I’m an integralist, collecting and synthesizing ideas. An explorer where the rivers flow from the Land of Shining Mountains to the Great American Desert, in search of the center of the world. A ranger without a park, a rancher without a ranch, a scientist outside of the academy; a conservationist of wildness in working landscapes, and a cultivator of wildness in myself.

My explorations in science and conservation have focused on leading-edge rangeland stewardship in the American West, mostly collaboratively with ranchers and other land managers, asking how to live on the land, mostly in native vegetation, mostly with native wildlife, in ways that are regenerative.

Both my scientific work and my work as a ranch manager have been contributions to resolving the long-standing debate in range science over rotational grazing–especially by using a complex creative systems framework to show how both sides are true, but partial.

Perhaps the reason I’m attracted to ranching is that, at its best, it blends the wild and domestic more profoundly than any other way of life on the landscapes of the West. But it hasn’t always lived up to that promise, and if we’re going to live up to our common assertion that we’re the real conservationists, let alone our regenerative aspirations, we’re going to have to learn to better integrate those poles of wildness and domesticity. One of the ways we need to do that is to demonstrate that ranching can be compatible with all of the native wildlife, especially those that are potential predators of livestock.

To that end, I work with ranch managers who are ready to coexist with large carnivores such as grizzly bears and wolves. I’ve found that the practices known as regenerative, like strategically grazing in nature’s image, also seem to make ranches less likely to lose cattle to predation; and that the people who adopt those practices are more likely to see potential predators as a natural and acceptable part of a shared landscape.

I wear several different hats, which are represented by sections of this website.

In my for-profit hat, I’m owner of Shining Horizons Land Management, LLC. That started as a ranch management business and evolved into applied science, consulting, and rangeland monitoring. Honestly, it’s a veneer of professional respectability so that I can earn a living doing what I want to do.

In my not-for-profit hat, I’m a Research Associate with the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative. My work there is about Regenerating Wildness: an integral approach to land stewardship, coexistence with large carnivores, and public safety.

Along the trail, I quit a secure job to spend a few summers in the saddle, running a holistically managed custom cattle grazing operation in western Colorado. I coordinated livestock-wildlife coexistence projects for the non-profit People and Carnivores in Montana and Wyoming. I worked as a rangeland management specialist in the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Colorado; a prescribed fire manager with the Bureau of Indian Affairs Branch of Forestry, serving five tribes in northwest-central Arizona; and as a bear technician for Idaho Fish and Game and the National Park Service in Yosemite, California. I served as President of the Colorado Section Society for Range Management, and on the SRM’s Rangelands Editorial Board and Steering Committee. I earned an MS in Range Science from Utah State University and a BS in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Arizona. While a college student I spent my summers guiding young adults on backpacking, and wilderness search, rescue, and first aid in the backcountry of the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico.

I’ve also had a lifelong avocation in emergency services, as a search and rescue technician and as a firefighter, both wildland and structural. My Mom says that as a child I cried when the fire siren blew; and she cried when I joined a volunteer fire department at age 16.