CEC Training Material for Cattle Ranchers Workshops 2014

Presentation 4: Moving Forward through Partnerships

Lesson Plan: / 4
Lesson Objectives: /
  1. Provide examples of how to use the information givenduring previous presentations to support the NAGA vision.
  2. Define processes and functions that can be followed to facilitate a greater good for North American grasslands

Time Allotted: / 45 minutes
Resources Needed:
PowerPoint:
Handouts:
Equipment: / Computer; screen; projector; laser pointer
Other:
Facilitator Instructions:
References:

CEC. 2014. Grasslands beneficial management practices online tool.Accessed 29 May 2014.

Herrick, J.E., J.W. Van Zee, K.M. Havstad, L. M. Burkett, and W.G. Whitford. 2005. Monitoring manual for grassland, shrubland and savanna ecosystems. Volume II: Design, supplementary, methods and interpretation. Tucson, AZ, USA: University of Arizona Press. 200 pp. <jornada.nmsu.edu/files/Volume_II.pdf.

Pellant, M., P. Shaver, D.A. Pyke, and J.E. Herrick. 2005. Interpreting indicators of rangeland health, Version 4. Technical Reference 1734-6. US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, National Science and Technology Center, Denver, CO. 122 pp. <

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CEC Training Material for Cattle Ranchers Workshops 2014

Presentation 4: Moving Forward through Partnerships

Slide No. / Do / Say / Resources
1 / Title slide / Since 2011, through its North American Grasslands project, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation has developed products to facilitate wise land management at the most local level.
Among these, the North American Grasslands Alliance foundational document,A Framework for Change, provides a vision and a set of principles and objectives that canguide efforts to achieve specific goals and tasks.
Then there is the Grasslands Beneficial Management Practices online tool, a resource that makes universally accessible94 beneficial management practices designed forNorth American ranchers, conservation organizations, and government and academic institutions.
This presentation will focus on providing examples of how the NAGA information and the online tool can be used to help you understand what conservation opportunities are available and to help land managers make better management decisions that will advance grassland conservation.
2 / Objectives / [Define objectives of this presentation:]
The goal of this CEC project is to address the issues related to the loss of grasslands, through:
•providing examples of how to use the information given during the previous presentations to support the NAGA vision, and
•defining processes and functions that can be followed by managers, stakeholders, communities and others to collectively facilitate a greater good for North American grasslands.
3 / We have discussed the many values that grasslands provide to society.
We have discussed some of the CEC efforts: (a) formation of the North American Grassland Alliance, (2) the Framework for Change document, and (3) the BMP online tool.
How do we use the information presented to support the Vision of the North American Grassland Alliance? Are we applying the right beneficial management practices? What other BMPs could we use?
4 / Sustaining our grassland resources requires planning. The development of a plan on how you are going to achieve your management objectives is vital and should be one of the first steps taken (if not already developed) by a landowner, or a regional or national group.
There are numerous planning processes that can be used, each involving several steps.
When addressing grassland sustainability at scales larger than the local-producer scale, one of the first steps is to bring together the right people. A locallyled meeting of individuals with common interests for managing native grasslands is an excellent way to start. Involve individuals, communities, NGOs, and state and federal leaders.
5 / Plan, Monitor, Replan / Most planning processes involve the development of a plan, monitoring the progress of that plan, and adjusting or modifying the plan based on results of the monitoring.
Development of the plan includes defining the management objectives for the defined area, inventorying and analyzing the current resources, identifying the BMPs needed to meet the management objectives, and then implementing the BMPs.
To identify if the management objectives are being achieved, one must implement some type of monitoring plan. Within the monitoring plan one should: (1) define monitoring objectives, (2) identify the indicators that should be monitored to evaluate the monitoring objectives, (3) select the appropriate monitoring protocols, (4) select the monitoring locations and times to monitor, and (5) collect and analyze the data.
Based on analysis of the monitoring data, refinements in the management strategies and BMPs may be needed.
This process can be utilized at the local, regional, or national level. It can be used by a landowner when developing a plan for his or her own property, or it can be usd by groups when developing plans for larger geographic regions (for example, for a particular species of interest or a priority area).
6 / What support information does the CEC effort offer to land managers?
When developing your management objectives, keep the NAGA Vision Statement in mind. So, how do we facilitate that vision? Do your management objectives help facilitate that vision of providing healthy and productive grassland ecosystems?
7 / One of the earlier presentations defined a set of PRINCIPLES and OBJECTIVES that basically consisted of “strategies or actions” that can be taken by individuals to impart positive change. The Framework offers 7 principles and 18 supporting objectives. These principles and objectives can help partners to assess the alignment of their operations and/or activities with regard to achieving the overall vision.
Developing management objectives for regional or national projects should be defined through locallyled efforts and through community involvement.
8 / Another important step in the planning process is to identify which BMPs are needed to meet your objectives. The individual or land manager may have a more specific objective that he or she needs to meet than that identified at a regional, national or trinational level. However, if a common vision is understood and sought, only the scale of commitment or specificity of commitment will be different. Recall that the Grasslands BMPsonline tool identifies 94 different beneficial management practices for grasslands goods and services.
9 / Let’s review how the Framework document and the BMPs online tool can be used together. Objective 1.1 will need to be met in order to meet the vision of Principle 1. What are some examples of things that land managers and owners can do at the ground level to meet continental or regional goals?
10 / View video clip
Discussion / The greatest change happens at the landscape level, where ranchers manage the land. While private land managers are the ultimate stewards of landscapes, we can be more effective if we bond together. The BMPs online tool offers success stories from around North America, and this Nebraska, USA, effort describes how neighbors can collaborate to reach common goals and to make a greater impact on natural resources.
[Play video clip.
[The facilitator should ask the audience to provide other examples of similar partnerships or collaborative efforts.]
11 / Let’s look at Objective 1.2 and see how management practices can be used to improve or maintain water quantity and quality concerns.
Remember, within the online tool the beneficial management practices are organized into eight management categories, covering the relevant major management needs and represented by icons. For instance, the “raindrop” here identifies the beneficial management practices that address water-related practices. As you look for information related to specific resource concerns or issues, these icons will help you to locate that information.
12 / View video clip
Discussion / Let’s look at this example from Alberta, Canada, to see what some land mangers do to improve water quality, water quantity, and riparian ecosystems.
[Play video clip.
[The facilitator should ask the audience to provide other examples of similar efforts.]
13 / View video clip
Discussion / Let’s review another example of how the online tool and the Framework document provide support materialfor land managers.
How can rural communities influence positive change? Let’s look at this Alberta, Canada, example from the CEC online tool and see how rural communities and managers work together.
[Play video clip.
[The facilitator should ask the audience to provide other examples of similar partnerships or collaborative efforts.]
14 / Framework objective 5.2 focuses on the concept that sustainable grasslands are synonymous with a sustainable economy.
What are some of the tools and activities that can be used to ensure that grassland ecological processes are functioning as desired? The online tool identifies some of the types of activities that can be implemented to support objective 5.2.
15 / So how do you know if the current management strategies are sustaining hydrologic function, soil processes, and plant communities?There are several different rangeland health assessment protocols or monitoring procedures that managers can use.
Assessments can be used to evaluate how these ecological processes are functioning today (Pellant et al. 2005). Assessments provide you with a snapshot of how the hydrologic cycle or soil processes are currently functioning.
Monitoring is the collection of data about a specific indicator over a period of time and is used to track trends or changes that are occurring (Pellant et al. 2005).
16 / Rangeland Health is one of the assessment techniques that have been developed to measure the ability of rangelands to sustain certain ecological processes, such as the hydrologic function and soil processes.
Rangeland Health evaluates how the ecological processes of the water cycle (“capture, storage, and safe release of precipitation”), energy flow (“conversion of sunlight to plant and then to animal matter”), and nutrient cycle (“the cycling of nutrients through the environment”) are functioning compared to some standard (Pellant et al. 2005).
Understand what the indicators of rangeland health are and become trained in evaluating them. It is quite simple: learn to use all tools at your disposal in order to know when land is healthy, at-risk or unhealthy. Use monitoring techniques to evaluate the effects of past management, and to confirm the effectiveness of current management practices.
17 / “Monitoring is designed to support a diverse set of goals required by various societal interests. Monitoring procedures should provide data on the three key attributes of landscape and ecosystem sustainability: soil and site stability, hydrologic function and biotic integrity” (Herrick et al. 2005). This data can serve as foundational knowledge for assessing and evaluating the degree to which societal and/or land management goals are being met.What is monitored should be linked to evaluating management objectives.
18 / There are numerous monitoring techniques (ranging from quick, simple to more-time-consuming, intensive methods). Become familiar with the soils of your ranch and learn your plants. As basic a process as it is, few people still do it. Build upon the concepts of understanding plants, soils and management interactions.
Learn to read the land. People look at landscapes through different viewpoints and this is normal, as landscapes and vegetation are things of beauty. But learn the symptoms of good health and understand what indicators to evaluate to help you detect unhealthy grasslands (Herrick et al. 2005).
How do you know what technique to use or how to monitor? Begin small and grow. Almost any monitoring is better than no monitoring at all. You don’t have to purchase expensive sampling equipment. What can you do if you don’t have enough time, need to prioritize or need to start small? Use available resources and agencies to help you prepare your monitoring program.
Sample the ecological sites most abundant on the ranch and sample the most sensitive ecological sites first
Use photo points where change is slower
Set up wire cages (enclosures)
Use pace/step transects methods
Select measurements that are sensitive to the changes you need to monitor
Build upon the interactions amonghydrology, soils, plants, landscapes and management. These are the building blocks upon which all succeeding management decisions are based.
19 / Discussion / “The most useful monitoring programs helpmanagers achieve long-term managementobjectives by generating relevant data.Consequently, it is essential to clearly define bothmanagement and monitoring objectives beforedesigning a monitoring program” (Herrick et al. 2005).
Utse monitoring techniques to evaluate the effects of past management, and to confirm the effectiveness of current management practices. Many times we apply a “conservation practice” and think that ecological conditions will now improve. However, if the appropriate vegetation management is not applied, the impacts from that practice may actually be worse. Have any of you ever seen a fence or a pond actually create more degradation?
Are there examples that some of you would like to discuss?
20 / Discussion: Why Monitor? / Let’s look at a common example of why monitoring is important and why it is important that, through planning, we identify the correct BMPs to apply to our grasslands. What do we see in this image? The conservation practice that these ranchers decided to install was a pond. The concept was that with an additional water source they could better distribute livestock grazing. What’s happening? What do you see on this image? Overgrazing? Is it short-term or long-term? Discussion?
21 / What do we see here? Do we see symptoms of a healthy, at-risk or unhealthy ecosystem? What should it look like? To understand whether we are managing our resources appropriately we must understand what a healthy landscape looks like. Ecological resource information for the region plus inventory and monitoring tools can help a land manager understand how to read the landscape. What is the normal amount of bare ground? Is that much bare ground normal for that region of the country? Are annuals the dominant species for this ecological site and are terracettes and gullies normal? What is causing them?
22 / What problems do we see? Is the soil stable? Is the biotic plant component appropriately distributed and functioning healthily? Is the hydrologic cycle functioning appropriately? Are these short-term or long-term symptoms or indicators of health? If the symptoms are unhealthy, what should we do? Let’s see what this group of land managers is doing to resolve these resource problems.
23 / So how are we solving erosion and cover problem? These slope trenches (2x2x6’) are installed to slow overland water flow, store water, increase infiltration, and provide additional water for planted trees and prickly pear cacti. All sound like reasonable concepts. Mesquite and prickly pear are planted instead of grasses. Their rationaleis to provide another fruit-bearing plant source for livestock and human use.
24 / What other practices are being used in this watershed? On steep rock slopes, rock-walled terraces are built across the contour to reduce overland water flow, and increase infiltration. On deeper, flatter soils, contour berms are createdfor the same purpose. Prickly pear and mesquite are planted along both structures. These practices are installed by the communal families and financial support is provided by NGOs and government programs. What is missing?
25 / Do these managers know what the resource problems are? Did they solve the problem or problems? Look at this image. This dam has a storage depth of 30–35 feet.
26 / Discussion. / What do we see here? The entire watershed for this dam is full of silt. The distance from the top of the dam to the soil surface on the back side is approximately 35 feet, and the distance from the top of the dam to the silted soil on the front side is 4–5 feet. Note that there is about a 1-foot water storage capacity and that the the top half of the silted-in watershed is actually being farmed. Where has this soil come from? What practices have been applied over time? What has been the level of management over time? Do these managers understand what the indicators of poor health or an unhealthy ecosystem are? Have we been treating the symptoms and not the cause? For how long? If partners and programs are to support these types of managers and grassland systems, what changes need to be made or what might be some different emphasis or processes to use?
27 / What is the problem(s)? Is the problem livestock or might it be a stocking-rate issue? Is it possible that we are spending too much time and resources on facilitating and accelerating practices and not enough time on understanding management concepts? Is the problem that we failed to understand what our problems are? How do you know if you applied the appropriate practice or combination of practices? How do you know if your management is appropriate? Do we understand basic plant/soil/animal relationships and are we monitoring?
28 / Learn to monitor and to read the landscape. Understand how to detect healthy, at-risk, and unhealthy symptoms. It’s really not that difficult. The ranchers in the upper left image are doing a step transect in an effort to collect rudimentary cover data. It is very easy to collect percent cover by species, percent bare ground, and percent rock. The group in the lower middle image is collecting data on plant production, by species. The group is evaluating their results right there in the field. These data, over time, tell a story. These concepts afford excellent discussion and clarification. Three generations of ranchers participated in the field activity and training.