King Ranch: Ranching on the edge

The King Ranch in Wyoming, established in 1911, has for generations been “Ranching on the Edge” and adapting to new challenges as they operate on the perimeter of Wyoming's largest city, Cheyenne. Lessons learned from King Ranch are highlighted regarding decision-making approaches, management strategies, and partnerships used to manage complex and highly variable systems for multiple goals. Challenges presented to the King Ranch were turned into opportunities—“make lemonade when lemons are presented”—through creative collaborations resulting in new economic opportunities providing an avenue to involve the next family generation, leveraging existing skill sets of personnel on the ranch and ranch assets, and embracing community-centric relations. Management-science partnerships involving multiple local, state, and federal entities on contemporary issues foster bidirectional knowledge transfer and learning for both ranchers and scientists.