Research into meaningful management of public and private lands requires sites that include both types of ownership. The Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station’s Gund Research Ranch offers this reality.

A gift to the University of Nevada in 1973 of a 10,600-acre commercial cattle ranch, the Gund Ranch—named for its donor, George Gund, III—is a perfect setting for research relevant to Nevada’s livestock producers.

The ranch, located in Austin. Nev., has grazing rights on adjoining lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, providing an ideal laboratory for research into how commercial livestock production interacts with wildlife management on private-public rangelands. Recent research studies include optimizing livestock for Nevada’s arid rangelands as well as beef herd foraging patterns.

     Following a wildfire that swept through the Gund Ranch grazing land in 1999, researchers were given the opportunity to empirically test the standard practice of delaying grazing for several years after such fires, as well as the effects of the decision to re-seed or not. The results of this study have the potential of impacting those ranchers who are dependent on public land permits for grazing their livestock.