Ranch Ecology/Management Philosophy
The Stewardship Ranch is located in the Arkansas Valley ecoregion, which
consists of the low Arkansas River valley from east central Oklahoma
to central Arkansas. This broad valley separates the rugged Ozark Highlands
to the north from the Ouachita Mountains to the south. The Central Oklahoma/Texas
plains form the western border.
Climate & Topography
Annual precipitation in this ecoregion averages about 44 inches (111
cm) and temperature averages 62 degrees (17 degrees centigrade). The
growing season averages 216 days.
Flat lowlands with poor natural drainage characterize most of the area.
Isolated hills are scattered throughout the plains. Soils in the area
are generally poor except along larger streams. This ecoregion drains
into the Canadian and Arkansas Rivers. A tributary of the Arkansas, the
Poteau River, runs through the ranch. Like other tributaries, it is a
slow, clear stream.
Species Diversity
In the late 1980s, the Kerr Center inventoried the vegetation of the
ranch’s 4,000 acres of pasture, bottomland, woodland, and riparian
areas, and cataloging 500 species.
Three hundred twelve vertebrate species are native to this region, including
white-tailed deer, raccoons, bears, ducks, red and gray fox, bobcat, hawks, and
river otter. One hundred species of birds, including owls and snow geese, call
this region home. Many of these can be viewed on the ranch.
Native Pollinators
The Stewardship Ranch works to showcase native pollinator habitat maintenance and development strategies. Native pollinators face threats from many sources, including insecticides, intensive farming/ranching practices and urban development.
 With the mounting threats to honeybees, there are concerns about the need for native pollinators to provide pollination of food crops. Livestock operations can benefit from native pollinators by improving the seed set on legumes in pastures. While native pollinator habitat has been studied and promoted in different regions of the United States, limited work has been done in the eastern Oklahoma region.
Native pollinators include numerous bees, flies, beetles and bats. Pollinators are essential to the environment. The ecological service they provide is necessary for the reproduction of nearly 75% of the world’s flowering plants. This includes more than two-thirds of the world’s crop species. The fruit, seed, and animal production supported by pollinators provides over 30% of the foods and beverages consumed in this country. The annual economic value of insect-pollinated crops in the United States was estimated to be $20 billion in 2000, with native insects contributing at least $3 billion.
In 2006, the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences released the report Status of Pollinators in North America, which called attention to the decline of pollinators resulting from habitat loss, alteration, and fragmentation, as well as pesticide use.
Honey bees provide the bulk of crop pollination in the U.S., yet the number of managed honey bee hives has declined by 50% since the 1950s. Each year, the U.S. beekeeping industry loses more than 30% of hives from a variety of problems, including diseases, pests, and Colony Collapse Disorder. Recent research on crop pollination, however, has demonstrated that native bees also make a significant contribution to crop pollination, in some cases providing all of the pollination required – when enough habitat is available.
Today, habitat supporting these native pollinators is more important than ever as honey bee hives become more expensive and difficult to acquire. Furthermore, research suggests that increased pollen diversity leads to higher fitness in honey bees; diverse wildflower plantings benefit honey bees, as well as native species. The 2008 Farm Bill included pollinators as a priority resource concern of conservation programs.
To successfully implement pollinator conservation projects, farmers and NRCS conservation planners need detailed specifications for different regions of the country. While the plant composition needed to support a diverse and abundant community of pollinators is understood, there is a lack of specific information on how to establish plantings that contain diverse wildflowers. Growing monocultures of native grasses is comparatively simple, where broad-leaf herbicides are available to help with weed control. When establishing diverse wildflower meadows, growers have fewer weed control tools, making site preparation (e.g. weed abatement) very important.
Conservationists and growers also have concerns about establishing habitat that is able to sustain diverse shrub and wildflower communities over time. Finally, while many growers support the idea of conserving pollinator habitat, they are also concerned about bloom competition between target crops and habitat plantings, the potential for plantings to become weeds in the main crop, or for these plantings to harbor crop pests or diseases.
With help from a Conservation Innovation Grant from the USDA Natiural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), and in partnership with the Xerces Society, the Kerr Center is working to
1) Implement plantings at the Kerr Center Ranch to use in outdoor classrooms for students, teachers and NRCS employees to learn proper planting, plant identification, and management techniques for native pollinator habitat. Plantings focus on plants native to Eastern Oklahoma and those associated with native pollinators.
2) Install a stabilized stream crossing point within the riparian area native pollinator habitat, to demonstrate the establishment of native pollinator habitat within a working ranch program.
Multispecies grazing can be used where needed to maintain native pollinator habitat. As an additional benefit, native pollinator habitat can enhance market development for native seed producers who are currently struggling in the face of declining CRP markets.
Natural Communities
 The
Arkansas River Valley forms a break between the Ozark Highlands to the
north and the Ouachita Mountains to the south, not only in geologic formation
but also in community composition. The Stewardship Ranch is located just
north of the Ouachita Mountains.
Before European settlement, tall grass prairie communities containing
bluestems, switchgrass, and other tall grasses dominated much of the
broad valley. A wide variety of wildflowers and other plants also were
present in great numbers. Prairie communities were often scattered between
dry upland forests and bottomland hardwood forests that occurred along
streams. Fire was an important factor in maintaining these communities.
Shortleaf pine savannas occupied ridge tops of this ecoregion. Because
these forests are an extension of those dominating the Quachita Mountains,
they are similar in structure and function.
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A summer pond on the Stewardship
Farm
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Lush forests of oak, elm, and hackberry occurred along streams and rivers.
These tall forests (about 100 feet/30 meters) usually had two or three
other levels of trees in the understory, and often accumulated dense
mats of leaves and other litter. Scattered clumps of low vegetation thrived
in these heavily shaded forests except in openings, where a lush growth
of herbaceous plants covered the ground. Grape, poison ivy, and greenbrier
vines were common.*
Today much of the ranch is pastureland, dominated by bermuda grass and
tall fescue, both introduced species. Remnants of the natural communities
still remain on the ranch, and agroforestry and
riparian protection projects have enhanced
or restored others.
Throughout, the ranch retains its natural beauty. Crossing the Poteau
River to the south side of the ranch, you can imagine you are entering
another world, a world before fences and energy crises, a more spacious
world of vast prairie, broken by forests of oaks and watered by shimmering
oxbow lakes.
On summer evenings, comes the clamor of tree frogs, the buzz saw of
cicadas, and the insistent call of the chuck-will’s-widow. There
are wild smells – the sharp perfume of compass flowers, the resin
of pine, and the vanilla of native clover in the humid air, along with
the earthy smell of cattle.
On a foggy morning, the shiny green fescue is as beautiful as the native
big bluestem, and the cows emerging from the fog are as handsome as the
deer, their bellows as startling as the bugling of elk.
The farm is a part of nature. That is an ancient, basic idea. But in
modern, industrial agriculture, this view of the farm has been replaced
by simpler models such as the farm as mining operation, where food is
extracted, like gold, from the soil; or the farm as factory, where food
is assembled, like a bicycle, from a few raw materials.
In 1986, the Kerr
Center began to transform the Kerr Ranch from a well-managed conventional
spread into a model sustainable enterprise, tapping into the natural
cycles of abundant sun and rain in southeastern Oklahoma to grow grass
and beef without relying on chemical fertilizer. In doing so, it became
the only sustainable agriculture organization with livestock as a primary
focus.
Management Philosophy
To make a ranch or farm sustainable, it must be viewed as a system.
Farm as system: Webster’s definition of the word ‘system’ features
terms such as ‘interrelated,’ ‘complex,’ and ‘whole.’ On
a ranch, the cows, the grass they eat, and the soil they walk on and
that grows the grass cannot be separated in the long run if the system
is to remain viable.
In 1989 a group of farm managers, ranch workers, and researchers, headed
by Kerr Center president Jim Horne, collaborated on guidelines for evaluating
the economic and ecological sustainability of the ranch and center projects.
The guidelines addressed fertility management and soil health; insect,
disease and weed management; energy use and conservation; biological
diversity; water management; nutrient recycling and waste management;
plant and animal adaptation to local conditions; and economic accounting
systems (which include both monetary and non-monetary benefits). These
areas form the basis for the book written by Horne and Communications
Director Maura McDermott, The Next Green Revolution: Essential Steps
to a Healthy, Sustainable Agriculture, published in 2001 by Haworth
Press.
Resources
* Information on the Arkansas Valley ecoregion was taken from: Oklahoma
Biodiversity Task Force, Norman L Murray, editor, Oklahoma’s Biodiversity
Plan: A Shared Vision for Conserving Our Natural Heritage, Oklahoma Department
of Wildlife Conservation, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1996
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