This article caught my eye this morning. It’s not about what you have, it’s about HOW you use it.

What is Real Organic Ranching?

35 percent of public lands — 155 million acres — are used for livestock grazing in this country. And almost all of it is destructive; overgrazing can destroy native vegetation, damage soils and stream banks, disrupt natural processes and contaminate waterways with fecal waste.

But not the lands managed by Glenn and Carol Elzinga and their seven daughters: At the Elzinga family’s Alderspring Ranch in May, Idaho, they have implemented a practice called “inherding.” These practices have transformed dryland grazing on their 40,000-acre public land allotment from those that harm the land to those that heal.

Most ranchers in the US practice “continuous grazing” — turning cattle out onto public lands for the summer and rounding them up three months later. But continuous grazing is the bane of those trying to preserve our country’s dry grasslands. Most of these grazed areas are now so degraded that they’ve lost their biodiversity. There are few trees, if any, left by the waterways; and there is a lot of bare ground.

As Glenn says, “Cattle follow the 2 ‘Gs’: Gravity and Grass.” With the continuous grazing that most ranchers use, the riparian areas become so damaged because the cattle spend all of their time grazing (and pooping) by the water. With the loss of grasses and woody species by the waterways, there is no habitat for what Glenn calls the 3 “Bs” — Birds, Bears and Beavers. Beavers are considered a keystone species because they fell woody plants, which helps slow down the water. Without vegetation and beaver dams, water flows more quickly off the land — causing first erosion and then surrounding land that dries out more quickly because of the lost water. And the ripple effect goes on …

Wait a minute, are you telling me that having beavers in the watershed can keep grass lands healthier in a way that benefits cattle? WHOA! Next think you’ll be telling me that they’re good for humans, too.

Instead of “continuous grazing,” the cattle herded by the crew at Alderspring continuously walk. It’s an incredible thing to watch. Picture this: 500 head of cattle with their heads down, sneaking a bite here and there — walk through any given spot on the range in a matter of minutes — guided by the crew on horseback. And the Elzingas don’t allow the cattle to return to that spot again for 3-7 years, depending on rainfall. These are dry areas and recovery is slow!

Not only is this approach to grazing better for the land and the cows — another wonderful side effect of managing the herd in this way is that the meat raised on a more diverse landscape is much healthier for us, too. While cattle in a feedlot eat mostly corn (that they never evolved to eat), the cattle from Alderspring graze on 2,500 different plant species. Studies have shown that the thousands of diverse plant phytochemicals can then accumulate in the meat. The Elzingas have had metabolomic tests done on their beef compared to thousands of beef samples from around the world: The omega-3 fatty acids from the beef at Alderspring Ranch exceed that of omega-6. One benefit leads to another.

“Instead of acting on an ecosystem, we became part of it,” Glenn says. “That’s the vision that changed for us. When we partner with nature like that and become part of ecosystems, to me that’s what Real Organic is

Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, git along little beavers! Keep the cows moving and let the beavers stay put!

The sad thing is that many people are totally against grazing in the West because continuous grazing of cattle devastates the landscape. But by keeping the cattle and the aftermath of their presence out of the waterways, the Elzingas have shown us a better way.

“We all drink out of the creeks,” Glenn asserts. “We don’t purify or filter the water and we never get sick. It’s like what water was meant to be. It’s beautiful — and I can’t do that on anybody else’s grazing allotment, because it’s fetid. It’s got fecal matter floating down it and it’s got sedimentation. It’s wrong.”

It turns out that, like beavers, ranchers are a keystone species, too — it is human management that has cascading effects. We hold the keys to whether our public lands are nurtured or destroyed. We are the agents of change. And while the Elzingas bring us hope, the cattle industry at large would do well to take notes.

Let the beavers be beavers and let the cowboys be cowboys.