By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — The 105-year-old Dugout Ranch is situated between soaring walls of sandstone and rolling hills of grass and sage. It has seen changes, and more are coming.

Heidi Redd and her husband bought the Indian Creek Cattle Co., which is situated on Dugout Ranch, in 1965. When they divorced in 1989 she bought his half of the business and has been running it ever since.

“After I had purchased my partner’s half of the cattle I went to the bank to renew the running loan of $80,000,” Redd said. “We always put the cattle up for collateral. When I went to renew, the banker said, ‘I not only want your cattle for collateral I also want your securities’ – my stocks and bonds.
“I said, ‘You’ve never wanted it before; why do I have to do that when even 100 of these cattle would pay off that loan?’ He said, ‘Because you’re a woman.’”

Redd said she gathered her papers and walked across the street to another bank to get the loan. She took the $80,000 she owed the first bank, put it on that banker’s desk and walked out. She added she has never had to borrow money since while she’s been running the ranch.

Her two sons, Matthew and Adam, were away at college at the time. They have since returned and are working with her. Later, when her ex-husband and partner wanted his share of the profits from the land (“Rightly so, I am not disparaging him at all,” Redd explained), she couldn’t come up with the money.
So, in this land where ranchers and conservationists often don’t see eye-to-eye, Redd approached the Nature Conservancy because she wanted the land to remain a working cattle ranch and not become a development. She sold the Conservancy her land and grazing permits, but retains a lifetime lease on the ranch house and the surrounding 25 acres and has agreed to continue running the cattle operations.

The ranch encompasses 300,000 acres. Most of the land is permitted through the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Redd knows she loses some calves to bears, mountain lions and coyotes. She does not condone shooting the critters, as she considers those losses part of living in and sharing the same landscape with wildlife.

“For me to feel that I have superior rights over them is not right,” she said.
She runs the cow/calf operation (red Angus) just like was done in the 1800s – on horseback. She doesn’t truck the cattle. She is a cowgirl who, at age 70, spends 10-12 hours a day in the saddle.

“In the summertime we live on the mountain,” she said. “We gather and move them from line camp to line camp on a horse. I spend a lot of nights out, more nights in a sleeping bag than in my bed. We come home back to ranch headquarters (powered by generators) on the weekend, take a bath and get new groceries.”

By cooperative effort of the Nature Conservancy and Utah State University, University of Utah, the U.S. Parks Service, the BLM, the USFS, the Division of Wildlife and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a science center has been started on the ranch to understand how climate change might affect the land.

“They’ll study the grasses (the native grasses are Indian rice, needle and thread, sand drop seed – a variety), the soil, and the animals,” Redd said. “If we do get climate change there – already in some areas we’ve noticed that some animals are shifting from the desert floor higher in elevation, to get out of the heat.

“Even a minor shift, you think that won’t make a lot of difference, but it possibly could. I feel like a rancher and a farmer always has to be looking ahead, and this is my way to have one foot in that stirrup and be ready to move on and figure out how best to meet the future.

“It’s exciting,” she said. “We may decide that the way we’ve been moving cattle or holding them here … we may change all that.”