Soil Restoration at Rafter W Ranch
Enhancing soil health to increase drought resilience on an ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Certified Ranch in eastern Colorado.
Words by Evan Barrientos
Communications Manager, Community Building
Photography by
Evan Barrientos
Communications Manager, Community Building
Published October 27, 2022
This article is from ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Rockies
, ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ's regional office for Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Find your nearest ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ office here.
Located on the shortgrass prairie in eastern Colorado, is certified by ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ's Conservation Ranching Initiative. The owner, Lance Wheeler, has a deep interest in holistic ranch management and improving the long-term health of his land, the wildlife it sustains, the livestock it nourishes, and the people they feed. In February of 2022, ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Rockies' Conservation Ranching staff helped Lance implement a restoration project to improve the ranch's soil health and drought resilience.
³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ staff helped Lance secure a grant from the to use a keyline plow (operated by ) to reduce soil compaction and increase water filtration in a historically overgrazed pasture. This treatment should allow the land to capture more of the rain that falls on it. As the ranch faces hotter and drier summers, this will be crucial for growing grass, feeding cattle, and supporting the wildlife that also call the ranch home. Native seeds were also spread over the pasture to bolster and diversify the prairie plant community.
³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ will monitor the treatment's impacts for years to come, but the initial results are encouraging. In the first growing season, there were already noticeable improvements in soil compaction and forage production.
For questions, please contact dusty.downey@audubon.org.