Healthy Hereford Stock
Source: Nebraska State Historical Society
Essie Davis was part of a new trend – a more scientific approach to ranching. Range management is the handling of grasslands where cattle graze in order to maintain and increase both plant and animal production. Proper range management is crucial to successful ranching, and so, it is not surprising that Nebraska is where it was born.
The story of range management began in the late 1800s at the University of Nebraska with botanist Charles Edwin Bessey, a member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame. Before that time, not much thought was paid to managing the prairies that fed the cattle.
Charles Edwin Bessey
Source: Nebraska State Historical Society
Bessey revolutionized botany, both in how it was studied and how it was used. In Bessey’s time, botany was the process of observing plants in nature. Bessey also saw botany as an applied science, in a laboratory with microscopes and chemicals. He worked closely with farmers and ranchers to find ways to deal with the problems of weeds and methods to maintain plant abundance. In an era before chemical herbicides, Bessey’s applied ecology was one of few tools that people in agriculture had to deal with invasive plants.
Charles E. Bessey in his office
at the University of Nebraska, circa 1915
Source: Nebraska State Historical Society
Bessey was an inspirational teacher, and his students further revolutionized biology. They developed quantitative methods for examining plant populations, and looked at plants as populations interacting with environmental elements like soil, rain and drought, and other environmental factors.
Charles E. Bessey is in the Nebraska Hall of Fame. Click below to find out about all its members.
One of Bessey’s students, Arthur William Sampson went on to become America’s first range ecologist. Sampson was born in Oakland, Nebraska, on March 27, 1884. He attended the University of Nebraska where he studied botany and plant ecology. In the 20th century, Sampson conducted most of his research in Oregon and Utah.
Arthur William Sampson
Source: Nebraska State Historical Society
Sampson’s career, like Bessey’s, was a combination of laboratory and applied science. He is credited with a host of firsts, including rotational grazing and the first to develop a practical method for evaluating the quality of ranges. He also wrote the first range management textbook.
Shortly after the end of World War II, the Society of Range Management was founded, and in 1948 the Nebraska Section was organized. Along with the post World War II boom in cattle prices came a wider and wider interest in maintaining grasslands.
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Reforming Beef
