ranching

Between drought, climate change and competition for the Colorado River, Utah faces a precarious water future. Roughly three-fourths of the state’s water goes to agriculture and Utah is investing millions to help farmers and ranchers modernize their irrigation.

Even though Utah is home to around 335,000 beef cattle, ranchers haven’t had many local avenues for getting that meat to market. Instead, it gets sent out of state, driving up costs.

Some experts say the System Conservation Pilot Program is costly and may not be the most effective way to save Colorado River water.

The START AgriTech event at Utah Tech University focuses on emerging technologies that could help make agriculture more sustainable in dry places.

The Cliven Bundy family is still grazing cattle on disputed southern Nevada rangeland where armed protesters and federal agents took part in a tense showdown in 2014.

A recent gathering of ranchers and farmers in St. George highlights the growing movement to take better care of Utah’s soil.

Like hundreds of other ranchers in Colorado, the Stanko family is anxious about wolf packs being airlifted back to this state, where they were eradicated by the 1940s.

U.S. sheep ranchers are struggling but domestic lamb consumption is up. As it stands now, the country imports more than 70% of the lamb it consumes.

Last year, Wyoming lost 500,000 acres of farm and ranch land, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the Mountain West, more than seven million acres have disappeared in the past decade, mostly in Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico.

In 2020, Nikyle Begay started Rainbow Fiber Co-Op, a wool co-op intended to protect ancestral flocks on Navajo Nation and to help other Navajo shepherds get fair prices for their wool.

Grey wolves are one of the most controversial animals in the West, and how you can manage the species depends on what state you're in. Along the Colorado-Wyoming border, that friction is part of daily life.

Raising sheep is a way of life for many people in the Navajo Nation, but historic drought, grazing restrictions and development threaten that livelihood. There are some younger people, though, speaking out and finding ways to pass on the tradition.