Lost seasonal ranges reshape transhumant adaptive capacity: Thirty-five years at the US Sheep Experiment Station

Authors: Wilmer, Hailey; Taylor, Joshua - Bret; MACON, DANIEL - University Of California Agriculture And Natural Resources (UCANR); REEVES, MATTHEW - Us Forest Service (FS); Wilson, Carrie - Welsh; BECK, JACALYN - University Of California Agriculture And Natural Resources (UCANR)

Submitted to: Agriculture and Human Values
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/2/2024
Publication Date: 6/7/2024
Citation: Wilmer, H., Taylor, J.B., Macon, D., Reeves, M.C., Wilson, C.S., Beck, J.M.Strong, N.K. 2024. Loss seasonal ranges reshape transhumant adaptive capacity: Thirty-five years at the US Sheep Experiment Station. Agriculture and Human Values. Volume 41,Pages 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10591-2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10591-2

Interpretive Summary: Across the globe, rangeland-based livestock producers practice a form of production called transhumance. They move livestock across seasonal ranges to match ecological patterns. Changes in human values, including increased pressure to manage rangelands for biodiversity and other non-agricultural uses, are reshaping these traditional system. However, the ways managers adapt to these lost range resources is not well understood. This study traces 35 years of change on a large range sheep research station in Idaho, USA using agroecological calendars using manager records as data. The calendars show how managers adapted to loss of seasonal summer and winter ranges and how the adaptive capacity of the system was reduced with these lost ranges. The future of transhumant systems will depend on social and agroecological innovation and collaborative solutions to land management conflicts that limit access to seasonal ranges.

Technical Abstract: Transhumance is a form of extensive livestock production that involves seasonal movements among ecological zones or landscape types. Rangeland-based transhumance constitutes an important social and economic relationship to nature in many regions of the world, including across the Western US. However, in the US, social and ecological drivers of change are reshaping transhumant practices, and managers must adapt to increased competition for public rangelands use. Specifically, concerns for wildlife conservation have led to reduced access to seasonal public lands grazing for western US livestock production systems. To understand how managers adapt to loss of seasonal ranges, we create agroecological calendars from manager records spanning a total of 35 years for operations (1986-2021) at the US Sheep Experiment Station in Idaho and Montana. The calendars illustrate how a loss of winter and summer ranges after 2013 coincided with shifts in the operation’s adaptive strategies, leading to an agroecological calendar that incorporated more grazing of fall crop residue and purchased winter feed, and less flexibility to move among seasonal ranges to cope with variable forage conditions. These changes shifted the job duties and experiences of farm workers and managers and prompt a number of new agroecological questions related to sheep production and vegetation management outcomes that merit future research. Our case study brings to light the need for scholarship evaluating the impacts of transhumant system change on rural communities, sheep genetics, production, and rangeland vegetation communities. They illustrate how agroecological calendars help us understand the connections between changes in societal values for rangeland use, manager adaptation decisions, and overall system transformation, and how they can be used to theorize these impacts. For Western transhumant livestock systems that rely on government-managed lands, innovative forms of collaboration and social adaptation will be as important as technological innovations in the face of urgent biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, and food system sustainability issues.