In this section of our website you will find various concepts that form the basis of our organization's rangeland philosophy. If you have questions about any of the concepts we are presenting or if you know of concepts we need to add, please feel free to send us your thoughts.

General concepts

• Healthy rangelands play a vital role in recharging aquifers, protecting watersheds, controlling floods, preventing mudslides, purifying air and water, regenerating soil and water fertility, storing carbon dioxide in the soil, providing habitat for livestock and wildlife, preserving biodiversity, and nourishing the human spirit.
  
  
• In time, unhealthy rangelands lead to higher food costs, loss of open space, fewer species of wildlife, more carbon dioxide in the air, and erratic changes in climatic conditions.
  
  
• Maintaining healthy rangelands is important because they provide various goods and services needed for human survival.
  
  
• Habitat fragmentation and other rangeland degrading practices reduce the amount of goods and services provided by rangelands.
  
  
• The key to preserving wide-open space, natural habitat for wildlife, and the vocation of rangeland agriculture is protecting desert, prairie, and savanna rangelands from ecologically harmful practices.
  
  
• Building models that teach responsible rangeland stewardship plays an important role in protecting Texas rangelands from ecological abuse.
  
  
• Loss of rangelands to ecologically harmful practices spells doom to plants and animals that are native to a particular rangeland environment.
  
  
• Improving the ecological condition of most of today's remaining rangelands in Texas will require clearing land covered with brush, reseeding land void of native vegetation, and controlling an invasion of alien plants.
  
  
• Degrading rangeland resources is counterproductive to sustainable development.
  
  
• Carbon credits produced from rangeland can complete with carbon credits produced from cropland and forestry.
  
  
• Dividing larger size tracts of rangeland into smaller holdings poses the single greatest threat to the future of rangeland agriculture, wildlife habitat, and natural areas in Texas.
  
  
• Texans in towns and cities are gobbling-up open space and degrading wildlife habitat, while at the same time, depleting and polluting scarce water resources.
  
  
• Today -- after 162 years of mostly private ownership -- Texas rangelands show very little resemblance of what they looked like prior to statehood, 1845, and they are not nearly as healthy (agriculturally or ecologically) as they were prior to settlement.
  
  
• If Texas continues losing rangeland resources in the same amounts as were lost during the last half of the 20th century, there won't be anything left to save by the middle of the 21st century.
  
  
• A high percent of the once highly productive rangelands of Texas have been converted into a degraded ecological environment dominated by woods, brush, weeds, soil erosion, and various types of human development.
  
  
• Loss of open space, healthy food, clean water, clean air, and wildlife tends to increase in parallel with population growth.
  
  
• Uncontrolled population growth, uncontrolled demographic relocation of present populations combined with uncontrolled use of rangelands severely hinders efforts to ensure high quality living standards for future generations.
  
  
• When it comes to protecting the ecological integrity of rangelands, proper livestock grazing is a far better option than high-intensive stock farms, industrial dairies, row crop farming, small grain operations, exotic wildlife preserves, single-use recreation, ranchettes, and/or urban expansion.
  
  
• Freedom to exploit rangeland resources without restrain will sooner or later result in their PERMANENT ruin.
  
  
• Loss of ecological goods and services provided by native rangelands will lead to the eventual collaspe of human civilizations around the world.
  
  
• Efforts to preserve spacious areas of Texas rangeland tend to increase in difficulty as Texas population increases and as more land is covered with low-intensive housing, high-intensive subdivisions, superhighways, truckstops, automobile dealerships, chemical plants, oil refineries, race tracks, golf courses, airports, shopping centers, parking lots, and garbage dumps.
  
  
• Attempting to preserve any particular species of plants and animals is a waste of time and energy if the ecosystem in which the plants or animals are a part is not preserved.
  
  
• Any workable plan for offsetting the negative impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the environment must include improving the ecological condition of Texas rangelands.
  
  
• Growing more grass and less brush on prairie rangelands is a good way to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
  
  
• Replacing native grasslands with trees and shrubs results in increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
  
  
• Management practices that improve range productivity and reduce soil erosion increase the rate and amount of carbon dioxide removed out of the air and sequestered in the soil.
  
  

Rangeland agriculture concepts

• Grazing livestock on indigenous rangeland is deemed fully sustainable provided that the ecological integrity of the land is preserved.
  
  
• Social values are often the underlying variable either hindering or driving the development of sustainable livestock production systems.
  
  
• Operating a sustainable rangeland agriculture system requires large areas of rangeland maintained in good to excellent ecological condition.
  
  
• The first step towards making rangeland agriculture sustainable is PERMANENTLY protecting the land against natural resource degradation, subdividing, and future changes in land use.
  
  
• Harmful practices such as habitat fragmentation and countryside development threaten the future of rangeland agriculture in Texas and other range states.
  
  
• Years of overgrazing and fire suppression converts highly productive rangelands (rangelands dominated by highly adapted grasses, forbs, and high organic matter soils) into low-productive rangelands dominated by cactus, weeds, brush, and soil erosion.
  
  
• Most rangelands in Texas have been overgrazed and fragmented to the point where using them solely for livestock grazing is no longer an economically feasible option.
  
  
• Through history, ranchers have been overgrazing and fragmenting Texas rangelands in an attempt to make a positive return from their ranching investments, recoup financial losses, pay off debt, or just to have enough income to live on after retirement.
  
  
• The key to ensuring a future for rangeland agriculture in any part of the world is for producers to adopt a sustainable livestock production system.
  
  

Rangeland restoration concepts

• Restoring rangelands that have been degraded by years of overgrazing and fire suppression would be an excellent hedge against global warming and climate change.
  
  
• Spending money on brush removal, reseeding, and invasive weed control is a waste of both time and money if the land is not PERMANENTLY protected against ecologically harmful practices.
  
  
• Due to a lack of moisture, trying to restore degraded rangelands in desert environments is a slow, risky, and sometimes impossible endeavor.
  
  
• Humans know how to harvest and plant seed, but they are only beginning to learn what is required to fully restore rangeland ecosystems ruined by human abuse.