For more information contact:

                                                                                                                                  Dr. Jeff Mosley

                                Montana Stockgrowers Association                               Montana State University-Bozeman

406-442-3420                                                                         406-994-5601

                               

June 23, 2006

For Immediate Release

 

Close to Half a Million Acres of Private Rangeland

Added to Certified “Undaunted Land Stewards”

 

Participation, Interest in Montana’s Undaunted Stewardship

Program Grows Steadily in Second Year of Lewis and Clark Bicentennial

 

Almost 500,000 acres of privately-owned Montana rangeland, from 19 different ranches around the state, have now been added to the “certified” category of involvement in the nationally unique Undaunted Stewardship® program, it was announced today.

 

The owners and managers of these lands can call themselves “Undaunted Land Stewards” –participants in the program that is preserving historic sites along the Lewis and Clark Trail and helping ranch families improve both the stewardship and the economic performance of their ranches.

 

The 19 newly certified ranches collectively contain 466,650 privately owned acres and are located all over Montana, from Malta to Twin Bridges, from Nye to Belt.

 

Managed jointly by Montana State University, the federal Bureau of Land Management and the Montana Stockgrowers Association, Undaunted Stewardship® has earned national recognition for its unique approach to stewardship and historic site preservation.  A guidance council representing 19 different conservation, agricultural and other Montana groups helps oversee the multi-faceted program.

 

To participate as “Undaunted Land Stewards,” ranches have to meet a series of grazing and other land management standards that ensure the long-term sustainability and productivity of their ranch lands,” according to Dr. Jeff Mosley, extension range management specialist at Montana State University-Bozeman, who directs the land use programs of Undaunted Stewardship®. 

 

Mosley explained that before a ranch can become certified as an “Undaunted Land Steward,” it must use a grazing management approach that is “documented and monitored, with a written prescription for land management that conserves natural resources.  These ranchers are demonstrating how ranching can maintain natural productivity, and sustain it for generations to come,” he said.

 

Mosley coordinates a team of range scientists at Montana State University-Bozeman that visits and studies the ranches and helps the ranchers develop written grazing plans.  The team also helps each rancher establish a range monitoring program to collect baseline data that ranchers can use to judge, refine and continually improve their land management, Mosley said.

 

The ranches having completed the certification process are:

 

The IX Ranch                                      Big Sandy

The Chauvet Ranch                            Big Sandy

The Lazy JK Ranch                             Big Timber

The Keogh Ranch                                Nye

Ketchum Cattle Country                    Broadview

The A-Y Ranch                                    Belt

The American Fork Ranch                  Two Dot

The Crazy Mountain Cattle Co.         Big Timber

The Double O Ranch                           Malta

The EY Ranch                                      Eden

The Foster Ranch & Feedlot              Roundup

Hamilton Ranch                                  Twin Bridges

The Hould Ranch                                Malta

The Milesnick Ranch                           Belgrade

N Hanging 5 Ranch                             Ft. Benton

The Prairie White Cliffs Ranch           Loma

The Smiley Ranch                                Eden

The Sun Ranch                                    Cameron

The Sun West Ranch                           Cameron

 

“During the final year of the two-hundredth anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s first passage through Montana, we are recognizing the kind of superior rangeland stewardship that has kept our state looking more as it did two hundred years ago than any other state the explorers traveled,” Mosley said. 

 

“And through the Undaunted Stewardship® program, we’re helping ranchers all over Montana to continue being good stewards of the land,” he emphasized.  “There’s no other voluntary, incentive-based, private-land stewardship program like this in the nation,” he concluded.

 

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