Feeling Sheepish in NYC
A Reflection on the 2026 Climate Week
Amidst dozens of Climate Week gatherings in NYC this past week, I was asked to present on the topic of “Nature-based Solutions.” Implicit in most of these gatherings (filled with impact investors and philanthropists) is the question: “How can capital scale solutions that have been proven on the ground?” To answer that question, I shared a story from my own family’s experience ranching in the Blackfoot Valley.
In the early 2000’s, the ranch operation was facing a real problem with an invasive, non-native plant called spotted knapweed, and had been for a couple decades already. At the time, knapweed was trending hard in the direction of monoculture on several thousand acres of dry native shrub-steppe range on the eastern edge of the ranch. The increasing dominance of knapweed was becoming a risk to the cattle operation and to the land’s continued capacity to catch and hold water, capture carbon, and provide habitat. None of the many efforts to control it in the decades before had stuck. Then, we started experimenting with sheep grazing. When I say “we”, I mean my two sets of aunts and uncles and my parents. The oldest of my generation of siblings and cousins was still in high school.
More detail can be found here, but in a nutshell: over the course of the past 25 years, the ranch has been able to replace herbicide use (Tordon, in this case) with grazing by a band of roughly 1,000 sheep (not counting lambs) to control the knapweed. It was quite a journey. For example, during the first 4 years of the new experiment, knapweed prevalence actually increased as large older plants were replaced with many new smaller plants. By year 8, we could see promise, but the battle was far from over. Finally, after 12-13 years, the knapweed population began to crash. Even though Montana State University Extension estimated that we had been achieving more than 90% seedhead capture along the way, the knapweed that had already gone to seed in prior years had left a seedbed that remained viable for at least 10 years in the soil.
Today, this same land is feeding more livestock than ever, while its ecological health is flourishing. There are several reasons sheep grazing turned out to be a good tool for addressing this decades long challenge, but the “active ingredient” is this: when sheep eat the seedheads and the seeds pass through the digestive tract, those seeds become nonviable. With the addition of prescribed fire and ongoing refinement of grazing management in subsequent years, that range is vibrant enough that I swear I saw a tear come to Dad’s eye when I asked, earlier this summer, “how do you think that Canarway country looks?” I’d just taken my own walk through it, so I could guess how he might feel.
Beyond the management details, I wanted those gathered at Climate Week to know how their capital could scale solutions like these. So, I explained how our approach to capital applied to the sheep grazing anecdote. Today, a conservative estimate of the ranch’s value on the open market is $45M. Many folks with capital ask how our family plans to recover the annual opportunity cost on that capital that's wrapped up in the land, say 4% ($1.8M annually), given that our family’s explicit goal is never to sell it.
Often, shareholders would be clamoring for some of the money. But in this case, parents have shaped themselves and their children over a number of generations not to desire or expect a piece of that pie, since the ranch operation itself can’t provide it while at the same time employing the people (us) doing the work. So far, the ranch has been profitable enough to provide a reasonable and frugal living to the family members and employees who work there and to gradually allow the older generation a slower pace. It is not lucrative, but it is very worthwhile. We simply want the opportunity to continue that.
The real nature-based solution here is when people change their expectations of capital. We are part of nature, after all. Land is kin. These altered expectations have allowed time and financial breathing room for the ranch to thrive. Return on investment comes in the form of a vibrant community to live in, and in the flourishing of an ecosystem that provides innumerable benefits to society beyond the food and fiber from livestock, including fish and wildlife habitat, water retention, carbon sequestration, and natural beauty.
Growing up, Dad would say that capitalism works great when those with capital take a long view with respect to time, and a broad view with respect to wealth. My conclusion? Humans are a part of nature. How we manage our expectations with respect to money will determine whether we can succeed at what Aldo Leopold called “the oldest task in human history: to live in a piece of land without spoiling it.”
In gratitude,
Cole
