Profession or Area of Expertise
Personal Statement
Rangeland condition is the perpetual step-child of environmental
organizations and management agencies alike. While no other use impacts as
many acres of western public lands as frequently as grazing by domestic
livestock, those impacts often go unnoticed by the untrained eye. The
damage is often as subtle as it is pervasive and devastating to indigenous
organisms, soil properties, and hydrologic functions. Other higher
profile items such as forests, riparian, wilderness, and so forth end up
dominating environmental and management agendas while range condition
seldom shares the spotlight long enough to accomplish needed reforms.
I founded RangeNet in the hope of providing a
remedy to that situation, not by creating yet another organization, but by
improving communication and providing a focal point where individuals may
work more effectively on rangeland condition issues in support of their
existing organizational affiliations. In addition, I established and
maintain RangeBiome, A Public Rangeland Almanac as a one-man
operation on the web. As I function as webmaster for RangeNet,
Range Watch, and RangeBiome,
there is considerable resource sharing and interconnectivity among the
three sites. Each site, however, is a separate entity. RangeNet
belongs to the networked members and is a special project of Western
Watersheds Project, Inc.. Range Watch belongs to its
parent organization. RangeBiome belongs to me.
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