DOCUMENTING GOOD MANAGMENT
Using pictures over time to tell a story by Glenn Nader, Ph.D., Retired UC Livestock Farm Advisor Many ranches have a story to tell, but simply only using words to tell the story does not always do it justice. Photographs tell our own personal story for us. One can think of taking photos as capturing a timeline of our lives that we can then share with others. Not only can pictures preserve an important moment in time for us, but they can also act as a visual narrative, showing the conservation work ranchers are contributing to the land over time, which is a story worth sharing. Stewardship of the land is often a story best told through pictures. Photographs can vividly document changes over time that ranchers may not realize, as we see the landscape evolve so slowly over time. We can even be caught off guard by “before” pictures that occurred prior to management actions being implemented. My wife, Marie, and I traded a portion of the family ranch owned since 1872 for a ranch in Modoc county in 1999. In my previous life as a University of California Farm Livestock Advisor, I along with a group of other California Farm Livestock Advisors developed a rangeland monitoring publication. One of the points that was stressed was how to do photo monitoring (i.e., the taking of photographs from the same location over time) as a simple and powerful tool. We decided to take that advice when we traded into the new ranch and took baseline photographs at different locations on the ranch. We also developed a ranch plan that considered wildlife and recreation along with sustainable grass and cattle production. We worked with our local Resource Conservation District (RCD) to secure grant funds to fence the stream and improve riparian areas on the ranch.
30 California Cattleman April 2021
We were fortunate to have Dick Mackey, a local rancher, serve as a mentor. He has been a corner stone of the local resources RCD and also has done much riparian improvement work on his ranch. Marie attended several tours of his ranch, which guided us during our efforts to restore the Witcher Ranch riparian areas. Presented below are three restoration projects from our ranch where we used repeat photography to document change.
Bridge Field April 2002
BRIDGE FIELD
This field got its name from the bridges that were constructed to cross the down cut portion of Witcher Creek. Given that every time we crossed one, we would pray to get across safely, we realized something needed to change. We fenced off the creek to make a riparian pasture that was intensively grazed in May and rested from grazing the rest of year to allow for grass and willow growth. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Partners program and Fish and Game’s Cantera grants funded the RCD to construct 13 rock stream grade control structures on every one foot of elevation drop in the one-quarter mile portion of the stream. What started as a suggestion by a Point Blue Biologist in 2018, turned into an effort that allowed beavers to establish in the creek as a cheaper method to repair streams. The beavers have built on many the rock structures and raised the water table in the meadow even higher, reducing the amount of irrigation needed. The pictures taken over time, tell the story of change that has occurred.
Bridge Field November 2008
Bridge Field October 2017
Bridge Field August 2020, Beaver Dam
