By Katie Siesel, Working Lands Conservation
A white field truck kicks up dust as it winds its way across the high desert of northern Utah. Behind the wheel is Dr. Megan Nasto, Soil Science Program Director at Working Lands Conservation. It’s a hot July morning, and Megan is leading a crew of college students through a summer soil collection campaign. Hole after hole, site after site, across 136,000 acres of rugged sagebrush rangeland in what’s known as the Three Creeks Grazing Project. They pause at each site, kneeling down to sift soil between their fingers, label samples, and record data.
From the outside, it appears to be simple fieldwork. But this place, this patchwork of Forest Service, BLM, state trust, and private land, is the epicenter of one of the most ambitious public lands grazing experiments in the country. And these holes? They hold the story of how grazing might just save the soil.
The Story Beneath the Surface
Decades ago, the future of ranching in this region was in doubt. Federal agencies were under pressure from lawsuits. Environmental concerns and political tension meant that grazing permits were on the chopping block. For the ranching families of Rich County, Utah, losing access to public lands would have been a death sentence- there simply isn’t enough private land to sustain a cow-calf operation in this part of Utah.
Instead of bracing for collapse, the community leaned in. Thirty-eight ranching families joined forces to form Three Creeks Grazing, LLC. They combined their herds, restructured their operations, and dove headfirst into the grueling process of rewriting federal grazing management plans. What had once been a patchwork of management was transformed into a unified system: large, combined herds move every 2–3 weeks through smaller, carefully timed pastures in a rest-rotation grazing style (also referred to as adaptive or planned grazing).
The infrastructure overhaul was massive. So was the leap of faith. These families weren’t just pooling cows- they were pooling trust, livelihoods, and futures. What kept the effort alive for more than a decade was an unlikely alliance: ranchers, federal and state agency staff, and local leaders stayed at the table, working through disagreements and staying focused on a shared vision of what the land could become. In 2022, after over a decade of planning and fence-building, the new grazing system was finally implemented.
Watching the Land Respond
Working Lands Conservation, led by Dr. Kris Hulvey, partnered with local ranchers before the grazing switch to answer a big question: What does this new grazing system actually do to the land? Ranchers wanted more than anecdotes. They wanted to understand how new management might lead to cleaner water, more forage, and more recently, healthier soils. After all, soil is the foundation of everything out on the range: more grass, better water retention, and greater resilience during Utah’s increasingly dry summers.
Three Creeks offers a rare opportunity to study those changes. It’s a mosaic of past land use, featuring old grazing exclosures, pastures with diverse management histories, and a nearby private ranch that has practiced rest-rotation grazing for over 40 years. That ranch, generously collaborating with WLC, opened its gates to offer a glimpse of what the future could hold for Three Creeks. The results were striking: the private ranch held nearly twice as much soil carbon
as Three Creeks before the switch to the collective grazing system.
WLC is measuring much more than just soil carbon, but soil carbon is one of the clearest indicators of overall soil health. It reflects the land’s ability to store water, cycle nutrients, and support the microbial life that underpins productivity. For ranchers, soil health isn’t an abstract metric. It’s business. It’s the difference between a pasture that can carry through a dry year and one that withers under stress. They support the delicate web of life that rangelands depend on, from insects to birds to big game. In Rich County, where rain is scarce and the growing season is short, that matters. For producers, healthy soils can be the difference between long-term viability and running out of options.
Early Signs of Transformation
Megan and her team don’t expect miracles. Soil doesn’t change overnight. But early indicators are promising. Since the switch to rest-rotational grazing, the amount of bare ground has decreased, and plant production has increased. More green above means more carbon flowing below. While it will take time for soil carbon storage to catch up, these signals suggest that the land is on the right trajectory.
More than anything, this work is an investment in the land, in the community, and a more resilient future. It’s clear the ranchers of Three Creeks are all in. So when Megan kneels next to another soil pit, hands buried in a patch of dirt, she’s not just looking for carbon. She’s looking for proof. Proof that a different kind of grazing is possible: one rooted in trust, collaboration, and the quiet, slow work of rebuilding from the ground up.
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