Range Manager

Range managers study and manage rangeland — the grasslands, shrublands, and semi-arid terrain used for grazing, wildlife habitat, and recreation across much of the western United States — to keep it productive without degrading it. A large share of the job is fieldwork: walking pastures and allotments to assess vegetation health, soil condition, and forage availability, then using that data to set stocking rates and rotation schedules for livestock grazing.

Range managers issue and monitor grazing permits on public land, check operators for compliance with permit conditions, and use prescribed burning, herbicide treatment, and reseeding to control invasive species and restore degraded rangeland.

Because rangeland typically serves multiple, competing purposes — cattle grazing, wildlife habitat, recreation, watershed protection — much of the job is negotiation: mediating between ranchers, environmental groups, tribal governments, and agency priorities to reach a management plan that holds up on the ground and in front of stakeholders who don't always agree. Most range managers work for federal land agencies (the Bureau of Land Management, U. S.

Forest Service), state wildlife or agriculture departments, or as private consultants to ranching operations, and the job typically requires a bachelor's degree in range science, rangeland ecology, or a related natural resource field.