More Than a Field Tour - What We Learned on the Landscape

What does a tree growing where it didn’t historically belong have to do with the water in the Ruby River? More than you might think.

Over the last 20 years, new conifer encroachment in the Ruby watershed is estimated to have consumed approximately 14,400 acre-feet of water. For perspective, the Ruby River Reservoir holds about 38,000 acre-feet. That’s water use equivalent to roughly 38% of the reservoir’s capacity.

It was one of several numbers that caught people’s attention during the Ruby Valley Strategic Alliance’s 2026 Summer Field Tour—and one that helped connect what we were seeing on the ground to a much larger conversation about the future of our forests, rangelands, water, wildlife, and working lands.

On July 8, 53 people joined the RVSA for a day exploring Prescribed Fire as a Forest and Range Management Tool. Ranchers and landowners stood alongside agency staff, conservation organizations, university researchers and students, county officials, community members, congressional delegation staff, and other local partners.

We had an ambitious agenda.

We didn’t come close to following it.

And that turned out to be one of the best things about the day.

When the Conversation Is Worth Staying For

Our original plan called for seven field stops. We made it to three.

At each location, the questions and conversations kept going. Rather than rushing people back into vehicles simply to stay on schedule, we gave those discussions room.

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At the Helle Burn, we looked at prescribed fire as a tool for maintaining productive sagebrush rangelands. Participants asked practical questions: How often should an area like this burn? What kind of support is available to landowners who want to use prescribed fire?

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The conversation continued at Ruby Dell, but this time we were looking at a site that had been mechanically treated without fire. That opened discussion about cost, labor, vegetation response, liability, and how landowners choose among the tools available to them.

Jeff Mosley, Extension Range Management Specialist, also challenged a commonly held assumption about the need to rest rangelands following fire. He pointed participants toward the science around grazing and fire and the potential benefits of integrating the two rather than automatically assuming livestock should be excluded after a burn.

These are exactly the kinds of conversations a field tour makes possible. Standing on the landscape changes the discussion. Instead of talking about management practices in the abstract, we can look at the results, ask questions, and hear from people with different kinds of expertise and experience.

Trees, Forage and Water

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Over lunch at Upper Canyon Outfitters, Derek Tilley and Shea Coons from the University of Montana brought another dimension to the conversation: conifer encroachment.

As conifers move into historically open rangelands, the impacts extend well beyond having more trees on the landscape.

Their research estimates that conifer encroachment across Montana costs the state approximately 400,000 tons of forage and 1.1 million acre-feet of water every year.

Here in the Ruby watershed, estimated forage loss from encroachment is approximately 3,700 tons, or 4,700 AUMs. Encroachment also crosses ownership boundaries: approximately 53% occurs on private land, 22% on BLM land, 19% on U.S. Forest Service land, and 6% on state land.

That makes the solution inherently collaborative.

Derek and Shea emphasized the importance of protecting intact rangelands first—addressing small trees as they appear before moving on to larger and denser stands. Early intervention can protect forage and water while avoiding the much greater cost of treatment later.

Their message was straightforward: start early and work together across boundaries.

No single landowner, agency, or organization can address a landscape-scale issue alone.

What Does a Successful Burn Look Like?

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Our final stop brought us to the Greenhorn prescribed burn, a project the RVSA has discussed and followed through its development.

This time, we weren’t looking at a plan on paper. We were standing in the results.

Participants saw a mosaic across the landscape—areas that burned differently, living trees interspersed with standing dead, and a forest that may not match what someone expects a “healthy” forest to look like.

That led to another important conversation.

Standing dead trees after a prescribed burn aren’t necessarily evidence that something went wrong. They can be part of the intended ecological outcome, contributing wildlife habitat, structural diversity, and greater resilience across the landscape.

It was a reminder that sometimes we have to understand what we’re looking at before deciding whether management succeeded.

The Greenhorn project also gave the group an opportunity to compare implementation with the project that had been discussed through the RVSA process. What we saw on the ground reflected those plans and demonstrated how prescribed fire can create a mosaic that supports both habitat and long-term fire resilience.

All Lands, All Hands

By the end of the day, several themes had surfaced again and again.

Prescribed fire is a valuable tool, but it isn’t the only tool. Mechanical treatments have a role. Grazing has a role. Monitoring and adaptive management matter. Forest and rangeland management are directly connected to water. And the best solution depends on the landscape and the objective.

Perhaps most importantly, the boundaries on a map don’t mean much to trees, fire, wildlife, or water.

That’s why partnership matters.

The field tour strengthened existing relationships with the U.S. Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, the Sagebrush Partnership, landowners, and other partners while opening opportunities for continued collaboration with University of Montana researchers.

It also generated an important question for the RVSA moving forward:

How can we work together to support more proactive management in the Upper Ruby?

That conversation will continue.

So will the field tours.

We still have sites we didn’t reach that day—Clear Creek, Badger Creek, and the Willow Vegetation Project, where beavers are building dams—and those landscapes offer the next opportunities to learn together.

The RVSA has always believed there is value in bringing people with different perspectives together around the same table.

There may be even more value in bringing them together on the same piece of ground.