University of Montana

UM’S BANDY RANCH

A learning center for sustainable ranching
Our Vision

As the world faces increased environmental, social and economic challenges, colleges and
universities are moving towards core curriculums that embrace the study of sustainable living
systems. The University of Montana – long a leader in this field – has many pillars in place to
create such a curriculum. These include the award-winning climate change and environmental
studies programs, the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation’s dedication to
conservation of natural resources and sustainable land management, and a campus-wide
commitment to sustainability that is part of a new strategic plan developed in 2017.

With support from donors, we will build another key element to this vision for the future:
Bandy Ranch.

A former cattle ranch on the edge of the northern Montana wilderness, Bandy Ranch will be
transformed into a model center for sustainability practice and learning. The ranch will once
again become a working property with a herd of UM-owned cattle, a place where students and
faculty can explore the intersection between humans, livestock, wildlife, forests and wildlands.

In addition, through a highly visible partnership with UM Dining Services, the ranch will bolster
the larger effort to make sustainability a core theme of the activities and educational promise of
UM.

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For 20 years Dining Services has pioneered providing local, healthy dining options to campus
through its Farm to College Program. Dining Services has, in effect, helped educate the
campus about sustainable farming with every meal served. By integrating the revitalized Bandy
Ranch with Dining Services, UM’s focus on sustainability will become more prominent and
create an unparalleled learning opportunity for students. This focus will attract and galvanize
both students and the University community, instilling in them a land ethic and desire to live
more sustainably, regardless of their field.

Support from donors will be essential to fulfilling this vision.

Bandy Ranch

In 1990, the then-School of Forestry received a unique gift from the estate of Ed Bandy: a
3,436-acre working cattle ranch, deeded to the Montana Forest and Conservation Experiment
Station. Ed Bandy’s vision was for his ranch to live on as a center for agricultural research,
learning and outreach. The ranch is located in Powell County, northwest of Ovando and
adjacent to Upsata Lake, the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area and the Bob

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Marshall Wilderness Area. The surroundings are beautiful and wild and are at the interface
between human-managed landscapes and unmanaged wildlands, with elk, deer, grizzly bear
and wolves frequenting the property and creating challenges for livestock production.

Over the last 25 years, the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation has managed the
property as an active cattle ranch, but with little focus on education or research. In the early
years, the College owned the cattle that grazed the property. However, the herd was sold in
2006, and since then the ranch land and hay operation have been leased to a neighboring
cattle operation. During this period the ranch infrastructure has declined due to lack of
investment and interest. In 2017, the college leadership established a new vision for the ranch,
and began to reinvest in infrastructure, including fencing, roofing, a furnace and hay sheds. In
2016, faculty began to implement active forest restoration projects. These two efforts mark a
renewed commitment to the proper use and future of Bandy Ranch.

The next phase is the vertical integration of sustainable ranch management and production
with the broader efforts in sustainability described above. This starts with reestablishing our
own herd of cattle and committing to create a progressive, grass-fed, grass-finished beef
operation that is simultaneously a learning, research and demonstration center.

The Ranch’s Future

To fulfill Ed Bandy’s and our vision of the ranch as a center for place-based learning and
agricultural innovation, we envision taking the following steps:

• Complete an ecological assessment of the property, and use the resulting

information to create a multi-year management plan. The plan and assessment would
drive stocking rates and other ranch decisions, with the goal of improving the
productivity and ecological integrity of the land. Understanding, quantifying and
assessing the ranch’s ecological resources (hay production, pasture conditions, noxious
weed issues, range productivity, etc.) is a necessary first step toward improving the
property.

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 • Establish a cattle herd on the ranch, which will serve as a learning tool for students
while producing beef for consumption on campus. Although herd size should be
determined by the ranch’s ecological condition, the Bandy’s current hay production
(approximately 600 tons), water rights and land base suggest that a 100-cow herd
would likely be appropriate. Alternatively, the ranch could be run as a stocker
operation, with calves purchased annually from neighboring ranches and fed to
slaughter weight on the Bandy.

• Implement sustainable ranching practices such as rotational grazing; regular soil,

riparian and pasture monitoring; proactive predator coexistence practices; and low-
stress stockmanship. Pursuing these and other practices would allow Bandy Ranch to
become a resource for the surrounding community, and would acquaint students with
the most recent theory and practice in ranching.

• Move toward a grass-fed/grass-finished production model, seeking organic or

other certification, and provide beef to University of Montana Dining Services. This
shift will allow the ranch to realize more income from its agricultural resources, and will
allow students to participate in the entire chain of food production.

• Conduct research on sustainable ranching techniques in an environment that

interfaces with fully natural landscapes, including predators and grazing ungulates.
Our research will assess the conservation implications of sustainable ranching
techniques on the wildlife community, a topic that has not been broadly addressed.
Further, both graduate and undergraduate students will gain valuable field, analytical
and conservation management skills through data collection, analysis and interpretation
while being exposed to current theories and approaches for integrating livestock and
wildlife.

• Implement a holistic educational program where students have the opportunity to

learn from a hands-on sustainable ranching course . This summer course places UM
students on Bandy Ranch and facilitates their expanded understanding of ranching,
range management, wildlife-livestock interactions and the ethics of land and livestock
management.

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Educational Objectives and Approach

Bandy Ranch will succeed as a center for sustainability learning and practice by providing a
variety of educational experiences for both UM students and others. The initial focus will be
summer internships that combine immersion in the daily labor of agriculture with a rigorous
curriculum in land stewardship, writing, ecology and ethics as they apply to the contemporary
American West.

Internships will balance practical and conceptual learning, while situating students at the
confluence of agriculture and conservation. Students will participate in the daily work of
agriculture and contextualize that work through focused study, thus experiencing the hard-
earned satisfaction of ranch life and incorporating their new understanding into a larger land
ethic. The end result will be a group of engaged and experienced individuals with the skills
necessary to serve as leaders in agriculture and conservation throughout the West.

Outline of Student Internship/Course Activities

Over the course of the summer, students will:

• Learn sustainable agricultural skills including irrigation, fencing, stockmanship,

horsemanship, pasture monitoring, animal health and conservation practices.

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 • Demonstrate an understanding of the key historical factors that led to today’s
dominant agricultural practices and attitudes in the West.

• Compare and contrast low-stress livestock management with conventional practices

from the perspective of animal behavior and ranch productivity.

• Learn to identify the effects of rotational grazing practices on pasture health.

• Complete readings about land ethics in the American West.

• Form a personal land ethic based on their experiences and information gathered
from the assigned readings.

• Articulate and critique their personal land ethic through discussions with peers, staff
and others.

• Be challenged to propose, refine and execute a meaningful creative response to the

summer’s work and study.

• Keep a journal over the course of the summer.

• Meet and learn from visiting writers and artists focused on land, place and the West.

Internship Logistics:

• Housing: For students to be truly immersed in the work and life of the ranch, they
must live on or very near the property and the herd. Bandy currently lacks housing
facilities beyond the manager’s house, but a long-term goal will be to build a
bunkhouse on site and transform a portion of one of the barns into a classroom. For
the next several years, students can be safely housed at a number of neighboring
properties.

• Food: Understanding what it means to make our living from the land is at the heart
of the Bandy Ranch experience. To this end, students take part in preparing their
own food. We envision constructing a garden and greenhouse on the ranch, but will
be limited by the short growing season. Working with existing UM programs such as
the PEAS Farm and the UM Dining Garden, we will source started plants for student

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 cultivation, as well as locally grown produce. Beef, of course, will come from the
ranch herd, and will be processed locally.

Due to its location and land base, the ranch also offers rare opportunities for short, intensive
courses. Focusing on topics such as livestock/wildlife interactions, rotational grazing,
collaborative conservation and riparian restoration, such block courses could draw larger
numbers of students to the ranch.

Cattle Herd and Ranch Stewardship

We envision a management strategy based on two calving seasons. Currently in the Blackfoot
Valley, calving seasons take place in March/April, with few ranches including a fall calving
season. A two-season strategy brings additional challenges, such as increased labor effort (e.g.,
night checking on calving cows and excluding 3rd trimester cows from pine forests to prevent
pine needle abortion is difficult for fall calving cows), and increased hay use during winter
feeding. Yet a two-season strategy allows interns to participate in a full calving season, better
distributes yearling harvest and delivery of beef over the calendar year and avoids
overwhelming of freezer capacity.

That system would ideally consist of 100 cows – 95 yearlings and two bulls. Over the six-month
growing season, that number would not overtax the ranch’s productive capacity. Required
support equipment includes a trailer (aluminum gooseneck), plus a hitch on the ranch truck in
order to haul livestock around the ranch and to town. Additionally, the ranch’s squeeze chute is
outdated and in need of replacement, and the scales are imprecise and insufficient for beef
cattle research. Ideally those needs would be met by a modern squeeze chute with integrated
electronic scale with weigh bars.

Calves would be weaned and moved to a finishing stage in a manner similar to the common
practice of raising replacement heifers. This would likely include the final three months of
finishing yearlings on nicer grass and/or alfalfa, reducing hay supplies somewhat.

Summer interns would help with the labor required to move cattle around the ranch, and to
divide the pastures for more efficient grazing practices. Current emerging trends in grazing

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suggest that most of Bandy Ranch’s pastures are larger than ideal. We have developed a
network of electric perimeter fencing; interns could help realize its potential by using it to
temporarily subdivide larger pastures (a small pilot test of this method is currently underway at
Bandy Ranch). Water availability needs would have to be addressed under this approach.

If horsemanship is a desired part of the educational program, it would be possible to host up to

12 horses (or one per intern). Additional investments are needed to enable the horsemanship
program. For example, horses require consistent year-round care and a steady labor force to
supply that care. Additionally, Bandy Ranch does not have a trailer; a dozen horses would
require approximately two trailers.

Research Activities

Bandy Ranch will provide an opportunity for collaborative studies across the University of
Montana campus. The varied terrain and proposed activities of the ranch offers geologists,
hydrologists, ecologists and others the setting for studies ranging from ecohydrology and near-
surface hydro-geophysics to biochemical and microbial fluxes in grazed systems. Sustainable
ranching and rural development require new visions of the economics of efficient farm-to-

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market systems, the sociology of changing demographics, the human geography of changing
land uses and values, and legal implications of new models for sustainable rural communities.

Some specific research areas include:

• Social science inquiry on attitudes and effectiveness of place-based learning for

sustainable agricultural practices.

• Conjunctive water management of grassland, forest and environmental systems.

• Response of soil systems to alternative rangeland practices.

• Managing for profitable cattle operations and healthy fish and wildlife populations at
the wilderness interface.

• Complementary land management practices across multiple jurisdictions and land

stewardship boundaries.

• Comparing landscape response to holistic/alternative management practices (within

Montana and between global regions, e.g. Montana and Zambia.

• Developing long-term climatic/hydrologic monitoring strategies to support agricultural,

natural resource and ecosystem management.

Bandy Ranch provides a foundation for synergistic growth between UM and Montana State
University and across the entire Montana University System. It provides a nexus for
collaborative research in rangeland management, leveraging the unique strength of both
institutions. Further, Bandy provides opportunities for cooperative undergraduate research
activities through the UM Western equine management program, the Tribal College system
and the other MUS units.

The proximity of Bandy Ranch to public land stewards – the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks – and
private producers provides opportunities for collaborative research on common management
problems and challenges of managing land units with divergent objectives, goals and
stewardship responsibilities. These efforts will be augmented by the very successful activities of

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land stewardship groups such as the Blackfoot Challenge and Trout Unlimited and their work
with ranchers in Upper Clark Fork restoration area.

The development of Bandy Ranch as an active research and monitoring center for sustainable
ranching and environmental management complements the National Science Foundation
Long-Term Ecological Research and Critical Zone Observatory Networks. While these programs
focus on natural landscapes, research at Bandy Ranch will monitor response to climate change
in an actively managed landscape with multiple resource objectives. This provides a unique
opportunity to serve the vital and extensive farming and ranching communities across Montana
and throughout the West, developing scientific applications to support sustainable practices for
an economically strong and environmentally healthy future.

Use of Bandy Ranch for wildlife research and educational activities complements ongoing and
long-term programs aimed at addressing the conservation implications of sustainable ranching
activities on wildlife communities. Researchers funded by the National Science Foundation and
the Boone and Crockett Club are investigating how best to integrate sustainable ranching
operations and wildlife communities. Including Bandy Ranch in this research would extend our
opportunity to address these critical questions in a unique environment while involving
students. We envision integrating data collection, analysis and interpretation in courses that
address wildlife sustainability, such as Wildlife Habitat Conservation and Management and
Applied Wildlife Management.

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Grass-Finished Beef and Dining Services

UM Dining Services is a national leader in institutional dining and a pioneer in sustainable

foodservice practices. One of UM Dining’s most successful initiatives has been its Farm to
College Program, which aims to support local and sustainable agriculture by leveraging the
purchasing power of the department. Since the program started in 2003, UM Dining has
invested over $8 million dollars in local and sustainable agricultural products. Sourcing local
and sustainably raised beef has been one of the program’s priorities. UM Dining purchases
around 35,000 lbs. of beef products annually, more than 80 percent of which comes from
Montana ranchers.

Not only is sourcing beef from Bandy Ranch perfectly aligned with UM Dining’s commitment to
supporting sustainable agriculture, it is also an exceptional opportunity to educate students
and guests on the complex social and environmental issues we all face as food consumers.
Many of the problems inherent in the food system stem from a lack of awareness and
transparency. The partnership between

UM Dining and Bandy Ranch would be an unprecedented example of direct and transparent
procurement, and would extend the learning opportunities of the Bandy Ranch project beyond
issues specific to producers and into the realm of consumer-based food system issues.

UM Dining has undertaken a number of initiatives designed to educate consumers about issues
related to the food system – everything from internships and work-study positions to special
events, theme dinners, documentary screenings and a variety of digital and print collateral used
to raise awareness. A partnership with Bandy Ranch would provide numerous opportunities to
build on the department’s educational mission and extend the learning opportunities
associated with Bandy Ranch to the broader campus community.

With a long history of working directly with local producers, UM Dining has the knowledge and
resources to overcome any potential hurdles in using Bandy Ranch beef. We have existing
relationships with several state-inspected animal processing facilities, all of which would be
able to accommodate the volume and packaging needs of Bandy Ranch and UM Dining. As a
large institutional operation, UM Dining has the storage infrastructure to accommodate any
swings in product availability and the ability to forecast our menus, and therefore our product

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needs, well into the future. UM Dining also has an exceptional culinary staff that is skilled at
whole animal, tip to tail cooking.

Linking sustainable agricultural programs at Bandy Ranch to food systems activities on the UM
campus creates a foundation for students to learn about sustainable living in all campus
programs. Dining Services can use educational displays to share current and future activities in
locally sourced foods and Farm to College programs. A range of other Dining Services-
sponsored activities, like field trips to Bandy Ranch during freshman orientation, weekend
retreats to Bandy Ranch throughout the school year and cooking demonstrations and classes
that promote healthy eating and local foods, will continue the reach of Dining Services’
educational efforts.

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Integration and Role in a Sustainable Campus

Dining Services is merely one piece of the puzzle. A center for sustainable ranching at Bandy
Ranch will integrate programs across the UM campus to enhance our existing culture of
sustainability.

The W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation will complement and synergistically
extend current sustainability education programs within the college and across campus by
focusing research and education at Bandy Ranch. Sustainable living will be promoted through
courses in environmental studies, geography and other majors. As faculty study new economic,
social and legal visions needed to transition cultures – locally, nationally and globally – into new
sustainability models, new curriculum and research areas will open up. Bandy Ranch could be
integrated into UM activities such as freshman-level core education options, interdisciplinary
and cross-departmental courses and degree programs, and graduate-level seminars and
degrees. The broader community will benefit through evening lecture programs and
community activities on campus and the ranch.

All activities across campus and at Bandy Ranch serve to build and reinforce a land and
environmental ethic consistent with the traditional stewardship values of Montana and the
American West, extending these values into realization of new visions of sustainable living.

Your Support Matters

We invite you to invest in our students, our faculty and our vision for a more sustainable future
with a leadership gift supporting the planning and implementation of this vital program.

Your gift will be part of a bold initiative: Campaign Montana, a comprehensive, seven-year
fundraising campaign for the University of Montana. As we move forward with the campaign,
your gift will be an incredible inspiration to other donors, both within the W.A. Franke College
of Forestry and Conservation and across the University community. Join us!

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