Red Canyon Ranch

At Red Canyon, TNC is testing virtual fencing technology, a system of cellular- and GPS-enabled collars designed to enable ranchers to contain their herds with  fewer wire fences. Barbed wire and woven-wire fences cause migrating wildlife to waste crucial time and calories navigating around them. Loose fence wires also entangle countless animals trying to pass over or under them. And they can trap wildlife on roadways, creating a deadly risk for both animals and passing motorists.

Critical research on animal behavior to better understand why they forage in certain locations at particular times. Their findings will provide invaluable insight for those managing grazing of livestock and wildlife.

TNC’s Western Wyoming Stewardship Director, John Coffman, doesn’t look much like a beaver, but he knows how to work like one. Literally. He is among a vanguard of conservationists who are building artificial beaver dams— known as beaver dam analogs or BDAs—in an effort to restore the natural function of rivers and streams by going back in time.

The arrow straight, grass-covered stream channels so familiar in the West are, for the most part, the work of humans, not nature. Left to its own devices, a stream will usually twist and meander along, breaching its banks with spring snowmelt and slowing in a more contained manner in the drier months.

Beaver dams will create natural pools that help restore groundwater as the thirsty earth sucks down the moisture like a sponge, that feed willows and bushes to shade and cool water for native fish and that help slow flows enough to deposit sediment that maintains healthy banks. But, as people settled the land, they straightened and armored channels and exterminated beavers in an effort to create more consistent flows. Unfortunately, without those meanders and obstacles like beaver dams to slow flows, snowmelt races through channels, scouring and deepening streambanks and not lingering long enough to replenish vital groundwater stores. As a result, some streams flow to a mere trickle when it’s needed most.

BDAs are one tool we’re using at Red Canyon Ranch to undo some of that damage. These inexpensive, low-tech structures are mostly piles of small limbs and brush anchored by wooden posts, but they’re already proving their value. What we learn here can help other landowners replicate similar solutions on their land.

The Sagebrush Sea is vanishing at an astonishing rate of a million acres per year. Invasive species, severe wildfire, road and subdivision construction, poor grazing practices and drought all contribute to its loss. To defend and restore sagebrush habitat, scientists, landowners and communities need large quantities of native seeds so they can replant degraded lands. Their efforts have been significantly hobbled by a lack of native seeds. Seeds for many of the wildflowers and native grasses found throughout the sagebrush sea are simply unavailable to purchase at any cost. Plus, the seeds we are able to get can be very difficult to cultivate.

At Red Canyon Ranch, TNC is leading cutting-edge research to discover how to get finicky native plants to sprout and thrive, as well as how to grow them at a large enough scale to make native seeds commercially viable for the region’s seed companies. At a TNC lab in Lander, Wyoming, scientists test different methods of replicating the conditions seeds need to sprout, such as the optimal length of time and temperature they need to be frozen to trigger germination in spring, or how to best scratch the seeds’ hard coatings to allow moisture to enter and send a signal for the seed to sprout. TNC is also testing methods of growing and harvesting seeds outdoors at a nursery scale and utilizing sustainable cultivation practices to manage our nursery.

To learn more about the Red Canyon Ranch Native Seed Nursery, contact Maggie Eshleman, Restoration Scientists for The Nature Conservancy in Wyoming, at maggie.eshleman@tnc.org.