AoR 141: New Rangeland Wildlife Ecology & Conservation reference manual -- Lance McNew & Jeff Beck

[ Music ]

>> Welcome to the Art of Range, a podcast focused on rangelands and the people who manage them. I'm your host, Tip Hudson, Range and Livestock Specialist with Washington State University Extension. The goal of this podcast is education and conservation through conversation. Find us online at artofrange.com.

[ Music ]

Welcome back to the Art of Range. My guests today are two of the editors for a new Rangeland Wildlife Ecology and Conservation textbook recently published by Springer. We have Jeff Beck with the University of Wyoming and Lance McNew, who is a Wildlife Professor at Montana State. Dave Dahlgren is also one of the editors for the publication. He's not joining us today. And to get into this, I want to read just a portion of the foreword, which was written by Paul Krausman, a professor emeritus from University of Arizona. And then we'll do some more introduction of Jeff and Lance. Paul said, "Management and conservation are inclusive terms used to convey management, conservation, and ecological understanding of natural resources. Without active management, many of the resources we hold dear would cease to exist or decline sharply. Effective management enhances conservation and the reestablishment of dwindling populations. Both management and conservation require an understanding of ecology, the study of interactions between organisms and their environment. Some prefer to discuss management, others conservation, as the primary mechanisms to achieve objectives in the natural world. It really does not matter what human activity is called as long as it doesn't compromise the ability for humans to live with, maintain, and enhance our natural environment, including fish, wildlife, grasslands, shrublands, deserts, and other rangeland resources. That ability rests with an understanding of science. The fields of rangeland and wildlife management are brothers in the same fight for the conservation, protection, and management of wildlife. And one cannot be completely understood without knowledge of the other. And that presents challenges that are often played out within society, the society that dictates what we do with our resources. In the United States, natural resources are governed by society via numerous state and federal laws designed to protect wildlife and the habitats they use. Love of nature is in the bones of North Americans, and few other places occur where wildlife, its habitats, and other natural resources are an essential part of its identity. In 1996, the Society for Range Management published Rangeland Wildlife, which provided information about major vertebrates on rangelands in the Western U.S. and provided some insights into their interactions with the millions of head of livestock that share rangeland landscapes. Nearly 30 years have passed since the publication of that work, and science has advanced and evolved. In the early years of the wildlife and rangeland professions, there was not as much or any emphasis on holistic management, and much of the research was related to single species. We are finally now in an era of transdisciplinary research that builds on the strengths of other disciplines to gain a better understanding of ecology for enhanced understanding and management, something that Aldo Leopold endorsed in the 1930s. Rangeland Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, this book, updates the research in the arena over the past two to three decades that continues to develop a holistic approach to conservation and management of our rangelands and the biota it supports. Because of the dominant presence of rangelands in the country and the role of rangelands in the lives of humans and wildlife, this work presents optimism that wildlife and rangeland scientists, managers, and conservationists are advancing the cause our country has been built on and can work together for the benefit of wildlife and society." End quote. These words resonate with me as someone who started in wildlife biology, and for me, that was the -- wildlife was the gateway drug to the good stuff in rangeland ecology. But the very reason I liked rangeland ecology, and I'm aware of the connotative baggage in the word rangeland that seems to presuppose a particular land use, namely livestock, I liked range because it was integrative. But I would say that my first love, so to speak, is maintaining the whole, including all of, you know, Sam Fuhlendorf's patterns and processes that conserve heterogeneity that makes for good habitat. And in my own mind, in my work, I'm always trying to bring human management of landscape together in a way that permits the expression of everything that could be there. That is a long-winded introduction. But I was really pleased and moved by this chord of kinship that Dr. Krausman struck in his foreword. I think these are the things, the big ideas, I call them, that make us want to go to work every day, and they're important. And it actually makes me more excited to get into your book. And yes, I'm the sort of range nerd who would read your textbook. So, Jeff and Lance, welcome. And Jeff, let's start with you with a bit of self-introduction. What is your role now, and how did you get into the field of wildlife biology? And how did you come to be assembling a textbook?

>> Okay. Yeah, I'm a Professor of Wildlife Habitat Restoration Ecology at the University of Wyoming. Our program is -- our department is actually the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management. Within that department, our major is Rangeland Ecology and Watershed Management. So our students here at the University of Wyoming are introduced to a few different disciplines, of course, Rangeland Ecology Management, but also Soil Science and Watershed Management. And we have other courses in wildlife habitat, entomology, and other things. And I have been here, this is my, this will be my 18th year here at the University of Wyoming in this role. And I think you asked about how I got into the field.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah, probably like you, you know, I was introduced to wildlife first, you know, through hunting and fishing. I was a Boy Scout, kind of grew up really liking the outdoors and very, very, very much so, actually, you know, kind of in -- kind of the consumptive route that a lot of people take. But I always had an interest in science. And I think, you know, I started to go into college and started to take certain classes. And the major I got was in wildlife and range resources. And we had a real great understanding of vegetation, rangeland vegetation, communities of vegetation, wildlife habitat, starting to kind of open our minds up to, you know, how all these things tie together. You know, in your introduction, you mentioned ecology and defined it. And I think those interactions, you know, between different organisms and their environments kind of really opened my eyes. And then, you know, I proceeded through school but also worked for two different state wildlife agencies, both Utah and Colorado, and then also had summer jobs, say with the Forest Service, for instance. And just, I'm really focused on trying to understand the impacts of anthropogenic effects on wildlife populations and habitats, but also, through those impacts, learning what we can do to mitigate the impacts, make the impacts maybe more harmonious with wildlife populations. So that's kind of a real broad introduction of myself, what I'm doing currently, and how I got into the field.

>> I'm sorry if I missed it. Where did you get your bachelor's degree? You spoke fairly highly of that program.

>> Oh, sure. Yeah. Where I got my bachelor's in wildlife and range resources at the time, it was at Brigham Young University.

>> Okay.

>> Got both my bachelor's and master's there. And my Ph.D. was in also interdisciplinary programs, forestry, wildlife, and range sciences at the University of Idaho.

>> Great. I like the University of Idaho.

>> Yeah, me too. [laughs]

>> Lance, what was your -- what is your role now in the world of wildlife biology? And what was your pathway to getting there?

>> Great. Well, first of all, thanks for having us on the podcast today. It's a joy to be here. I really enjoy your podcast. So it's an honor to be on it. So I'm a professor of wildlife habitat ecology at Montana State University in the Department of Animal and Range Sciences. Our department is one of just three remaining integrated departments of animal and range sciences in the country. My background is actually, I think, similar to Jeff's in that I started as a wildlife-oriented management biologist and also research biologist. I worked for state and federal agencies as a manager and field biologist for a while. But I soon came to realize that if you really wanted to have an impact and move the needle on conservation, you needed to be working with land managers who actually do the habitat management. And that was a gap that I identified early on. And after working for a variety of different outfits and agencies, specifically in wildlife population ecology and management, I made it a goal to come back to work in working landscapes with folks who are integrated in wildlife habitat management. They might call it rangeland ecology and management. But it was a goal of mine for many years to come back and work in that space. I'm from the Midwest originally. I grew up working on small farms, both our folks and others. The Midwest is highly fragmented. And I saw, over the course of my youth, the loss and degradation of a lot of native wildlife habitat. And I didn't understand why that happened until I went to college. I went to a small regional university in Illinois. I did my master's at the Cooperative Wildlife Research Lab at Southern Illinois University. And then eventually my Ph.D. is in ecology and evolutionary biology from Kansas State University, where I really got my first taste of working in rangeland ecosystems, specifically on private working lands. I'm not sure if I answered all your questions.

>> Nearly. We'll get to the next one here in a second.

>> Okay.

>> I really like that integration between animal science and range. I know it's difficult for a university to jam everything that is important into a single degree program. But one of my main regrets is that I did not have more animal science and, particularly, animal nutrition in my range program. And I've tried to learn some of that since then. But I do think that it's an important one and a crossover since a lot of, you know, one of the main considerations for wildlife is how to feed them.

>> Yeah.

>> Go ahead.

>> If you don't mind me interjecting here. So it was actually a joint conference when I was in Kansas of the Society for Range Management and The Wildlife Society. And I was a member of TWS and not SRM at that time. And it was my first exposure really to rangeland ecologists because I was at a -- I was in a degree program for my Ph.D., which was totally separated. And there was a little bit of animosity, I might admit, between the biology division and then the Department of Range and Animal Science there. So that was really my first exposure. And I'm giving a talk to this joint session on wildlife ecology and range management on the results of my Ph.D. research, where I evaluated land use and spatial and population ecology of greater prairie chickens. And after the talk was over, I had presented the effects of this common metric that we use in wildlife ecology. It's called VOR. It's an acronym we use all the time in wildlife ecology. And I'm presenting the results. And VOR was driving pretty much everything in my system for nesting and reproductive ecology of greater prairie chickens. And at the end of my talk, this SRM member and cowboy in the back of the room raised his hand. He said, "What's VOR?" [laughs] And it was at that moment where I realized I'm not speaking the same language as the people that matter. And I made it a mission right there that if I could ever get a faculty job, I wanted it to be in a land management department, specifically working with the folks who implement and manage private lands. And luckily, I was able to make that happen about 10 years ago.

>> Well, I think you found another listener who doesn't know what VOR is because I don't think I've heard that term.

>> Exactly. That's my point. So it's a measure that, specifically, that researchers like Jeff and me who study grouse and grassland birds use to quantify the visual obstruction of nest sites and brood sites. It's an integrated measure of biomass called visual obstruction reading, all right? But that's not something that's commonly measured in rangeland ecology and conservation. So I realized that I needed to change the way I think about -- well, at least learn the techniques and protocols and the sampling strategies that rangeland managers are interested in, and then try to link those to the wildlife responses that we were interested in.

>> Hmm. Yeah, we do have similar measurements, I think, in rangeland ecology. But it's more focused on the vegetation, almost from the other side of the thing, you know, to measure vegetation structure.

>> Oh, absolutely. And actually, the guy that invented VOR is a guy named Bob Robel. And actually, he created it as an index -- yeah, he created it as an index of vegetation biomass, herbaceous biomass, which is something that rangeland managers are quite interested in. But it has been adopted by wildlife folks to be an index of cover concealment for nests and small and ground-dwelling birds, and that's how we use it.

>> Interesting. Yeah, I didn't -- I grew up sort of in the transition between the Midwest and the South in the Ozarks of Northern Arkansas. And interestingly there, the soil was just poor enough and just steep enough that there wasn't much crop farming. And so you had quite a bit of, you know, remaining oak and hickory woodland with scattered grasslands that made for decent habitat. And my introduction to rangelands was doing an internship with the Corps of Engineers who owned, you know, or had rights of way on a lot of land around some of the big lakes in the area that were created by, you know, flood control and hydroelectric dams. And so they were doing active habitat enhancement projects for wild turkey. And I was working with a wildlife biologist at the time, and I found it really interesting. And, of course, we had a small farm in Northern Arkansas. We call it a farm, but, you know, there were no crops grown. It was some pasture and mostly woods that we had cows on. And one of the objectives was to maintain wildlife habitat. But you had much smaller, you know, land ownerships. And, of course, in the Ozarks oftentimes you didn't really see the transition from land ownerships because it wasn't like there was tillage from fence line to fence line. And so it still functioned more like habitat probably than much of Illinois and more the true Midwest.

>> Indeed. Yeah. And I saw that transition through my youth from small-scale family operations where it was messy. And messy makes for good wildlife habitat typically, to clean farming practices that eliminated a lot of that messiness. Yep.

>> Well, why did you guys put together a textbook? I actually like the idea, and I've threatened to interview Rod Heitschmidt about his 1991 range textbook for a few years. We need to get that done. But is that what you would call it? It's 1,000 pages, so I'm not sure what else you would call it. It's certainly a book.

>> I don't know if I'd call it a textbook. And I'll let Jeff chime in here as well. But textbooks are traditionally written cover to cover by the same authors and attempt to distill major ideas in a whole field of science into something that's learnable by an undergraduate in one semester. So it's often vague and just seed planting. Whereas what we attempted to do was consolidate all of the top experts in particular disciplines to summarize and synthesize the state of the science on a particular issue. That created an edited volume, but oftentimes edited volumes are -- they just essentially take peer-reviewed journal articles and staple them together and call them a book, which is a little disparate. And that's kind of what the Rangeland Wildlife book was in 1996. It was the first attempt to like try to consolidate what we knew at the time. But it came off as being these disparate chapters. What we attempted to do was like a hybrid of the two. We wanted the best state of the science in one place. But we also wanted it to read consistently from front to back and tell a story. And also to be able to be used as a reference guide so that folks who are working in rangeland management like you, Tip, can go to a chapter and find -- and be so acclimated and familiar with the organization of the book, they can go right to what they want for that particular question and then fold the book and put it on their shelf and walk away. So it was, I'm not sure if textbook is the right word. I don't know if we have a word to describe it. It's more of like a reference manual that can be used to deliver undergraduate and graduate curriculum for sure. That's how I'm using it. But we also wanted it to be a reference manual for practical rangeland managers both working in the public and private sectors where they can use it in their day-to-day operations. Jeff.

>> Sure.

>> Do you want to chime in there?

>> I do. I want to step back for a moment. I think to answer Tip's question, I could step back to when Lance and Dave and myself were putting together the proposal for the book and even fine-tuning the book even prior to recruiting the authors of the chapters. There are 30 chapters, and like you said, I think it's 1,023 pages. It's really comprehensive. But we wanted to, you know, come up with topics that are really relevant in today's rangeland wildlife interface. You know, what do we need to know? What are some of the new and kind of real pressing issues? For instance, you know, we cover predators in the book, large predators. If you go to the 1996 book, you know, that wouldn't have been in there. It was more game species, maybe not predators. We also have in our new book, you know, what I wanted to say, too, it's broken down into three parts. If you just look at the headings to the parts, I think it says a lot about, you know, what the chapters are focusing on. So the first part is Rangeland Ecosystems and Processes. The second part is Species Accounts. That is the largest number of chapters in that section. I would say that's probably the most similar to the 1996 book. But the depth of information is so much broader now. You know, 24 years after that, I guess when we started the book, this book, you know, the number of citations has just increased, you know, by hundreds, if not thousands more for almost all these species and the topics. So we're including things like burrowing rodents, avian predators, mesocarnivores on Western rangelands, a chapter on waterfowl and wetland birds. And of course, some of the species that rise, I think, to the level of real concern conservation like prairie grouse and sage-grouse, quail species, and ungulate species that we're really concerned about like mule deer, pronghorn and elk, bighorn sheep. We even have a chapter on feral equids, which has really risen to the top of a concern. And of course, on bison too, I forgot to mention that. And then the last part is on social-ecological considerations. And to me, that section is really innovative. You know, we brought together a variety of scientists, some that are social scientists, that have experience in those areas too. And, yeah, I think the book is -- You know, like you brought up the point, is it a textbook or something else? I like what Lance said. You know, it's usable as a textbook for sure, both in undergraduate and graduate courses, but also just as a reference for practitioners, ranchers, for someone that's, say, just like a rangeland manager or the Bureau of Land Management or the Forest Service or NRCS or, you know, state wildlife biologists that is working with these issues of these species. So I really like the coverage. I'm kind of like you. Like I've kind of fallen in love with it too. You know, it was a work of love. It was lots of work, lots of time, lots of careful thought, lots of input to the authors of each chapter, but it's really broad.

>> I can only imagine how much work that is. Yeah, I'm not sure my endorsement is worth much, but I will definitely endorse it here. In what I've seen so far, it's relevant, readable, and well-referenced. And that's an immense achievement, you know, in this space between practitioner and academia. And I really think it is likely to be well-used and well-loved. You alluded to it a little bit, but what is -- Well, maybe my first question is, you mentioned that, at some point, you began trying to assemble who would be the authors for each of the sections, how far back did that begin?

>> Lance could tell you better. Was it 2000? Something like that?

>> Yeah. So it was a long process. So, to be quite honest, you know, my impetus for approaching Jeff and Dave to help me with this project was a little bit self-serving. So I teach undergraduate and graduate classes in rangeland wildlife, habitat ecology, and management. And I didn't have -- You know, it took a long time to background students, especially students in a diverse department, to have the same background information in order to facilitate like advanced level discussions on management and conservation, right? So I wanted to have, you know, a really foundational, thorough review as a jumping-off point to facilitate those discussions. And that was really what I was primarily motivated in doing back in the year 2020. So it took us, from the time I approached Jeff and Dave with the idea to put this book together -- And they were also -- they also had similar ideas about putting this foundational stuff together for their own students. From the time we had the idea to the time the book was published, I think, was just over three years. So it took us a while to, first of all, lay out what our vision for the book would be, how it would be organized, and then identify, that was actually the second part, which is identifying the experts in the field who are really working in the cutting-edge nexus of advancement of these issues. That was a little bit easier. But getting those people to commit to working on a product that goes into a book was a little bit more challenging. But we were persistent. We pretty much got everybody that we identified as being like the go-to folks for writing these chapters to invest into the book. And like Jeff, I am really happy with the product.

>> Yeah, I just wanted to add, too, Tip, that the content, the formatting of the chapters, particularly the species account chapters, was really purposeful. You know, we wanted the authors to write about issues that are relevant, like grazing, land management activities like fire, for instance, disease, diseases that might be shared with livestock. Also, you know, broader questions about, you know, how does livestock management influence these species? And we also have -- we asked each author in those chapters to write about climate change and also kind of future needs, conservation management needs so that the book was, you know, more cutting-edge. It's going to provide that information, we think, to the future, you know, what the big issues will be, if not already, and how to deal with them. I think that the science, you know, kind of the culmination of all the science and distilling it down in the synthesis, really 30 syntheses actually, you know, is really helpful. It makes the book, maybe sets it apart a little bit from other books that might be out there.

>> We definitely asked our authors to incorporate discussions of all the management tools out there, fire and grazing and conservation programs and policy and a number of other things into their chapters where appropriate. We gave them latitude to pursue those. We defined some sideboards on what we wanted those chapters to look like, but we let them have the reins. But it's important to know that this book is not meant to be like a paint-by-numbers recipe for the management of wildlife on rangelands. That would be impossible. So what we're hoping to demonstrate is that, through the works in these books, that what we know and what we don't know and what's uncertain and where the gaps are, and that wildlife interactions and responses to rangeland management are context-dependent and will take local knowledge. And that's what we're hoping to present, that you're always going to need site-specific local knowledge in order to apply the information in the book that we hope would be both general enough but also useful enough to apply in that context.

>> I'm curious. You mentioned a little bit what your roles were as the general editors. Talk a little bit more about what the role is of an editor versus a technical editor, and I had not introduced who they were.

>> Sure. So since there are 30 chapters with nearly 100 or maybe more than 100 co-authors -- you'd think I would know that -- [laughs] we certainly didn't have the technical expertise to spend the time, the three of us, because we have day jobs, to do a lot of the technical issues for formatting, ensuring that the authors are providing to meeting our vision, and also serving as the roles like subject matter editors for like a peer-reviewed journal. We couldn't do that for every single chapter ourselves. So what we did is we went out and we found folks who are really good at that. We have found two of them. Jill Shaefer, who works for USGS in North Dakota, and Dr. Peek, who is emeritus at the University of Idaho, right, Jeff?

>> Mm-hmm.

>> Yes. Yeah, he was my major advisor at the University of Idaho.

>> I had a class or two from Jim Peek.

>> Yes. Both of those --

>> He was fantastic, yeah.

>> So Jim's breadth and depth of knowledge was super valuable for handling these manuscripts. And then Jill has been working on a series of publications where she's been through to produce like technical management-oriented reports on federal lands of like where the state of the science was for management of birds specifically. So they both had skills in editing and a current state of the knowledge that we could lean on to help us move the book forward. But as far as like the vision, the organization, the goals and objectives of the books, the editors were -- the three editors are the team that put those together.

>> I ran across this in doing a Google Scholar search looking for information on the differences in foraging behavior of bison versus cattle. So I came to it from a search link. But if somebody wanted to go directly to it, I'm guessing there might be a few people who are now trying to find it while they're listening, where is the best place to go to get a hold of this?

>> Yeah, it's pretty simple. If you just go to google your favorite search engine and type in "rangeland wildlife ecology and conservation," you'll get a link, the Springer link to the book.

>> Okay.

>> It's searchable everywhere. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure if it's just because I have not cleared my cookies in a while, but if you even type rangeland wildlife, it's one of the top search responses. The book has been accessed now -- It was published in October of 23. It's been accessed in some capacity, either downloaded or chapters accessed more than 170,000 times. So it's coming up on the top of searches now.

>> Good. And this is open access. I've run across some, you know, some technical manuals, you know, multi-chapter, large volumes like this for other fields that are not open access, and they cost a lot of money. What does it take to make a publication like this open access?

>> [Laughs] Yeah, that's a great question, Tip. Jeff and Dave and I were pretty adamant that the book would be freely accessible to anyone who wanted to use it, whether that was, you know, a poor undergraduate or a working rangeland manager or a scientist would have free and available access. No matter where they were, developed or developing countries would have access to the information in this book. To make that happen, we had to pay the publisher for the expected book sales that they would -- so the revenue generated by book sales that they would expect to sell. So what we did was we wrote essentially grant proposals to funding agencies to help cover the cost of the open access fee by the publisher. So that's what we did. So the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, NRCS, as well as a couple of university programs associated with the authors in this book all chipped in to pay the open access fee so that Springer got their expected revenues from book sales, and the book would be freely accessible.

>> I won't ask you what the price tag was. We can move on from there. No, I'm thrilled with that because I've run across chapters where -- Most of the time, I have access to stuff through Washington State University's library. But even at that, sometimes these big textbooks like this from a, you know, a private publisher don't even have access through a university library. And you have to pay to play.

>> Yeah, and, you know, I'm not trying to make a plug for Springer. But you mentioned the cost, and the cost is highly variable across book publishing companies. And Springer actually had one of the more affordable cost structures. That, in addition to the fact that it had previously published an amazing book on rangeland ecosystems previously called Rangeland Systems --

>> That's the 2017 Briske book, yep.

>> Yeah.

>> So we thought that was the most appropriate place to put our book. We collated all of the funding. I forgot to mention that WAFWA, the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, served as a repository for that funding and then helped us negotiate and pay the publishing fee. So they were instrumental in, I guess, corralling the cats, you might say. So that can be a little bit difficult from a university level.

>> I wanted to add that one of the things about the book that makes it even more user-friendly is you can download the entire book as a PDF, if you want, or as an EPUB or each chapter separately. So, you know, if you were a researcher working with bison, for instance, you can just download that chapter, have it to read, have it to share, whatever. But it makes it really easy to access. I really like that, you know, when books like the Briske book also did a similar thing. It makes it much easier to access the material.

>> Yeah, I debated whether or not to do this. But I think it would be worthwhile to take just a couple minutes for you to just essentially list off what the species accounts are in here because I think this will be an entry point for people. It'll create some interest. I happen to have it in front of me if nobody else does, but --

>> I can read it to you if you like.

>> Okay, please.

>> Okay. Do you want me to just start from the top and read them down?

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. Okay, so starting with Chapter 9, we have Prairie Grouse. The next chapter is Sage-Grouse, then Quails. Then we have a chapter on Rangeland Songbirds. Following that is Waterfowl and Wetland Birds. Then a chapter on Avian Predators in Rangelands. Then a chapter on Burrowing Rodents. Then Mesocarnivores of Western Rangelands.

>> I'll pause you there. I was pretty sure I had some idea what that was, but again, I've been away from the wildlife world for long enough that I did open up that chapter just to see what that list was. So you defined -- I think in the chapter it says that mesocarnivores are carnivores that are less than 15 kilograms. Is that right?

>> Yeah, so there's 22 different species. It's pretty broad. You know, I think we always think about striped skunks and raccoons, bobcats, coyotes, but there's many others. American badgers.

>> Foxes.

>> Yeah, there's some, like the ring-tailed cat that is seldom seen. You know, they're out there in these rangelands. Spotted skunk is another one that's kind of seldom seen. So, yeah, that was a really interesting chapter, putting all that together.

>> I think that was the only chapter where I didn't recognize any of the names of the authors.

>> Oh, okay.

>> And I just might mention here before Jeff continues with the list that you can tell from what he's read so far that we have a lot of information on some species. But other species, we don't have much information. And in those cases, a lot of species are put into one chapter. So, for example, the mesocarnivore chapter tries to cover what we know about 22 different species of mesocarnivores. And rangeland songbirds, we've got hundreds. There are hundreds of species of rangeland songbirds. And I won't even try to begin to quantify the number of invertebrates that occur on rangelands. So those -- Trying to -- You know, this book could have been eight times as long if we tried to break these things out. But what we're trying to do is consolidate into something that's digestible in, you know, in one session of reading, and organized by how much new information that we have to present since the publication of the last synthesis in '96.

>> Right. Okay, carry on.

>> That is a really good point. For instance, there are six quail species in the Quail chapter. Sage-Grouse has both Greater and Gunnison Sage-Grouse. Prairie Grouse has three species as well. And how about burrowing rodents? One that we don't talk about as much in some rangeland systems than others but the prairie dog species, ground squirrels primarily. I think there are some other rodent species.

>> There's pocket gophers and kangaroo rats.

>> Kangaroo rats, that's right.

>> Well, that takes us to black-tailed and mule deer, which actually are the same species. They just occur in different ecosystems and look a little different. And those authors explain that quite well.

>> I didn't know that.

>> That was kind of unique. I didn't expect that to come out. But I guess taxonomically and so forth, that is more correct. So that's how that chapter is constructed. Then we go to White-Tailed Deer. There's got to be a chapter on them. And Pronghorn, the next chapter, a species that I think is gaining more appreciation on rangelands is pronghorn. And then one that has garnered a lot of interest in management and conservation for quite some time, there's lots of information on this, but Elk and Rangelands. And then Feral Equids, which is topic that I -- an area that I study and work in quite a bit. And this is to include both feral horses and feral burros that occur on primarily public rangelands, also tribal rangelands in the West.

>> Quick question. Are there any equids that are native to North America?

>> Not currently, no.

>> Not that are extant.

>> There were historically, but they are extinct now.

>> That's what I thought.

>> So there were, I think, three equids. They're smaller than the ones that we -- smaller than horses. But the two that are described here were brought in by Europeans.

>> Right.

>> And then the species accounts wrap up with three really important chapters, one on Bighorn Sheep and Mountain Goats. So that's going to include both Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and desert bighorn sheep, as well as the Rocky Mountain goat. We have a chapter on American Bison, which is quite insightful. They're unusual because most bison are privately owned, as we know, although there's some on, some public bison as well, public rangelands. And then Large Carnivores, which includes the four large carnivores: black bear, grizzly bear, mountain lion, and the gray wolf. And then, I did forget. There are -- I should have scrolled down a little farther -- Amphibians and Reptiles, which is a really interesting, well-written chapter, really unique. I don't think we have another synthesis of rangeland amphibians and reptiles. At least not one that's this thorough. [Inaudible]. And then a final chapter on insects and grassland ecosystems.

>> That's a great list.

>> Yeah, Jeff is right. Those last two chapters, they occur at the end of the book. But that's not because they're less important than any others. And it is the first synthetic coverage of each of those groups of wildlife. And, you know, considering insects as wildlife is probably novel, as presented in this book.

>> Yeah. You've alluded to it a few times, but what are your hopes for the publication, aside from being read by, used by people that are actively managing land? Maybe that's enough. [laughs]

>> Yeah, that's it.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, you know, we've mentioned it. We may have beat around that over the course of the last half an hour or so, that I want it to be a reference for instruction for undergraduate and graduates, for sure, especially as a jumping-off point for laying foundations of knowledge that we could discuss, but also be used in the field by people who are managing wildlife habitats in working landscapes.

>> Yeah, that's something that I really want is for -- Because we're all educators, right? Lance, Dave, myself, we're all educators, universities, public universities in the West. We work with these systems and these species. But, you know, if you could educate people, you know, whether formally in the classroom or whether informally on their own as they study these topics, you know, just think about the information that they can gain, you know, even the distribution of species. Where do they occur? We have maps of both current and historical distributions for many of the species in each one of the chapters, species accounts chapters. But then also all the upcoming issues, you know, kind of what to be prepared for. Because I think that as managers, as students, as landowners, ranchers, go through the years to come, I think that, you know, we just need to understand better and better what we're doing with the conservation, with the ecology of these species. And the book that came together so well. It just really, you know, encapsulates both those topics, ecology and conservation, so well. And, of course, you know, down the road, it probably will need to be updated at some point. But I think right now, it really is a, you know, really unique kind of standalone volume.

>> Mm-hmm. I would agree. Maybe we'll wrap up here with some reflection questions. I don't assume that you've read every word. But you guys do have probably the most comprehensive knowledge of what's in here of anybody. Was there anything that surprised you in what came out of these, particularly the species account syntheses, anything that seemed like, you know, a new understanding or major research findings in the book?

>> I don't -- I'll let -- I mean, so the way that we divided up the effort was there were three of us. So we divided all of the chapters into thirds. And we served as primary editors and reviewers for those chapters. Although, Tip, yes, I have read most of the book, even the chapters that I didn't directly have an editorial hand in. And I don't think there's anything in it that really surprised me because all three of us have been working in, you know, in rangeland wildlife ecology and conservation and the science of that for a while. So there wasn't really anything that really surprised me. But I did learn a lot of stuff that greatly expanded my own knowledge and got me thinking about how the topics that, for example, the folks working in burrowing rodent ecology, how that might be applicable for grassland birds. So it got me to think -- I don't think interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary is the right phraseology. But it got me thinking about different ideas that folks working in the same similar space have been thinking about that I hadn't thought about it before. So even as a -- even as a scientist who tries to keep up to date on everything, that's almost impossible given the thousands of journal articles that are published each year, it really helped me find new information and inspire ideas in my own work. And I was, you know, I had these preconceived ideas going in that I had a pretty good handle on everything. And that wasn't necessarily the case.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> Yeah, I might just add -- I guess, you know, you kind of asked about surprising. I think what was really surprising to me was just how well some of these chapters came together, you know, and everyone is going to have their favorites. My favorites may not be Lance's or may not be someone else's. But, you know, I think there's some real standalone chapters that I could see myself, like, for instance, one of my rangeland -- it's a rangeland vegetation management class that I teach in the spring. You know, I assigned the chapter on riparian areas. It just does a great job of explaining water and what riparian areas are and how they can be managed and how important they are for wildlife and for the landscape in general. Just and then, you know, new ways to create riparian areas or enhance them. You know, it's just really relevant. That's just one example of a chapter that, you know, I really liked the way the author did a fantastic job on.

>> I couldn't agree more. I love that chapter.

>> Yeah, it's great.

>> Yeah, and, you know, that first part of the book, the first section of the book, that was not --So there are great coverages of rangeland -- there are great syntheses and coverages of rangeland ecology and management out there in text form. That Briske book is a great example of that, and we weren't trying to replicate that. What we were trying to do is provide folks who aren't rangeland ecologists, specifically wildlife-oriented folks and also maybe private ranchers and private landowners, with backgrounding information of how those processes and functions interact with wildlife specifically. And I think that the authors in that section just crushed it. I'm really happy with that first section.

>> Yeah, another one that would be for someone who isn't as familiar with rangeland is the history of North American rangelands. It's a fantastic, well-written chapter. And then there's a chapter before that on rangeland ecoregions for those who may not be as familiar with vegetation and the communities, how they're formed, what management issues there are for those ecoregions. Then following that, there's also one on Western rangelands, livestock production systems, and grazing management, which I think would be, you know, some wildlife people that may not understand that as well as range-focused people would probably gain a lot from that chapter too. But these are just examples, right? There's other things to say.

>> No, it's excellent. I like the organization of it. I like having the references at the conclusion of each chapter so that when you get to the end of the book, you know, your summary statements close out the volume. I think it works really well. Somebody asked me one time at what point would I run out of content for the podcast. And I think this book is a good example. My response has been that, you know, we could do an interview every other week for the rest of my life and not even scratch the surface of what there is to know and talk about and think about. And this certainly demonstrates that, you know, all of the interactions, the interactions between all the different categories of species and livestock and people and land and change over time, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.

>> Absolutely.

>> Well stated.

>> Yeah, absolutely. So we're thankful that you're providing some coverage and promotion of the book. We hope that others like you find it useful, and that's what we want. And thanks again for having us on the program.

>> Thank you very much.

>> Yeah, this is great. We will put a direct link to the Springer website where people can download this and the show notes. And thank you for what you've done with this book. And thank you so much for your time today.

>> Thank you.

>> You're welcome. Thank you.

>> Thank you for listening to the Art of Range podcast. Links to websites or documents mentioned in each episode are available at artofrange.com. And be sure to subscribe to the show through Apple Podcasts, Podbean, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting app so that each new episode will automatically show up in your podcast feed. Just search for Art of Range. If you are not a social media addict, don't start now. If you are, please like or otherwise follow the Art of Range on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X, formerly Twitter. We value listener feedback. If you have questions or comments for us to address in a future episode or just want to let me know you're listening, send an email to show@artofrange.com. For more direct communication from me, sign up for a regular email from the podcast on the homepage at artofrange.com. This podcast is produced by CAHNRS Communications in the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University. The project is supported by the University of Arizona and funded by sponsors. If you're interested in being a sponsor, send an email to show@artofrange.com.

>> The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests of this podcast are their own and does not imply Washington State University's endorsement.

[ Music ]