A charcoaled tree root cracked underneath Trevor Barnson’s boot as he walked toward an ashened mound.
“That’s one of mine,” he said, pointing at the dead cow. Its calf lay a few feet away.
There are at least six dead cows and calves blending in with the burned trees and ash. They were killed when the Cottonwood Fire roared through two-thirds of Barnson’s grazing land.
“So, this, this is to me one of the saddest things we see,” he said as he observed the carnage around him.
The Cottonwood Fire is the largest wildfire in the nation and has burned more than 94,000 acres of private and government land. Barnson’s family farm, the Straight Arrow Ranch, sits just outside Circleville in Piute County. He has a permit from the U.S. Forest Service to graze on Beaver Mountain in the Fishlake National Forest.
Ranchers like Barnson lease designated sections of the U.S. Forest Service land for grazing. Each allotment has a set limit on how many cattle it can support. Barnson said he and four other ranchers typically graze 300 to 400 head across 33,000 acres. But wildfire is steadily shrinking that footprint.
Looking at the cattle carcasses, he painted a picture of what he thinks happened.
“They come in here, they huddle up around this water,” he said, pointing at a small spring that trickles down the hill. He explained that the herd would have been running from the fire as it came over the ridge and down into the basin, and sought refuge by the water. One cow was lying right next to the spring. At this point, he believes at least 20% of his herd has been killed.
Barnson reared almost all of his herd from birth. He knew these cows; he saw them on horseback or in the corral two, maybe three times a year.
“It's just, it's pretty rough,” he said. “I mean, I haven't, I haven't allowed any of my kids to even come up here with me to see this type of stuff.”
He shook his head as he turned and headed back up the hill to his off-road vehicle to continue his assessment. This was only the first stop.
Fires are nothing new here. As he drove to a ridge overlooking much of his allotment, Barnson explained there had been at least three major wildfires since 2024. Burned rangeland can take years to recover, and even longer before it's productive enough for cattle to graze again. It’s unlikely he’ll be able to use this land for at least three years.
“You're making exponential decisions,” Barnson said. “I have some extra pasture, or I have some hay. So I can turn my cows out for a period of time on my pasture, or you can feed them hay, but this same pasture is where they're supposed to go in the fall. The same hay is when I'm supposed to feed them in the winter.”
The fires burning across Utah are yet another nail in the coffin for agricultural producers already facing an aging workforce, drought and volatile markets. The Trump administration's tariffs and war in Iran have also impacted fertilizer and fuel prices, which have trickled down to other commodities like hay.
“Hay is going to be hitting, I mean, right now it's two and $250 or $150 a ton – it's going to be over $300 this year, so it's all exponential costs, not even counting what we've lost,” he said.
Agriculture is what “supports rural Utah,” Barnson said, and he believes there are going to be trickle-down effects for the whole community, because towns like Junction and Circleville depend on rural enterprise to stimulate the local economy.
But as Barnson drove around the scorched land, he said the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food and the Division of Wildlife Resources have been on the front foot to work with ranchers impacted by the fires.
The Grazing Improvement Program is an initiative started in 2006 that offers “cost share grants to graziers to improve rangeland management and sustainability.” It essentially offers producers financial assistance for things like fencing, water development and vegetation treatments.
Barnson will meet with the Department of Agriculture and Food soon. He said he’s expecting questions.
“What do you need to get back on there? What has been burned that we can replace? What do you need to get back on there next year and the year after?” he said.
He sees a lot of work that needs to be done on this land. But as he stood on the ridgeline looking over the massive burn scar, he also saw a silver lining.
“I will say on the positive side, it does open up a lot of opportunities to fix it,” he said. “To fix what has been wrong, to clean up, clean it up quite a bit. At this point in time, that's all you can really focus on now. Is what do we do now, and how do we make it better in the future?”
