About This Lesson
Balancing cattle herd size, grazing rights and wildlife populations is beneficial to grasslands. When cattle ranchers and conservationists carefully manage the land and water needs of cattle and wildlife, they can help balance the needs of both populations. In this lesson, students role-play as cattle ranchers. They explore traditional culture and predicted economic outcomes to determine if they will sell or keep their land. They learn how raising cattle, combined with ecotourism, can be an alternative economic model to the boom and bust of selling land to the highest bidder.
Click here for the standards-aligned lesson plan that accompanies this video.
Keywords: grasslands, carry capacity, conservationist, exponential growth, logistic growth, grazing, grazing rights, overgrazing, population density, population dynamic, population ecology
