Grassland conservation depends on ranching. So, with the number of ranches dwindling across the West, and more land being developed every day, how do we support the sustainability of existing ranching operations? In my mind, sustainability in ranching is a two-sided coin. On one side, we must work to fix the market dynamics that make turning a profit on cows so difficult. On the other side of the coin, we must continue to improve stewardship practices that benefit the health and resiliency of the land. The Ucross High Plains Stewardship Initiative’s grasshopper research aims to improve ecological stewardship on the land by surveying and analyzing ranchers’ responses to grasshopper outbreaks.
One of the main difficulties of agriculture in the U.S. today is that one bad year can wipe out a farm or ranch. In the age of increasing drought, new invasive species, globalized animal diseases, and large market fluctuations from trade uncertainty, that one bad year is becoming a lot more common. For centuries, grasshopper and Mormon cricket infestations could make that bad year for ranchers. Grasshoppers and Mormon crickets swarm, leading to the defoliation of crops and rangelands. How a rancher or farmer responds to an outbreak is of vital importance to the future of their operation.
The most common response to grasshopper and Mormon cricket outbreaks is applying pesticide, but there are a variety of other responses out there, from rotational grazing to changing seeding strategy. However, each method has an extensive list of pros and cons that impact the profitability and sustainability of a ranch. To analyze which strategies are deployed and which work the best, we are going straight to the source: ranchers. More often, improvements in rangeland stewardship come from practitioners themselves sharing information rather than research from elite universities. This 2026 spring semester, I am excited to work with my colleagues at the Yale School of the Environment and Ucross High Plains Stewardship Initiative to use our resources to interview and compile information from ranchers across eastern Montana and eastern Oregon about grasshopper and Mormon cricket outbreaks.
Jackson Newman – Research Assistant and WCC Coordinator | Jackson is a master’s in environmental management candidate specializing in ecosystem conservation and management. Prior to Yale, Jackson was a community organizer in eastern Montana for a conservation and family agriculture non-profit. Jackson is particularly interested in private lands conservation, prairies, commodity markets, land ownership, restoration, and lots more. His favorite quote is “there are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land” by Aldo Leopold. See what Jackson has been up to.
