How Badger Creek Ranch Earned the “Grazed on Audubon Certified Bird Friendly Land” Label
By Kris Herbst
When you buy Badger Creek Ranch meats, you are joining a community of consumers whose purchasing power ensures that their food is produced by responsibly-managed land stewards. Badger Creek Ranch meats carry the “Grazed on Audubon Certified Bird Friendly Land” label, which guarantees that the ranch's cattle are improving the health of open grasslands, creating bird-friendly habitat for endangered bird species and other wildlife, and helping to store and purify surface waters.
Audubon created this food label to promote meat products from livestock that are allowed to graze freely on open grasslands – they are never kept in feedlots. Cattle must be managed in a way that improves the health of grasslands so that native grasses flourish, creating habitat that conserves bird species and other wildlife.
“Nowadays, most of us don’t really know where our food comes from,” said Chris Wilson, director of Audubon Conservation Ranching. “The ‘not knowing’ can be a passive endorsement of poor land stewardship, little to no grassland habitat, and fewer wingbeats.
“But now people have a choice – selecting beef raised on Audubon certified lands that are building diverse bird habitats – and this has the potential to empower anyone that eats beef to support conservation. The range of land benefits rolled into certification includes healthier soil, cleaner streams, and increased plant diversity that supports bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.”
Badger Creek Ranch is the 100th ranch to be certified by Audubon since it began enrolling ranches in its Conservation Ranching program in 2017. The Audubon certification guarantees that Badger Creek Ranch restricts the use of pesticides, including a complete prohibition on neonicotinoid pesticides. Its cattle must be raised humanely on open grassland without hormones, antibiotics, or negative environmental impacts. Cattle feed must not include animal byproducts and only minimal grain-based feed supplements.
“We take that a step further because all of the cattle that we raise for beef are grass fed and grass finished, with no grain,” said Chrissy McFarren, co-owner of Badger Creek Ranch. “That is our standard.”
Moving cattle at Badger Creek Ranch
The ranch follows strict animal welfare protocols that require livestock are kept in good health at all times on healthy pastures. Cattle are allowed to follow their natural and instinctive behaviors without confinement except when providing veterinary care, for protection against inclement weather, or when handling and shipping. The handling and movement of cattle is managed as quietly and patiently as possible, ensuring comfort, safety, and calmness, to prevent stress or injury.
Through its certification, Audubon recognizes that Badger Creek Ranch is committed to improving habitat for native plants, pollinators, and numerous species of bird and other wildlife on its expansive open grasslands. “We already had these practices in place, so that's what attracted us to the Audubon certification program,” McFarren said. “We were already a good fit for them because we didn't have to change anything.”
“Badger Creek Ranch is one of the last bits of undeveloped open prairie in South Park.”
Grasslands conservation is critical because North America has lost more than half of its native grasslands – they are among the most threatened and least protected ecosystems in the world. Grasslands are being fragmented and degraded through unsustainable agricultural uses, proliferation of invasive plants and vegetation, encroaching human development, and poor grazing practices. As grassland habitats have declined over the past half century, the number of grassland birds has dropped by almost one-half, and many birds and other wildlife are edging closer to endangerment and even extinction.
Badger Creek Ranch is about midway through implementing a two-year conservation ranching plan, created with the Audubon Society. Under the plan, the ranch agrees to maintain most of its grasslands as native prairie grasses or wildlife-friendly cool-season grass.
“Badger Creek Ranch is one of the last bits of undeveloped open prairie in South Park,” McFarren said. “Our goals, and all that we are doing, are the only things standing between losing this ecosystem to development.”
The ranch's cattle are moved frequently to different pastures, allowing for short periods of high-intensity grazing. This creates patches of short vegetation habitat for species like the horned lark and vesper sparrow, both considered “birds of conservation concern.”
Badger Creek Ranch
Elsewhere, two-thirds of pasture lands are allowed extended periods of rest and recovery each year so that vegetation grows taller to provide habitat for bird species like the savannah sparrow. This produces a mosaic of pastures with grasses of different heights, creating diverse habitats for a wide array of bird species.
Cattle are rotated among temporary pasture enclosures by setting up portable, single-wire solar-powered electric fences that the cows know not to touch. By keeping the cattle bunched up, they mimic the behavior of the bison herds that once roamed South Park. Their dung and urine added important nutrients to the soils, and the impact of their hooves, grazing, and wallowing tilled the soil so that it retained scarce moisture and native seeds could take root.
The ranch's goal is prevent cattle from “hanging out” along the cool waters of Badger Creek where they can pollute the waters and erode creek banks, sending sediment into the creek that damages its aquatic ecosystem. This keeps cattle from trampling wetland plants, shrubs and trees in the bottomlands that would otherwise help cool and filter the creek's waters, improving the habitat for wildlife including trout.
“Our project to add watering points for the cattle keeps them off the creek bed area. It’s a game changer.”
Instead, the ranch has installed water tanks, fed by ground wells, that allow cattle to drink when they are rotated through upland pastures. This sustainable grazing allows the land to regenerate after generations of overgrazing, enhancing the soil's ability to absorb and hold moisture while reducing water runoff and erosion, making the land more resilient to drought.
One of Badger Creek Ranch’s watering points, made from a tire from an oversize truck, straddles a fence line so that cattle can reach it from pastures on either side. Well water is pumped into the tank at upper left, which supplies several watering points. Photo by Lauren Rutten.
“This is one of the biggest things we have done to improve Badger Creek,” McFarren said. “Our project to add watering points for the cattle, which we just finished, keeps them off the creek bed area. Now they can go graze further out, where they have access to the watering points. It's a game changer.”
To maintain its Audubon certification, Badger Creek Ranch monitors and reports the condition of vegetation and soil health in its pastures, and works with Audubon to conduct seasonal bird and habitat surveys.
Badger Creek Ranch also participates in a coalition of landowners, government agencies, and environmental groups that are restoring the health of the Badger Creek watershed. This includes adding check dams to mimic the behavior of the beavers, which historically had lived in the watershed, slowing the flow of the creek and causing it to meander across a broader wetlands flood plain.
Willow trees and other types of vegetation are being planted along the creek to stabilize the banks. Badger Creek Ranch hosts regular land health workshops with the Quivira Coalition during which participants are taught to build rock structures that prevent water erosion from gouging out gullies on the slopes above the creek. These restoration measures will help absorb the damaging energy of flash floods, and over time they will recharge ground waters and restore a year-round flow to the creek.
Another benefit of restoring grasslands is that they store carbon in the soil, mitigating climate warming. Healthy farm and grasslands could remove and store almost two billion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year — as much as the global transportation sector emits annually.
Because most remaining grasslands are privately owned, it takes a coalition of groups like Audubon, plus landowners like Badger Creek Ranch who live and work on the land, to restore and maintain them. By buying Badger Creek Ranch meats or otherwise participating the Badger Creek Ranch Community, you become part of a movement that supports landowners who want to pursue their livelihood through sustainable ranching.