out into the field to ask researchers about their work – and to share her decades of observations and experiences.
Heidi’s observations are incredibly important, Barger said. Heidi has always been a careful manager and paid attention to what’s going on in the environment. “If you’re going to be out there for multiple decades, you have to be a steward of the land,” Barger said. “You have to be a careful observer.”
Firsthand observations can complement quantitative measurements.
“Bringing those two different knowledge systems together is really powerful,” Barger said. “When you have different forms of knowledge, it speaks to different audiences – I think about these as different types of storytelling, whether it’s with data or experience with the land.”
Matt said Dugout Ranch doesn’t feel lonely to him anymore. It may be because he’s changed and prefers more solitude now, or it could be that technology has shrunk the world, and even in the most far-flung places, it’s hard to feel unplugged or removed. Or it could be that the ranch has developed so many partnerships and is part of TNC’s dedication to “a future where people and nature thrive” – a goal with universal relevance.
“People are dependent on these natural systems,” Matt said, “and will be as long as there are people.”
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