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LandCAN Conservation Success Stories

LandCAN Conservation Success Stories

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LandCAN Conservation Success Stories

Browse our Growing Library of Success Stories

2S Land & Cattle

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2S Land & CattleMaking sound land management decisions on one’s own land is done by thousands of landowners and managers every day. But managing one’s own land and the land of fifteen landlords is a feat few successfully juggle. Randy and Nicole Small are among the few. The Smalls care for all the land they manage as if it were their own, with the goal of improving upon the foundation laid by previous generations.



 

Hoeme Family Farm and Ranch

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Hoeme Family Farm and RanchFor more than 40 years the Hoeme family has been on the cutting edge of conservation practices that help their farm’s profitability, soil health, water quality and wildlife habitat. 



 

Lazy VJ Farms

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Lazy VJ FarmsGrowing up, Rod Vorhees’ father taught ecology at local school. Although he didn’t realize it at the time, Rod was essentially immersed in an ecology class at home on the farm while he worked with his father, preparing him for a career dedicated to the family farm and conservation. Today Rod manages Lazy VJ Farms, his family’s fourth generation cow/calf ranch in Fredonia.



 

Sproul Ranch

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Sproul RanchAfter growing up on a small dairy farm, Bill Sproul dreamed of one day owning his own cattle ranch. With the support of his family, Bill purchased the land that is now Sproul Ranch, and manages cattle with his wife Peggy and their son Raymond.



 

Sherwood Acres

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Sherwood AcresThirteen years ago, with no real farming experience, Jon and Sylvia Bednarski purchased 35 acres at the headwater of Harrods Creek in LaGrange, Kentucky. Having grown up in rural America, Jon and Sylvia had a dream that their own children would share that lifestyle and grow up in similar fashion.



 

Springhill Farms

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Springhill FarmsWhile growing up in Hickman County in western Kentucky, Jerry Peery operated a tractor on his father’s farm starting at the age of seven. He farmed side-by-side with him during his teenage years, and began farming on his own after graduating from high school in 1957.



 

Tallow Creek Farm

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Tallow Creek FarmWhile working tirelessly at their jobs running a custom injection molding firm, Ray Pelle and his son Harry decided to pursue their dream of owning land to reconnect with nature and hunt. Ray bought the first 400-acre tract of land in 1982 in the knobby Tallow Creek area of northern Taylor County. After Ray’s passing in 2003, Harry and his wife Karen continued to follow the dream and have since added another 1,100 acres of forest onto Tallow Creek Farm. 



 

Trunnell Family Farm

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Trunnell Family FarmAchieving soil health through the use of no-till farming and cover crops is nothing new to Edward (Myrel) Trunnell, who began farming more than six decades ago. Conservation is synonymous with his idea of farming.



 

Turner Family Farms

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Turner Family FarmsConservation ethics were instilled in Mark Turner at a young age while helping his father on the family farm. When Mark took over Turner Farms, he saw the negative effects on the land from the moldboard plow, and decided to purchase his first no-till drill in 1983. The farm is now no-till and cover cropped on every acre.



 

West Wind Farm

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West Wind FarmTo many in Munfordville, Charlie Williams is simply known as “the tree man.” From a young age, Charlie developed a passion for woodland stewardship after he received 90 acres of land from his grandfather for Christmas. He has nurtured and expanded his landholdings into 1,200 acres, including over 1,000 acres of woodlands.



 

Malpai Borderlands Group

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The Malpai Borderlands Group is a grassroots, landowner-driven organization that is implementing cooperative ecosystem management on almost one million acres of virtually unfragmented landscape in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico along the Mexican border.  The area has been called a “working wilderness”.



 

The Roots of the General Mills Regenerative Agriculture Program

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The nonprofit Soil Health Academy (SHA) is just one of many initiatives spawned by regenerative agriculture guru Gabe Brown in collaboration with additional expert partners. SHA holds regenerative agriculture workshops around the country that are open to anyone who’s interested, and they are routinely sold out.



 

Beaver Dam Analogs catching on in Idaho

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Landowners and conservation professionals are excited about a new type of woody structure that mimics beaver dams. The benefits are similar – they store water, slow down runoff in streams, and enhance fish and wildlife habitat. They’re called Beaver Dam Analogs or BDA’s for short.



 

Sagebrush Landscape Restoration Project: A Boon To Working Lands

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The Commission’s two-year grant-funded project to restore wet meadows in southern Idaho benefiting sage grouse and wildlife habitat, due to conclude in June 2020, has already exceeded most of its deliverables. Partners and landowners and are pleased.



 

Restoring streams post-fire with low-tech structures in Idaho

Conservation professionals turned a negative into a positive in the aftermath of the 65,000-acre Sharps wildfire on Baugh Creek in the Little Wood watershed in Central Idaho.

 



 

Kerry Dockter believes you’re never too old to learn.

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Learn about how Kerry's family beef cattle ranch operates in a constant state of adaption and innovation, thanks to his careful observation, openness to new perspectives, and ability to work with researchers and nature.

 



 

When Conservation Happens Collaboratively

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When Heather Dutton, fresh out of undergraduate school at the Warner College of Natural Resources and graduate school in the College of Agriculture at Colorado State University, began her first job working for a non-profit river restoration organization in the San Luis Valley, she was thrilled. She also felt confident that her technical training in restoration ecology had prepared her for the challenges she’d soon be facing.

Heather was in for a surprise.



 

McArthur Lake Forest Legacy Easement

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Ten years in the making, the objective of the project was to keep “working forests working,” while knitting together checkboard-ownership of private lands with state endowment trust lands to provide open space for moose, elk, deer and bears to travel a between the Cabinet Mountains to the east and the Selkirk Mountains to the west via a narrow valley, known as the “Purcell Trench,” surrounding the McArthur Lake WMA.



 

Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve

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Selah, Bamberger Ranch PreserveJ. David Bamberger’s Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve stands as a motivating symbol of the power of private landowner conservation.



 

San Pedro Ranch

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Land stewardship is about balance. If a ranch is managed solely for the purpose of grazing cattle, the rest of its ecosystem falls out of balance. Hugh Fitzsimons Jr. embraced a more holistic approach at his San Pedro Ranch in the 1970s. He believed if you improved native habitat, the ecosystem would not only lead to more wildlife, but to healthier livestock.