At Brigham Young University's Life Sciences Building, students and faculty on the rangeland management team have been studying rangelands for years. Rangelands include deserts, grasslands, shrublands and woodlands.
“The main two things we do are a lot of plant ID, so learning to identify plants, and also just management principles, what are different range types and how do we take care of them,” said Ronnie Stauffer, a member of the rangeland management team.
At the Society for Range Management annual meeting, dozens of teams across North America competed, shared research and networked with professionals.
This year, BYU’s team won the honored Trail Boss award, which marked their fifth straight victory and sixth overall.
“So the Trail Boss is essentially an accumulation of all the competitions based on teams on who did the best,” Stauffer said.
This year the team traveled to Monterey, California, to compete. Team member Samuel Leigh said he enjoyed identifying plants and rangelands in places he’s never been before.
“California was just beautiful. We got the chance to walk along the seashore, saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time in my life, which was pretty cool,” Leigh said.
Not only did the team get to experience new places, they also got to learn from many people who are different from them.
“It’s a very, I feel like, ideologically diverse field, and so it helps you get a lot of different perspectives on things and there’s just so much that you can learn,” Stauffer said.
Despite their many differences, everyone had the same goal: to help save and preserve the rangelands around us so that plants, animals and people alike can enjoy nature for as long as possible.
“We have enough for everyone, but if everyone takes too much, we don't have enough for anybody,” Leigh said.
For more information about the BYU rangeland management team and the Trail Boss award, visit the team’s website.