SPARKS, NEVADA – Frank Price received the inaugural Chuck Jarecki Rancher Land Stewardship Award at the Society for Range Management’s 77th Annual Meeting in Sparks, Nevada last week. The award was recently established thanks to a generous donation by its namesake, Montana rancher Chuck Jarecki, a Society for Range Management (SRM) life member. The award recognizes ranch operators who demonstrate outstanding rangeland stewardship and contribute to the ranching profession through local, state, and national service.
Frank Price is a 4th generation rancher and longtime member of SRM who, with his son Sims, manages ranches established in 1882 in an 18-inch rainfall region of West Central Texas. The Price family has two primary goals. First, the ranch is operated as a separate, self-sustaining business and is expected to show an annual profit. Second, but equal, they aim to leave their natural resources in the best possible condition for the next generations.
Price witnessed the bare ground and devastation of rangelands that resulted from the drought of the 1950s and knew that for the ranch to be sustainable into the future, they would have to change how it was managed. He accomplished this by implementing conservative, flexible stocking rates, adaptive multi-paddock grazing, integrated brush management, and multispecies grazing. Equally important to the sustainability of the ranch is livestock management, which includes animals adapted to the environment and low-stress stockmanship to maintain healthy and productive animals.
In addition to their livestock operation, the Price’s manage their wildlife under a Texas Parks and Wildlife Managed Lands Deer Program. Price is concerned not only about the rangelands he manages but about all rangelands. To that end, he is chair of his local Grazing Lands Coalition and maintains a Facebook page and Blog where he shares his successes, failures, and the continual challenge of coping with drought. His motto regarding rangeland improvement is “The better it gets, the faster it gets better.”
For his tremendous contributions to the management of rangeland ecosystems, it is with great honor the Society of Range Management recognized Frank Price with the first Chuck Jarecki Rancher Land Stewardship Award.